Everything there is to know about GERMAN EXPRESSIONIST CINEMA

As the 19th century was coming to an end, as doubts slowly crept in about the old man who had so generously endowed our civilization, whether, in his final days, he could bestow upon us anything more, a group of women marched out of the Lyon factory with smiles on their faces. There would be nothing unusual about this if this particular procession had passed through the square in front of the factory gates. However, their journey took place in a completely different location and, lo and behold, without their direct participation. The female workers were, in fact, marching between the frames of a celluloid strip, which, thanks to a certain magical box created by the manufacturers of photographic materials, the Lumière brothers, came to life and started moving amidst the solid walls of the Indian Salon. The 19th century amazed us once again, assisting in the birth of another muse: in 1895, it gifted us with cinematography.

Introduction

In a time when the art of moving images was just beginning to take shape – three years before Méliès’ fantastic A Trip to the Moon, thirteen years before the monumental achievements of Italian monumentalism led by Giovanni Pastrone’s Cabiria – in another French salon, this time the “Salon des Indépendants,” J.A. Hervé set up a series of his paintings on wooden easels, a series he termed expressionism. The artist’s voice acted upon the minds of the era like a cry amidst snow-covered mountain peaks acts upon a blanket of white fluff – it triggered an avalanche. Unknowingly, Hervé gave birth to a new intellectual current, a new convention in art, a new way of perceiving reality. Thanks to two French salons, Goethe’s homeland, in just twenty years, could become, for the first time and as of now, the epicenter of world cinematography. It could give birth to a child of the somber era of Parisian negotiations – German expressionist cinema.

It’s impossible to talk about film without mentioning life because cinema is nothing but the projection of the creator’s soul. Humans are social beings, their character is determined by the times in which they exist. Thus, it becomes evident that it’s impossible to analyze a film movement, or even an individual film, in complete detachment from the reality in which it was born. According to this notion, discussions about the “German march of horror” must undoubtedly begin decades before the appearance of its spiritual father on the screens – Dr. Caligari. They must commence by delving into the doctrine of expressionism and even offering a cursory characterization of the times in which the doctrine matured.

Expressionism is a creative method that, under different names, has been employed by art for years. We can speak of it when an artist primarily aims to acquaint the viewer with their unbridled inner vision of things, which in turn can take shapes vastly different from those characterizing reality. Expressionism has therefore existed everywhere for all time, wherever the rational and classical tone of a work is replaced by euphoric creative illumination, where the desire for an academic representation of the world gives way to artistic means aimed at giving the work the appropriate expression.

Expressionism existed as a method forever, but as an artistic movement, it only emerged in the first three decades of the 20th century, most notably within the struggling post-war Germany. The term coined by J.A. Hervé stirred a true storm of ideas in the former Third Reich. Just four years after the unforgettable exhibition at the “Salon des Indépendants,” expressionism broke free from French canvases and found its place on the front pages of the Munich publication Die Erde. On paper, attempts were made to formulate something akin to an expressionist manifesto, striving to establish the principles that the 20th-century artist should follow. Soon after, from a relatively isolationist Munich, it ventured to Berlin, where it was discussed in the popular publications Die Aktion and Der Sturm.

Expressionism was the child of an era tainted by the cruelty of war, societies that grew up in the stench of death hanging over the fields of Verdun. As World War I exhaled its final breaths, as the Paris Peace Conference, soon to birth a document stabilizing post-war Europe, inhaled its first, Germany was engulfed in fear and unease. With uncertain tomorrows, society was far from optimistically looking toward a future that its wartime opponents would decide. Hence, a negation of the achievements of the previous generation, a generation that led millions to their deaths and allowed the fate of their sons to be determined by their enemies. The spectrum of values underwent a dramatic transformation; expressionism negated what had been obvious in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Expressionism’s ideological foundations are rooted in the theses of the most advanced minds of modern times. It is strongly influenced by idealistic philosophies, advocating a renewal of thought. In this respect, it draws from G. Hegel and I. Kant. Consequently, the forgotten metaphysics of classical times are rehabilitated, present both in Hegel’s Absolute and Kant’s philosophy. Through Edmund Husserl, phenomenology emerges, calling for a rejection of a naturalistic view of reality and encouraging the negation of generally accepted theses and assumptions, urging a perspective on the world as it “truly appears.” Henri Bergson, a French thinker, reminds expressionists of intuitionism – a philosophical viewpoint stating that true knowledge is not attainable through reason (rationalism) but through intuition.

Advocates of the new doctrine also turn to Friedrich Nietzsche, particularly to his Dionysianism, which posits that within humans exists an elemental essence of existence – wild, ecstatic, untamed, and to the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, who draws attention to the enigmatic nature of the human subconscious. Embracing these viewpoints leads to the negation of relativism (the belief in the absence of absolute truths), historicism (the belief that history is governed by constant laws leading to a predetermined goal), naturalism (the focus on the external aspects of the world, minimizing metaphysics), and rationalism (the belief that reason is the only tool of knowledge, senses or faith cannot lead to it).

It’s evident that the philosophical foundation of expressionism is spiritualistic monism, giving priority to the spirit – the immaterial being – rather than the rational and schematic systems of past years. For Germany, this path naturally leads back to the great traditions of romanticism, both ideologically and thematically. The revival of religious mysticism, sentimentality, the cult of the common man, and the escape into the world of fantasy resurface in expressionism after a period of classical oblivion.

Social disparities resulting from the post-war political and economic crisis, a sense of moral and cultural devaluation, and fear of ordinary days, combined with the ideological foundations of expressionism (negating the previous worldview) and references to the romantic era, which left a golden mark in German cultural history, cause the expansion of the new movement across all domains of Germanic art. Painters, upholding ideas opposing naturalism and impressionism, stop striving for formal perfection. In the search for the secret Absolute, they abandon academic aesthetics for creative expression. The painting was no longer meant to be beautiful aesthetically – it was to demonstrate the artist’s ecstasy, the tension between individual elements of the work. Hence the popularity of paintings with exaggerated colors, the popularity of painting with bold and irregular lines.

The abandonment of the conventional view of the world results in a fascination with primitive art; woodcuts and their more recent form, linocuts (created similarly to woodcuts, but using linoleum instead of wood), start to emerge. The artist once again becomes a visionary, artistry becomes a mission again. The most representative groups of German expressionists (in the realm of painting, of course) were “Die Brücke” (founded in 1906) in Dresden and “Der Blaue Reiter” (founded in 1911) in Munich. Prominent creators included Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff from the Dresden formation, and Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc from the Munich one.

In the field of music, expressionism is manifested through the creation of atonal music, which abandons the center around which it would develop. Individual chords are not linked together, and the entire composition becomes atematic. This is most perfectly presented in the works of Schönberg, Berg, and Webern, but certain elements of expressionism also appear in Strauss’s work.

In literature, there is a special fondness for lyrical forms. Epics are pushed to the margins, with short stories by Benn, Edschmid, and partly Kafka being their only form. From the pages flows a bitter critique of capitalism, an observation of the inevitable agony of cities. Prose breaks with the naturalistic novel, emphasizing textual vision and unusual techniques aimed at stylizing the language. The tenets of realistic psychology lose their strength, as humanity is no longer observed from that angle; a complete transformation of humans is called for. The flight from beautiful form leads to the barbarization of language. Nouns become strongly overrepresented since only they approximate the essence of the thing being written about.

Adjectives, adverbs, attributes are reduced to the necessary minimum; their excess disrupts the composition of the work, which is not meant to move through what it represents but to move through itself. Expressionist drama forms a separate branch of literature, reinstating monumental monologues, attempting to become entirely universal. Its characters often lack names; they are women, men, children, doctors, symbols of different social groups. During that time, Brecht, Sorge, Wedekind, and Hasenclever contributed most significantly to dramaturgy.

From drama, we are not far from the progenitor of cinema, theater, which during the time of expressionist expansion was still under the enormous influence of the English theorist Edward Gordon Craig. The Briton called for a departure from the stereotypical copying of works, aiming to create a theater where the director’s vision would be more important than faithful reproduction of the original script. A stage bridging the gap between the audience and the “super-marionette” actor, astonishing with its scenic depth and monumentality. Expressionists perfectly realize his intentions, turning the stage into another actor – this applies to both theater and film. Dreamlike sets created by German painters make the stage a small work of art while projecting a nightmare simultaneously. The meaning of the word “prop” evolves; it becomes geometric-cubist structures surrounding the actor, who plays their role contrary to Stanislavski’s vision (meticulous psychological shading replaced by emotional performance). Amidst this theatrical frenzy, the director becomes almost god-like; as the sole individual, thanks to their subjective vision, they can control what happens on the theater stage or within the confines of a small studio.

Traveling through the meanders of the subject, we’ve finally reached its source; it’s time to become acquainted with the achievements of expressionism in German cinema, for which the 1920s were incredibly fruitful.

Before Caligari

The precursor to German expressionist works can be recognized in the 1913 film The Student of Prague. Directed by Stellan Rye, a Danish filmmaker, it was created a year before his death in a French prisoner-of-war camp. It’s a great loss that the barbaric bloodshed took away an artist who undoubtedly had the potential to join the pantheon of German directors of the expressionist era. The Student of Prague exhibited the first elements characteristic of the new style. At a time when Hollywood was slowly reveling in scandal, indulging in perverse fantasmagoria, German cinema transported us to the romantic worlds of Edgar Allan Poe, Alfred de Musset, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. S. Rye’s film transformed the paragraphs of one of the English romantic’s tales – William Wilson – combining them with elements drawn from Musset’s poetic Night of December.

References to the monument of German literature, Faust, can also be found. By synthesizing three works, we get a story about a student named Balduin, who decides to sell his mirror image to a sorcerer. The rebellious magician uses it to create a doppelgänger of the original owner. This doppelgänger begins to torment the young man effectively, becoming his greatest nightmare and turning his life into a hellish game. The screenplay features emblematic figures of the upcoming movement. The split character, so characteristic of Fritz Lang’s works, the demonic sorcerer – a prefiguration of Caligari or Rotwang from Metropolis, the mutual interference of the spiritual and material worlds (doctrine of the entire expressionism). The new artistic current shyly begins to reveal itself even in terms of form, where suggestive contrasts give it away.

Three years after the Danish filmmaker’s death, in 1917, a powerful film production company emerged in the territory of the Second Reich, known as “Universum Film AG,” popularly called “UFA.” Initially functioning as a government propaganda machine, it became a private organization in 1921. Its apolitical character allowed it to promote films that deviated from the war theme. Soon, under its patronage, the world would hear about Fritz Lang and Marlene Dietrich, but we will return to them a little later.

Early period (Paul Wegener and Robert Wiene)

Supposedly, in the beginning, there was the word, and following it, reality emerged – a debatable and subjective matter since it’s impossible to prove. When it comes to German film expressionism, there’s no doubt that it all began with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

Directed by Robert Wiene (born in Breslau, now Polish Wrocław), the film became a manifesto of expressionistic madness. For the first time in the history of cinema – and perhaps the last – set designers became more important than actors, directors, or screenwriters. The idea of the stage as a bridge, proposed by Craig, and realized on the theater stages of the interwar period, reached its extreme expression here. In the surreal labyrinth of decorations, stretched on wooden easels in the seclusion of a hermetic atelier, figures wandered, engulfed by their surroundings. Predatory shapes of the deformed “world seen through the eyes of a madman” (a slogan on the posters of Caligari) attacked the audience’s imagination, quickened their heartbeat, and momentarily made them themselves – like the narrator – an inmate of a psychiatric hospital. The boundary was defined by a wall made of celluloid tape. The creators of the set design were Hermann Warm, Walter Rohrig, and Walter Reinmann, painters associated with the group “Der Sturm,” formed around the Berlin newspaper of the same name.

Wiene told a story characteristic of the movement, employing equally characteristic techniques and narrative solutions. The story takes place in a town visited by a mysterious doctor who possesses power over a sleepwalker, Cesare. Soon, people begin to disappear among the winding streets, and the shrewd townsman Alan starts to suspect that death arrived with Caligari. The main character’s mental illness fits perfectly with the expressionistic fascination with the human subconscious, influenced by the writings of Sigmund Freud. Caligari is the prototype of an iconic character for the movement – beneath the mask of ordinary existence, he hides a storm of conflicting emotions, a desire for dominance, a disposition driven by instincts. He is an expressionistic madman, a product of the moral devaluation of post-war society.

In the initial version of the film, the town authorities were portrayed as insane (an expressionistic critique of the system), but censorship demanded their portrayal to be changed. The fascination with contrast is so significant here that shadows often aren’t natural reflections of characters but black spots painted on the decorations. Contrast is also present in one of the most remarkable scenes in The Cabinet… – the awakening of the sleepwalker. The makeup emphasizing Cesare’s closed eyes in contrast with his deathly pale complexion causes the moment of opening his eyelids to appear more sudden and dynamic (similar techniques would later be used by other creators of horror films, and even the Romanian aristocrat – Dracula – would awaken similarly).

Werner Krauss takes on the role of the diabolical Caligari, and he will appear again in the iconic expressionist film four years later, embodying the revived figure of Jack the Ripper in Waxworks. Apart from him, Wiene, and the aforementioned set designers, there’s someone else worth mentioning. Carl Mayer, the screenwriter, will return several times in the 1920s, both in expressionist style and in another German film movement – Kammerspiel. He will even write the brilliant The Hotel Atlantic for Friedrich Murnau. The director of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari seems overwhelmed by the enormity of his work and thus ends up being remembered in the history of cinema for only one film – a pity because a few months later, he creates Genuine, also written by Mayer, which takes us back into the world of surreal delusions.

However, this film doesn’t have the same impact and is overshadowed by other titles, like the famous The Golem by Paul Wegener. Wiene falls into creative stagnation, exemplified by the unsuccessful Raskolnikov or the new version of The Student of Prague. Toward the end of his career, he shines once more with the forgotten The Hands of Orlac, telling the story of a pianist who, after losing his hands, receives the hands of a serial killer as replacements (a brilliant performance by Conrad Veidt).

Let’s leave Wiene now and move on to Wegener and his animated statue, the Jewish Golem. Few know that the human likeness made of clay is a legendary figure found, for instance, in the Talmud. Jewish tradition believed that it was possible to replicate the divine creation process, but since humans are weaker than the Creator, they won’t be able to breathe life and consequently, speech, into their creation. The most famous legend about the Golem dates back to the 16th century and is attributed to the Jewish rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel. He supposedly brought to life a creature that would protect his people from the persecution of the Prague society, which accused Jews of practicing witchcraft and the occult.

Wegener’s The Golem is a cinematic interpretation of this Jewish legend and is also the third film about the clay monster. The first was made in 1915 and had the same title as the one from 1920. The second, The Golem and the Dancing Girl, was made two years before the latter. Unfortunately, both of these films are lost, with the tapes likely destroyed during World War II. Hopefully, they will be rediscovered someday, much like the original reels of Sergei Eisenstein’s masterpiece Battleship Potemkin were found after years – then Wiene and his Doctor will have to step aside from the top spot in the expressionist realm.

