Expressionism and Caligarisme

© copyright Bouton Jones
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When I was enrolled at the University of Texas in Austin, I took a course in German Film History taught by a visiting professor from Germany. For one of the assignments I delivered an oral presentation on German Expressionism in Film which I revised following the professor's critique. Here's the final product.

Do not try to present this as your own report. Any good instructor will recognize the difference in syntax and can confirm his suspicions with a few simple questions.

Student: Bouton Jones
Instructor: Dr. Giesenfeld
GRC 361E: German Cinema Until 1932
University of Texas
Austin, Texas

Despite the enormous attention given by film historians to Expressionism there are few films that might appropriately be classified as Expressionistic. Doctor Giesenfeld would limit the list to three: Von Morgens Bis Mitternachts, Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari, and Genuine.

Some film historians such as Barry Salt would expand the list to include Torgus, Raskolnikov, Das Waxenfigurenkabinett, and, arguably, Metropolis. (199) Of course quite a few German films had elements that could be classified as Expressionistic. Nosferatu was a commercial horror film with Expressionistic design and acting. It can not be called purely Expressionist. But even limiting the list to Von Morgens Bis Mitternachts, Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari, and Genuine, the term "Expressionist" is not completely appropriate. Therefore this paper will use the term "Caligarisme" (the contemporary term for the ornamentally "Expressionistic" film style) to avoid confusing it with the real thing. (Hoberman, 62)

Before examining Caligarisme, it's necessary to define Expressionism, specifically its philosophy and conventions: The Expressionists intended a dynamic breakthrough into unexplored areas of experience, of visionary revolution against corrupt social traditions and false values. (Kracauer 38; Calandra "Jessner" 40) They believed the time was coming for mankind's spiritual rebirth, for the end of the old authoritarian society and the destruction of industry's corrupting influence, the two of which were restricting and crippling the spirit of the common man, oppressing him into autonomous conformity, distorting the Seelen of mankind. (Brockett 596) When men freed themselves from these confinements and their own inhibitions, contacting themselves, their souls, and reach a mystic soul-state of enlightenment (Aufklarung ), their lives would be filled with what Ludwig Rubiner called "the roaring fire of intensity, the burstings, splittings, explosions of intensity." (3) The ultimate goal of the Expressionists was the evolution of the the Neue Mensch, -- the "new man," a superman, the first citizen of this brave new world, an apostle of ecstatic individuality, mankind's eventual savior. The new man never appeared in Expressionist literature although he was often discussed. Only his early prototypes appeared, from whom he would be the ultimate decedent. Apparently he was still an unattainable ideal even to the Expressionists. (Giesenfeld) Another frequent expressionist theme was the sentience of inanimate objects. (Titford, 16) Objects took on a life of their own in Expressionist literature. They even dominated characters as in The Strongbox. But the most important trait of Expressionism was this premise: The nature of reality is subjective. (16) Rather than imitating external reality, Expressionism presented the underlying truth through distortion and abstraction of the external forms. Distorted lines, unnatural colors, and perverted forms were all ways used by the artists to express the internal conditions of their subject matter. In simpler terms the artists sought the "transformation of inner images into public facts." (Rubiner, 5)

But while they had a complex aesthetic program they had no political platform. (Giesenfeld) Literary Expressionism was like Naturalism in that it catalogued the maladies of society. But unlike Naturalism it offered no prescription for a cure. The Expressionists didn't have a program for saving the world only an undefined hope in its recovery, a silly Chekhovian optimism. (Barlow, 18) Except for Von Morgens Bis Mitternachts (and to a limited extent Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari) this philosophy was absent from Caligarist film. (Giesenfeld) But Caligarisme did feature Expressionism's distortion of the design elements, i.e. line, form, color, etc., Take for example Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari (directed by Robert Weine in 1919) the first example of Caligarisme. The sets were made from oddly shaped canvas flats painted with sharp angles, diagonals, and zigzags. (But while in Expressionist art this distortion would have meant to reveal the true nature of the object, in Caligari it was meant to characterize the narrator's insanity.)

Despite its artistic innovation Caligari was a technical step backward for film. Previously Griffith had advanced film technique by using montage. But Caligari was a throwback to the theatrical film style. (Giesenfeld) Barry Salt suggests that this theatrical style was a main reason for the infrequent appearance of Caligarisme. He writes that the basic theatrical convention of these films which entailed filming a series of painted flats arranged perpendicular to the camera, left little to the initiative of the director and the cameraman on the set. For such sets had to be flatly lit in the main, or the painted patterns on them would be lost. Also it was almost impossible to change the camera angle, for that would have meant shooting out through the gaps between the flats at the side. What enterprising film-maker wants to be stuck in the position where all he has to do is guide the actors from one predesigned place to another? (122)

Another film of this style, Von Morgens Bis Mitternachts, [Karl Heinz Martin, 1921] is an even better example of Caligarisme than Caligari because it remained truer to the precepts of Expressionism. Caligari contains a greater wealth of realistic (albeit distorted) visual elements. In Morgens all but the most essential set pieces and props are retained and distorted such as the painted costumes. Everything else is excised. Only those elements chosen by the director remain, although distorted for effect. The backgrounds were simply painted black. (This made it even cheaper to produce than Caligari.) (Giesenfeld) The outdoor scene is a good example. The ground and the sky are painted black, invisible. The ground is suggested by a path, obviously painted on the floor. The trees are painted white, set against the black sky they define the space and help to set the scene outdoors. But the sets are flatter and less interesting than the sets of Caligari: There are few diagonal lines; Only flat vertical and horizontal planes are used; The designs don't suggest depth.

