German Expressionist Sets

Artists and their influence on film makers

The artists Caravaggio, Rembrandt and Vermeer have all influenced filmmakers over the years with their paintings. their use of lighting, framing and many other things have influenced many great films.

Caravagio

Caravagio lived in italy during the 16th century at a time where violence was just part of life. His work was very dramatic and often reflects this violent time he using normal everyday people as models for example using them to act out biblical scenes. his work is very contrasting with use of chiaroscuro(strong contrast in lighting) to draw the audiences eye to the characters or objects illuminated. the illumination often mean something like the representation of a holy person.

His influence on film can be seen in many of Martin Scorsese's films such as Mean streets and Raging bull. it can bee seen in this still of mean streets where half of the characters face is illuminated creating a strong shadow on the other half this is an example of chiaroscuro.

Rembrandt

Rembrandt was a Dutch painter during the 17th century and has also influence many filmmakers. AS with caravagio he used strong directional light likein this photo where the darkness has an almost vignette effect drawing the audiences eye to the center and the body.

Rembrant's works unlike Caravagio often depicted more every day scenes althoght not to the extent tat Vermeer did.

Vermeer

Like the other artists Vermeer uses chiaroscuro in his pictures again to make the lighter colors of the people and objects in focus although his subjects tend to be more everyday. he also was one of the first artists to use negative space in his art as shown in this picture where although the main subject is mainly to the right the artist leaves the whole scene.

expressionism

The expressionist movement in Germany originated in the early 20th century, just before the First World War. It sought to express feelings and moods by abandoning naturalism and impressionism in favor of a simplified style that allowed for a greater emotional impact.

In the visual arts, especially print making, German Expressionism was characterised by the use of distorted perspective, geometric shapes, often at unnatural angles and high contrast in the images with the use of a lot of black. In film these features were present in set design, lighting and makeup.

A classic example is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1919) in which the sets are highly stylised and have a dreamlike or nightmarish quality.

In some scenes shadows were painted on to the sets to further exaggerate the distortion and sense of unease.

Make up was also used in the film to make the character of the hypnotised man seem tired and almost corpse like.

The war had been a cataclysmic event. Millions of people died. There was destruction on an industrial scale never seen before in the world. This made a massive impact in Europe and influenced artists profoundly. Nothing was certain any more, civilisation itself appeared to break down and governments could never be trusted again.

This is seen in the film Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) in which the workers are depicted as being pawns of the owners, doing their bidding like machines. This can be compared to the First World War, when the generals sent people to their death like pawns. The machines in the factory swallow up the workers through a giant mouth like the mouth of a beast.

By the 1920’s Freud’s theories were becoming more well known. Freud argued that everyone’s brain was divided up into three parts, the id, the ego and the super ego. The id is the part that contains the basic unconscious drives of the human mind (things like hunger, thirst and sexual desire). The super ego was the part of the brain that creates feelings of guilt and guides us through society, this part is the opposite to the id as it suppresses those primal urges. The ego was reason, acting between the id and the super ego in the real world so that the desires of the id could satisfied in an acceptable manner.

This theory is explored in The Hands of Orlac (G.W. Pabst, 1924), in which a musician loses his hands and gets a transplant from a murderer. Does he control the hands or do they allow him to act out his secret unconscious evil desires ? A striking image from the film shows the musician holding up his hands to the camera as if they are not his own.