The film from 1920 was primarily made possible by Wegener, who, in addition to directing, also took care of the literary aspect by writing the screenplay and acted as the unforgettable Golem himself. Wegener is an intriguing figure, a precursor to expressionist cinema – he played one of the main roles in Stellan Rye’s The Student of Prague, and on the other hand (much like the mysterious Max Schreck, whom we’ll mention a bit later when discussing F. Murnau), he was an actor in Max Reinhardt’s theater. Reinhardt’s theater, unlike Craig’s ideas, treated the actor as a figure who ideally represents the psychology of the portrayed character. It’s non-expressionistic in nature, yet profoundly influential on German expressionism.

The film transports us to a world where reality collides with fantasy, where the powerful in Prague are depicted as wicked individuals, while the poor Jews from lower social classes are portrayed, as Orwell would say, as “more equal.” While not as psychedelic as the world haunting us from the frames of the somnambulist-murderer story, it is greatly influenced by expressionistic painting preferences. The narrative also includes a theme characteristic of Romanticism: the love between a young man from the upper class and a girl from the lower class, which is brutally interrupted by the intervention of the clay monster. After assisting in convincing the city authorities of the innocence of the Jews, the monster gradually turns against its creators and eventually succumbs to a murderous rage. This rampage is ultimately halted by an innocent girl, fascinated by the shiny “Star of David” on the monster’s chest and captivated by its heart.

The birth of a titan – Fritz Lang

The Golem marked the last interpretation of the Jewish legend of the Golem (in Wegener’s rendition), and after that, a brief silence fell over the world of German expressionist cinema. This silence was shattered by the expressionist hurricane brought about by the entrance of Friedrich Murnau and Fritz Lang onto the German scene.

Fritz Lang, after producing a few less captivating titles such as Spiders Part I: Adventure on the Golden Lake (a literal translation from German), appeared on the silver screens in 1921 with The Weary Death, written by his future wife, Thea von Harbou. In my subjective opinion, this fairytale represents the peak achievement of both the director and German expressionism.

The film tells the story of a young girl who, accompanied by her beloved, arrives in a small town where another stranger resides—a man with a sad face, eyes where the will to live has extinguished, dressed in black robes. Tempting the local upper classes with the jingle of gold coins, he buys consecrated burial land and erects a wall around it, a wall with no entrance. Only he can open the gate that leads to the hidden garden behind the stone enclosure. This newcomer is Death, and the garden is his kingdom, and the young man becomes his next lamb. The girl cannot come to terms with the departure of her lover; she loses her mind in despair. She grabs the Holy Scripture and stumbles upon a quote: “Love is as strong as death.

” On the wings of this quote, she crosses the wall that separates her from the realm of Death and faces him. Death makes her realize that it is not up to her, but up to God, to decide who should end their earthly stay. However, he allows the girl to attempt to rescue her lover. He shows her three burning candles, symbols of human souls, and tells her that if she saves even one of them, she will return life to her beloved. Each flame represents a different story, a story of unfortunate love. The first transports us to mythical India, the second to Venice, and the third to the Far East, distant Japan.

Lang abandons the madness style employed by Wiene, to some extent perpetuated by Wegener, and revived a few years later by Paul Leni in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. For him, fulfilling the expressionist doctrine is important not artistically (in a painterly way), but ideologically. He conveys characteristic expressionist themes in a somewhat primitive yet beautiful manner and throws distinctive slogans.

He transports us to a world that breathes the same air Goethe once did. He upholds the tradition of German Romanticism, demonstrating the power of love; equating it with death, he makes us realize that love is the meaning of our life. He doesn’t belittle death itself, its power, because in the ending, he indicates that escaping fate is unavoidable, and the only way to overcome death is to reside in its garden. He criticizes the materialistic approach to life held by those in high positions. By naming his characters with universal titles—Doctor, Mayor, Official—he launches an attack on the bourgeoisie, who prefer to sit in bars and exchange sacred grounds for a handful of gold coins rather than engage in genuinely important matters (an expressionist critique of capitalism).

He transports us to the Far East, which for expressionists was humanity’s cradle, a place where humanity, devalued by war, could be reborn anew. There, all aspects of life are determined not by the desire for profit, but by faith. According to expressionists, combining Far Eastern ideas with Western civilization’s achievements would create an ideal society.

Lastly, a seemingly random scene, perhaps an attempt to criticize the contemporary world—a battle between two roosters on the floor resembling a map of our globe. They fight without reason, without purpose, much like how Lang fought on the battlefront three years earlier during World War I.

Lang portrays Death itself in an incredibly original way. As the title suggests, Death is weary of witnessing the suffering caused by its visits. It is tired of people demonizing it for following the orders of the same God to whom they fervently pray. It is a tragic figure, condemned to loneliness simply for being faithful to the Creator.