The abstraction of design didn't stop with the set and costumes. Even the appearance of the actors were distorted in order to convey the soul states of the characters. According to Expressionist thought, environments were "acting upon" people. (Calandra, "Jessner," 38) The world of the inanimate was supplanting man. (Titford) As the world of objects dominated men and took on their own "life," men were becoming increasingly inorganic. This idea became a common motif in Caligarisme: A common visual image was tightly framing a character in a window or doorway as in the film Von Morgens bis Mitternachts where Ernst Deutsch exaggerated the posture of the cashier to conform to the cashier's cage, thereby submitting to it. (Calandra "Kaiser" 49) The cashier's cage consisted of chicken wire making it the human equivalent of a chicken coup. In Nosferatu, Orloc usually appears in closed form, slightly hunched, his arms held close together: He makes one think of something that has spent half its existence cramped in a coffin, as indeed he has. In Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, Werner Kraus and Conrad Veidt as Caligari and Ceasar seem to have adapted an "angular" acting style from the sets. (Willet, Expressionism, 160) The Caesar role is associated predominantly with triangles. (Mitry 217) Eisner describes this film's acting thus

Through a reduction of gesture they attain movements which are almost linear and which - despite a few curves that slip in - remain brusque, like the broken angles of the sets; and their movements from point to point never go beyond the limits of a given geometrical plane. (25)

Kracauer writes that "the two protagonists seemed actually to be created by a draftsman's imagination." (Kracauer 69) This trend toward abstraction of the actor went so far that in Von Morgens bis Mitternachts Ernst Deutsch

is made up in such a way as to suggest that the lines on his face, and on his clothes for that matter, are part of a total design, that he himself is merely an element in the design. The face is sometimes reminiscent of a woodcut in black and white, and part of a larger woodcut, at times abstract in effect. (Calandra "Kaiser" 50)

And in Nosferatu the cut of Schreck's costume did strange things to his appearance. The two long rows of buttons emphasized the longitudinal axis of his body and made him look taller and thinner. The shoulders were rounded and raised to hide his neck. All this distorted and minimalized Schreck's shape, thereby making it less organic and more geometric. His longitudinal form was reduced to a visual motif. The pointed arch of a doorway suddenly echoed his form as he passed through it. The prince in Von Morgens Bis Mitternachts nodded his his head in repeated jerks like a broken automaton. In Metropolis, depersonalized workers were herded to and from their work sites in perfectly geometric columns. This mechanical movement is one of the most distinctive aspects of Expressionist acting.

It is proper to call the acting style of Caligarisme Expressionistic since this style is adapted from the expressionist stage in addition to traditional silent film mime. (Barlow, 41) The Expressionist acting theories called for broad, slow gestures and movements. The premise being that such gestures would amplify the emotions and have greater effect on the audience. (Salt, 120) The movements were few, broken, and transitionless. (Eisner, 141) The expressionist performer's movements were frequently described as sudden, irregular, abrupt, explosive, uninhibited, fast, and puppet-like. In Nosferatu, Max Schreck as Count Orloc played some scenes unnaturally slow, in others his speed was superhuman. His strange ephemeral grace as the carriage driver alternated bizarrely with his first entrance in the castle where he seemed afflicted with rigor mortis.

As with other artists, the actor's primary objective was the outward expression of these interior visions or soul states. (Calandra "Kaiser" 47) Erwin Kaiser, who originated the Cashier role in Von Morgens bis Mitternachts, believed that for this to be done the actor must remove "the obstinacy of the body ... to make it completely and totally the organ of the soul." (47) Likewise the actor Friedrich Kaysler wrote "It is the soul that plays the roles, not the body. The body is an instrument, loudspeaker, means of expression, tool." (48) As Kasimir Edschmid wrote: Expressionist man wore "his heart painted on his chest." (Eisner 141) From this premise emerged the "ecstatic" style, an intensified acting style suggestive possession or insanity. (Calandra "Kaiser" 47, 50) Paul Kronfeld writes

Expression of a feeling which is not genuine and which has really been artificially stimulated is purer, clearer, and stronger than that of any person whose feeling is prompted by genuine stimulus ... the actor, who merely performs, is truer in his expression than many of those who are victims of an actual fate .... Let him therefore pick out the essential attributes of reality and be nothing but a representative of thought, feeling, or fate! (7)

He was advocating the antithesis of Stanislavski's realistic method: Kornfeld's essay was opposed to the imitation of reality and the illusion of the first time. He wanted the actor to present pure emotion, unencumbered by the adoption of realistic detail. (7) It follows that the ecstatic style was much more vocally and bodily demanding than other schools of acting. (Sokel xix) The ecstatic actor's role was "somewhere between actor, singer, and mime." (Sokel xix) But in the case of Caligarisme, unlike literary Expressionism, the text was not as important as the visual element. Naturally there was no use for spoken text in a silent film.

Caligarisme adopted many of the conventions and artistic devices of Expressionism. But, except for Von Morgens Bis Mitternachts, the style was merely ornamentational. The philosophy, values, world view, and biases were missing. The text had far less importance. Films like Nosferatu and Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari are only conventional horror stories produced in a stylized manner.

Works Cited

Barlow, John D. German Expressionist Film. Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1982.

Brockett, Oscar G. History of the Theatre. 4th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon, Inc., 1982.

Calandra, Denis. "Jessner's 'Hintertreppe' : a Semiotic Approach to Expressionist Performance." Theatre Quarterly. 9 (Autumn 1979): 31 - 42.

---. "Georg Kaiser's 'From Morn to Midnight': the Nature of Expressionist Performance" Theatre Quarterly. 6 (Spring 1976): 45 - 54.

Eisner, Lotte H. The Haunted Screen. Los Angeles: The University of California Press, 1973.

Giesenfeld. "German Cinema." College of Liberal Arts, The University of Texas At Austin. Jester Center, Room A203A. