Fritz Lang - Metropolis(1927)

Born in Vienna in 1890 and died in Beverly Hills CA in 1976.

He was an Austrian-German-American film director, screenwriter and producer and an emigre from the German school of Expressionism.  

He was dubbed "The Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute.

His most famous films are Metropolis and M. 

He attended the Technical University of Vienna studying civil engineering and then switch to fine art.  He spent time in 1910 traveling the world but returned to Vienna and served in WW1 and was wounded three times.

He began writing some of his initial ideas and concepts for films while he was recovering from the war.

He was the director of the German film studio Ufa during the growth of the German Expressionist movement.

Metropolis (1927)

A silent science fiction film depicting a futuristic dystopian society with massive skyscrapers where a robot woman causes a workers revolution over the bourgeoise planners and thinkers.

It displays again the use of large and distorted scenery like the Cabinet of Dr Caligari.  

The most expensive film of its day it cost 7 million Reichsmarks which is equivalent today to 200 million USD dollars.

Metropolis Documentary pt 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Robert Wiene - The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920)

Robert Wiene born April 27 1873 in Breslau Germany and he died June 16 1938 in Paris.

Breslau Germany is now Wroclaw Poland.  

First studied Law at the University of berlin and through his passion for acting he made his way into filmmaking. 

His most famous films are The Cabinet of Dr Caligari and an adaptation of Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment - Raskolnikow.  

 

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) 

Groundbreaking and artistically acclaimed silent film directed by Wiene from a screenplay written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer.  

Janowitz and Meyer met following WW1 and thought of film as a revolutionary form of artistic expression. They felt that film was an ideal medium that could bring together many disciplines of the arts.  

The film tells the story of a deranged Dr Caligari and his connection to a string of murders in a German mountain town.  

This film is an early example of a Frame Story where the body of the plot is presented as a flashback told by the narrator, Francis.  

It also is an early example of a twist ending.

Caligari also displays the creation of wild and distorted sets that reinforce the dark and twisted nature of the film. 

 This film is considered one of the first horror movies and is an influence on film noir.

Its been adapted into an opera in 1997 and a sound remake of the film was released in 2005.

F.W Murnau - Nosferatu (1922)

One of the most influential German Film directors.  A major figure in German Expressionist film during the 1920s.  

He was born in 1888 Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe in Bielefeld Germany and died 1931 in Santa Barbara, California, USA

His most famous films are Nosferatu and The Last Laugh. 

Nosferatu was an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula and its controversial release caused the Stoker estate to sue him for copyright infringement and all prints of the film were ordered to be destroyed.  Only bootleg copies survived and these are the prints of the film we have today. 

The Last Laugh featured the use of new and different camera angles that reinforced the story of the film.  The camera was placed at the sightline of the characters as to show what they were seeing and this was used to reinforce the psychological state of the character. This was understood as the Unchained Camera Technique--an innovation that many consider one of the most important stylistic inventions of 20th century.  

Unchained Camera Technique - Allowed filmmakers to get shots from cameras in motion enabling them to utilize pan shots, tracking shots, zooms, etc.

Background Information 1920s Germany (The Weimar Republic)

Germany was in a state of international disgrace following WW1. 

 The German people were torn apart by right wing and left wing bickering and there was an overall feeling of agitation and bitterness towards the government 

The nation was facing a massive national debt and recession.  

German people saw a lot of crime and attempts to overthrow the government.

During the time of German Expressionism, the dada movement was growing in Europe and there was a general feeling of change and a willingness to experiment with new and avant-garde styles.   

Most of this experimentation and liberalism centered in Berlin which was understood at the time as the intellectual capital of Europe

• Bauhaus (Walter Gropius, Mies Van Der Rohe)
• Humboldt University of Berlin
  
• Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Physics (Albert Einstein was its director until 1933)
• Literature (Berthold Brecht, Arnold Zweig, Kurt Tucholsky)
• Art (George Grosz, Oskar Schlemmer, Paul Klee, Theo van Doesburg)