Just because the director shies away from the dreamlike decorations created by the “Der Sturm” group, it doesn’t mean his films lack captivating visuals. On the contrary, Lang plays with light and incorporates beautiful hints of what we now call special effects. The use of “Méliès-like” tricks allows the German creator to demonstrate in the 1921 film, a white horse galloping across the sky (in the Japanese story), a soul leaving a man’s body (main German story), a miniature army emerging from a sorcerer’s kimono (Japanese story again), a flying carpet, and an intelligent parchment (once more, a story from the Far East). Watching these types of shots revives the sentimental side of our souls. We sense that we are engaging with cinema, where magical events were brought to life through human hands, not lifeless integrated circuits.

Fritz Lang, while embodying the expressionist doctrine, creates one of the most beautiful European fairy tales, which unfortunately falls into obscurity under the weight of his most famous work, Metropolis. However, before we delve into the world of the 20th-century “city-machine,” let’s pause for a moment to consider his two earlier films – Doctor Mabuse and The Nibelungs.

The story of Mabuse became a cinematic hit, and its sequels continued until the 1960s. However, only the first part of the series, premiered in 1922, was created in the expressionist style. Once again, Lang brings to life the script written by his wife, this time transporting us to a city where Inspector Norbert von Wenck battles the demonic leader of the local gang, the titular doctor. The entire story is an adaptation of a novel by Norbert Jacques.

In this film, Lang does not distance himself from the fascination with the expressionist movement, incorporating into his cinematic craftsmanship a character who can induce people into a hypnotic trance using his psychic abilities. This man uses his extraordinary powers to fulfill his most secret desires – the desire for murder, the desire for profit. Ultimately, Mabuse is defeated by his own mind, which refuses to obey him when the ghosts of his victims appear before him. The doctor ends up in a psychiatric hospital, which becomes the setting for the next film in which he appears. Throughout the film, the influence of Freud’s theories is evident, and Lang believes that the non-material world somehow still accompanies the reality in which we exist. The demonic figure of Mabuse strongly resembles Caligari, also a doctor. The only difference is that Lang’s character uses extraordinary psychic abilities within his own body, while Caligari exploits the psychic predispositions of his sleepwalking victim. The struggle against the mad doctor, the ending within the walls of a madhouse, the demonic doctor – did Fritz Lang commit something akin to plagiarism? Or did the scriptwriter of Wiene’s film not acknowledge the influence of Jacques’s novel?

Doctor Mabuse is also one of the precursors of the crime thriller, effectively developing the patterns initiated by French stories about Fantomas. Aggressive editing and excellent chase and panic scenes contribute to its undeniable success. However, beneath the guise of sensational entertainment lies an attempt to depict post-World War I Germany, where doubt and anarchy roam the streets much like they do on the film reel.

After Mabuse, and before the leap into the future, Fritz Lang embarks on a journey to the past. He visits an era where Germanic tribes are triumphant (unlike the Germany of his time) and presents us with the 12th-century tale of the Nibelungs. He divides this tale into two parts, both closely connected in plot; both parts premiered in 1924.

The first part, The Death of Siegfried, narrates the love between the titular hero and Kriemhild, a love that is interrupted by the death of the valiant lover. Young Siegfried, embodying all virtues (emphasized by the contrast between his white attire and the clothing of his tormentors), encounters a fire-breathing beast as he journeys through a magical forest. Swiftly drawing his sword, he ends the life of the terrifying dragon. Suddenly, a skylark speaks to him from a nearby branch, revealing that bathing in the dragon’s blood will make his body invulnerable to sword strikes, arrowheads, and spears. Following the advice of the avian messenger, the youth decides to take a bloody bath. However, as the dragon’s dying body writhes in its final agony, a leaf falls from a tree and lands on Siegfried’s shoulder. This becomes Siegfried’s “Achilles’ heel,” into which the morose warrior Hagen – a dark figure clad in black armor – thrusts his sharpened spear. The murder is revenge for Siegfried’s assistance to King Gunther, enabling him to win a contest for the hand of the Icelandic ruler Brunhild. Siegfried’s aid is motivated by his love (Gunther’s marriage to Brunhild was a condition for Siegfried’s union with Kriemhild), but Brunhild views it as dishonorable.

The second part, Kriemhild’s Revenge, sheds its fairy-tale veneer and transforms into a dark spectacle of revenge. Kriemhild, in pursuit of her plans, remarries. This time, she weds King Etzel of the Huns. However, Etzel does not agree with his new wife’s intentions, prompting her to take matters into her own hands. Kriemhild seizes Siegfried’s sword and unleashes a bloody massacre at her wedding feast, during which her lover’s murderer, the brooding Hagen, and King Gunther are among the victims.

The story of the Nibelungs has been one of the most popular Germanic tales for centuries, and its interpretations include Wagner’s famous tetralogy The Ring of the Nibelung and Friedrich Hebbel’s dramatic work, which was performed on German stages until 1914. The wife of Fritz Lang, Thea von Harbou, appeared in Hebbel’s version, and the classic, unadulterated 12th-century spirit of the Nibelungs, unaffected by Wagner’s opera, was well-known to her. This familiarity was helpful when creating the screenplay for her husband’s film. The potential of the ancient Germanic legend, combined with Fritz Lang’s artistry and the production power of the “Decla-Bioskop” and “UFA” studios (the two largest German studios), resulted in the creation of a monument of German silent cinema.

