Transcript Masters of European Formalist Cinema:

Masters of European
Formalist Cinema:
From German Expressionism
to Bergman
German Expressionism
• A film premiered in Berlin,
late February, 1920.
• Das Kabinett des Dr.
Caligari by Robert Wiene
• Stylized sets with distorted
buildings on canvas
backdrops, crooked trees
and lampposts, interiors in a
theatrical manner.
• Completely non-realistic
performance - jerky and
dance-like movements
German
Expressionism
• Das Kabinett des
Dr. Caligari (The
Cabinet of Dr.
Caligari, 1920)
• Thomas Eakins, The Champion Single Sculls (1871)
• Realist painting: realistic representation of outward
appearance
• Photographic realism in painting - painter’s
attempt to record reality as a camera does
• Thomas Eakins, Students at the Site of the
“Swimming Hole” (Albumin print on paper, 1883)
• Thomas Eakins, Swimming (The Swimming Hole,
1885)
Claude Monet, La Cathédral de Rouen (Full
Sunlight; Gold in Dull Weather; Harmony of Blue
1894)
・French impressionism - attempt to capture
fleeting qualities of light.
Expressionism in Painting
• Abandonment of realistic representation and the
expression of inner emotion through extreme
distortion
• Large shapes of raw, unrealistic and symbolic
colours expressing psychic condition.
Expressionism in Painting
• Anguish, anxiety, fear, vanity, pride and other
emotion represented by elongated figures and
distorted faces
Expressionism in Painting
• Tilted, lean buildings, oddly angled streets, and
distorted perspective express a state of mind.
Expressionism in Theatre
• Expressionist theatre
• Expressionistic stage design (Bertold Brecht and
Kurt Weil, Drei groschen oper)
• Unnaturalistic performance
German Expressionism
• Actors and their
performance fit to the
composition of shots, set
designs, costumes and
lighting.
• ‘… the film image must
become graphic art’
Herman Warm
German Expressionism
‘If the décor has been
conceived as having the same
spiritual state as that which
governs the character’s
mentality, the actor will find
in that décor a valuable aid in
composing and living his part.
He will blend himself into the
represented milieu, and both
of them will move in the
same rhythm.’ Conrad Veight
German Expressionism
• Nosferatu: eine symphonie des grauns (Vampire:
a symphony of horror, 1922)
• Directed by F.W. Murnau starring Max Schreck
as Count Orlock (Count Dracula) based on Bram
Stoker’s Dracula
• Albin Grau, art designer, costume designer and
producer
European Art Films
• International avant-garde style French, German, Soviet
filmmaking as an alternative to
American realist film style
• The epitome - Carl Theodor
Dreyer’s Passion of Joan of Arc
(1928)
• The film depicting the trial and
execution of Joan of Arc
European Avant-garde Films
• Great many close-ups, often decentered
• Filmed against blank and white background or
symbolic objects and signs (the sets designed by
Hermann Warm, the designer of Caligari) The
inquistion of Joan
European Avantgarde Films
• Close ups of the face of Joan of Arc (Italian
comedienne Renée Falconetti) without make-ups every emotional detail can be shown.
• Dynamic low and high angle framings
• Symbolic scenes juxtaposed in editing
• Accelerated subjective editing (Soviet Montage
film)
・Luis Buñuel (1900-1983 Spanish/Mexican)
・Ingmar Bergman (1918-2007 Sweden)
・Federico Fellini (1920-1993 Italy)
・Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007 Italy)
・Robert Bresson (1901-1999 France)
・Jacques Tati (1908-1982 France)