Lang enclosed the entire endeavor within the walls of an impressive atelier, which, thanks to exquisite set designs – not the cubist phantasms in the style of Wiene, but Lang’s characteristic style – transformed into a fairy-tale world from the ancient Germanic tales. The director skillfully utilized the possibilities offered by artificial lighting, thus realizing one of the fundamental principles of expressionist visual arts – an affinity for contrast, which is also used in character portrayal. Thirty years before the birth of Japan’s Godzilla, Lang confronted the audience with a fire-breathing dragon, a challenge that young Siegfried must face. Moreover, the beast doesn’t look bad at all; compared to the monsters from contemporary “B-movie” productions, it hardly differs. The dragon is by no means the only “gem” to be admired in The Nibelungs. Kriemhild’s dream is splendidly realized, the animated scenes are interesting, but all of these pale in comparison to the brilliance emanating from the ingenious set designs of Hunte, Vollbrecht, and Kettelhut.

A three-year gap separates the premiere of The Nibelungs from the first screening of what is arguably the most famous German expressionist film, Metropolis.

This time, Fritz Lang transports us to the 21st century, depicted on the subsequent frames of the film reel in a truly apocalyptic manner. Society is divided into two classes – the workers, who resemble a horde of genderless creatures servicing the machinery located in the underground depths of the titular megalopolis, and the privileged, inhabiting the upper levels of the city. The world above sea level resembles an earthly Eden, striking us with its whiteness, modernity, and monumentality. The underground resembles dark, narrow tunnels dug by ants between clumps of earth, and the comparison is not coincidental, for the workers, much like these insects, look nearly identical, with the sole exception of Maria, their counterpart to the queen ant.

In the eyes of the workers, treated by the privileged as mere cogs in the lifeless machinery, Maria is akin to a prophet in modern times. She preaches the idea that a man will come who will unite the hands (symbolizing the workers) and the mind (symbolizing the privileged) through the heart, creating a symbiotic human organism (symbolizing a harmonious society). Alongside prophets, there usually appear mystifiers attempting to exploit their social position. In Metropolis, the machine becomes the mystifier, crafted with such precision that it cannot be distinguished from a living being.

Wonderfully naive, yet chillingly relevant is the collaborative work of Fritz Lang and his wife. Naive in terms of depicting human relationships, their affinity for contrast, which was already evident during the adaptation of the 12th-century legend, becomes excessively overrepresented in this tale of an apocalyptic future. The distinction between good and evil is no longer based on the color of clothing but rather on the drastically different attitudes of the characters. There are hardly any ambiguous figures, except for the heir of Caligari’s character – the creator of the false woman, Rotwang. As a result of these stylistic choices, the characters in Metropolis become personas who essentially lack psychological depth, instead being given a set of stereotypical character traits.

Chillingly relevant is the dependence of humans on machines – isn’t our life already dependent on hundreds of tons of steel machinery today? What was merely science fiction in Metropolis, expressing fear of rampant capitalism and industrial mechanization, is gradually becoming reality. As long as the machine is under human control, all is well, but what will we do when, just like in Lang’s film, the “false Maria” steps among us, looking just like us but lacking what is most essential in a human being – not only according to the expressionists – the immortal soul.

Metropolis emerges from the fear of an uncertain tomorrow in post-war Germany. On one hand, capitalism is galloping ahead, new factories are being established; on the other hand, people suffer hunger as their positions on the production lines are taken by machines. Power is concentrated in the hands of the privileged, capitalists, symbolized by the upper class residing among awe-inspiring skyscrapers. This upper class remains blind to the plight of the gray man, who feeds the ruthless machinery of the underground city-machinery with his own life. In the words of Jerzy Płażewski, Metropolis is not only a masterpiece of set design (extraordinary decorations depicting the city of the future), but also a “Dantean premonition of Auschwitz.” People dressed in identical uniforms, sacrificing their lives during the performance of their Sisyphean labor, waiting for a savior, a new Maria – they are identical to those who tend to the machinery of the underground colossus.

In light of this comparison, it is terrifying to note that a few years later, Thea von Harbou, the film’s screenwriter, would part ways with Fritz Lang and pledge her allegiance to Adolf Hitler’s misguided ideology. Lang, who resisted this new doctrine, had to leave the Third Reich and head to the capitalist America, which, contrary to his expectations, appreciated his directorial prowess, engaging him in the domestic film industry. Before Lang permanently left his homeland, he completed two more productions: his final expressionist film, M (M – Murderer), and the continuation of the Mabuse story, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse. We’ll discuss M in a moment, as alongside The Blue Angel, it was one of the two sound films that adhered to the expressionist principles. For now, let’s rewind a few years back, so as not to forget the man who liberated expressionism from the confines of the studio.

The birth of a demon – Friedrich Murnau

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau merely flirted with expressionism. The idea of creating reality in unreal spaces was not close to his heart. Murnau preferred to utilize the possibilities offered by outdoor shooting. This led to the creation of the first film that tells the story of a Romanian bloodsucker ruling an ancient castle hidden within the Carpathian borders.

Nosferatu – A Symphony of Horror made its debut on silver screens a month before Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse, in 1922. Unable to secure the rights for an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel, Murnau decided to sidestep copyright regulations. As a result, the novel’s Count Dracula transforms into Count Orlok on celluloid, the titular Nosferatu – and a similar situation occurs with the names of other characters. The storyline itself also undergoes significant modifications, with the character of Dr. Van Helsing, for example, being limited.

Murnau narrates the story of a young man who sets out on a journey to the castle of the old count, driven by a desire for wealth. He leaves behind his beloved in his hometown, who, out of longing and fear of losing her lover, succumbs to madness. Meanwhile, the young man arrives at the stone castle, which surely remembers the times of medieval battles. It turns out that the surname Orlok instills a near-panicked fear among the villagers from the nearby village – supposedly, the castle’s owner is a legendary bloodsucker. Skeptical of supernatural phenomena, the young man ignores the warnings of the locals and ventures to meet Orlok. By the time he realizes that the count is not a normal man, it is already too late. The vampire signs a contract that makes him the owner of the property adjacent to the young man’s house. In the meantime, Orlok notices a likeness of the young man’s beloved placed in a gold locket. The bloodthirsty vampire has only one goal from that moment: to taste the blood of this beautiful woman.

Murnau’s expressionist concept is realized in the screenplay as an escape from reality into the realm of fantasy. Formally, the director treats expressionism quite selectively, employing ubiquitous contrast and demonic makeup that transforms Max Schreck, the actor portraying Orlok, into a terrifying creature.

Schreck’s portrayal was so convincing that even to this day, a legend circulates that he was an actual vampire. The claim states that on-screen, he was himself, and he assumed an actor’s mask off-screen, pretending to be human. The legend is further fueled by the significance of the actor’s name, which translates to “fear” in German, and the mysterious biography of the actor portraying the vampire. Today, we know about the life history of the German actor (he was associated with Max Reinhardt, similar to the expressionist Golem), but should we unconditionally believe it? Perhaps Schreck played the role of a human so convincingly that he managed to deceive even his biographers?

An homage to this legend was paid by American filmmaker E. Elias Merhige in 2000, with the creation of Shadow of the Vampire. The film, utilizing fragments from the 1922 Nosferatu, narrates the story of the making of Murnau’s film. It portrays Max Schreck as a bona fide vampire who manipulates the director at every step of the film’s production, demanding the blood of the actress portraying the real estate agent’s wife as payment for his role.

This is what Murnau left us with in terms of expressionism – of course, within the stylistic confines of the movement. A somewhat average story with characters who somewhat resemble those we will encounter in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis a few years later. Characters without deep psychological dimensions, naive. All this is flavored with a spine-tingling legend that still captivates the imagination of the viewer. One might say that Nosferatu is more the work of Max Schreck than of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau himself, who would realize his directorial talent in the Kammerspiel style, creating masterpieces like The Last Laugh (Interestingly, the script for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was also written by the author of The Last Laugh, Carl Mayer).

In longing for Caligari – Paul Leni and his cabinet

At the same moment when the monumental triumphs of The Nibelungs, propagating the expressionist poetics according to Fritz Lang’s recipe, were celebrated, a film with visual references to Caligari burst onto the screens. The initiator of this whole commotion was Paul Leni, a director in his early thirties from Stuttgart.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari serves as a synthesis of two expressionist ideas – the cubist fantasies of Wiene are merged with the narrative structure once written by Thea von Harbou. It acts as a common denominator between The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Weary Death. Additionally, it brings together the most characteristic actors of the expressionist era. Emil Jannings (Porter from the Hotel Atlantic, The Blue Angel), Conrad Veidt (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Hands of Orlac, The Student of Prague [1926]), and Werner Krauss (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Rails, The Student of Prague [1926]) stand side by side. Thus, Waxworks could be referred to as a sum of expressionist diversities.

Similar to The Weary Death, the story unfolds on four levels. However, the candles symbolizing human souls are replaced by three wax figures. The stories will revolve around these figures, devised by a young novelist hired by the cabinet owner to enhance the stories of his wax subjects. The first exhibit is the likeness of Sheikh Harun al-Rashid (Emil Jannings), so the initial story adopts the backdrop of his homeland of exotic spices – a variation borrowed from Fritz Lang’s film. The second figure represents Tsar Ivan the Terrible (Conrad Veidt), who, consumed by his bloodlust, falls victim to the witchcraft snares set for his prey. The final exhibit is an exact replica of the infamous murderer, Jack the Ripper (Werner Krauss). His episode was not inscribed on parchments; it was a dream-like creation of a tired writer and served as a bridge between the works of Wiene and Lang.

Despite copying the precedents’ patterns, the film remains significant as it amalgamates everything that expressionism brought. It harmonizes Wiene’s cubist-geometric fantasies with the brilliant use of spaces and mastery in manipulating artificial light, characteristic of Fritz Lang. The enchanting oriental tales of the era contrast with contemporary Germany. Demonic characters like Caligari, Nosferatu, and Rotwang are linked to stereotypical personas like Jack the Ripper and Ivan the Terrible. Probably intentionally, the entire piece is united by its cast. By placing the three titans of acting side by side – who, no matter how you look at it, play the roles of monuments, statues they have erected with their unforgettable performances even in their lifetimes.

The fall

The era of silent film was coming to an end, and in 1927 in America, the premiere of the first partially sound film took place – The Jazz Singer. Sound killed silent cinema, which was just beginning its artistic revolution. The advent of sound film, along with changes in the mentality of the German citizens, also marked the end of expressionism.

Only two titles were able to realize the principles of the movement on a tape enriched with a melodic line. As we know, the first of these was M – The Murderer, which cultivated the traditions initiated by Doctor Mabuse. The second one, The Blue Angel, besides the magnificent performance of Emil Jannings, also gifted the cinema something more – the wonderful Marlene Dietrich. Let’s start with this film, as it premiered a year before Fritz Lang’s movie.

Josef von Sternberg’s The Blue Angel has a subtitle – The Fall of the Tyrant. This tyrant is a high school teacher (played by Jannings), who among his students does not enjoy a favorable reputation. One day, disgusted by the demoralizing influence of a cabaret star (played by Dietrich) on the town’s youth, he visits her with complaints. This visit becomes his downfall; seduced by Dietrich’s predatory sexuality, he spirals down to rock bottom. The respected profession of a teacher turns into a comedic charlatan’s costume, and his scholarly eloquence transforms into the terrifying crowing of a rooster.

The Blue Angel is not just about Dietrich’s sensuality; it’s also a metaphor for contemporary Germany. Beneath the layers of deep faith and rigorous adherence to rules, true emotions are brewing within the society, emotions that according to Nietzsche or Bergson determine our essence. The Blue Angel is also the perfect contradiction to the Hollywood cinema of the time, which from the 1930s onwards became governed by the Hays Code, blocking any manifestations of on-screen sexuality. It’s precisely this sexuality – Dietrich’s incredible allure – that captures our attention. Could the scene where she sits provocatively with her legs crossed not have been an inspiration for Paul Verhoeven and the famous scene from Basic Instinct?

Lang’s penultimate film made within the territory of Germany departs from the style he employed since the premiere of The Nibelungs. The director abandons monumental tales from ancient Germanic times and apocalyptic visions of the future, returning to themes somewhat initiated in 1922 by his Doctor Mabuse. He creates a suspenseful crime story, which is based on real events. He crafts a film that, between the lines, poses a serious question to the audience – how should mentally ill individuals be treated when they pose a threat to the normal people? Should they be judged like mentally healthy individuals?

M presents the story of a mentally ill outsider who takes the lives of innocent children in the winding alleyways. Ultimately, he is found, not due to the faulty police apparatus, but thanks to the joint effort of society and the mafia organizations, who pursue the perpetrator because his crimes mobilize the local security forces. In a confrontation with the gang leader tasked with extrajudicially executing the killer (the role of the mafia boss is played by Gustaf Gründgens, the same actor who in a few years will portray Mephistopheles in Nazi Germany’s theaters and will become the subject of István Szabó’s film), the question of the moral foundations that could justify such an act arises. Soon, Adolf Hitler will resolve the issue of mentally ill citizens with his T4 program.

M, in accordance with expressionism, is politically engaged – it is, to some extent, a critique of the sluggishness of the police force and a critique of the legal system. Like a magical mirror reflecting the moods prevailing in Germany at the beginning of the 1930s, it is full of anxiety, difficult questions, and dynamic changes. And ultimately, it is fascinated by the secrets of the human subconscious, once again using a deranged person as a creative tool, a fetish of expressionist authors.

Thus, within a decade, German expressionist cinema was born amidst post-war troubles and died under the pressure of sound cinema and the impending Nazi doctrine. However, it did not perish completely; its spirit continues to haunt the realms of the tenth muse.

Conclusion

Motifs from expressionist films appear in the music videos of the most famous rock bands. Even the great Queen uses scenes from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. The same apocalyptic vision of the future becomes an inspiration for Japanese director Rintaro, who in 2001 creates his vision of a city-machine. Another prominent German director, Werner Herzog, pays homage to F.W. Murnau in 1979 by creating a new version of Nosferatu, employing expressionistic elements. The magical, unreal sets of Tim Burton strongly reference the fantasies of expressionist creators. The city in which Edward Scissorhands must live is wonderfully unreal, just like the cities of expressionists. Gotham City from Burton’s version of Batman is almost a replica of the future city created by Fritz Lang.

David Lynch skillfully employs expressionistic techniques in his feature debut, the enigmatic Eraserhead. The champion of Manhattan himself, Woody Allen, creates an homage to the style with Shadows and Fog in 1992. From expressionism arises film noir, influencing directors like Kurosawa and Hitchcock. In the end, expressionism is the father of horror narratives; without it, horror might have emerged only after World War II and could have taken a completely different direction.

Let us conclude by adhering to the principles of this extraordinary doctrine. Expressionism may have died in physicality, but its spirit has transitioned to a realm of reality that continually oscillates on the border of our material world. Some individuals can draw from this realm, aided by intuition and the subconscious. They think with their hearts, not their minds. They are the chosen ones, and only they can resurrect the spirit of expressionism so effectively that it once again takes our breath away.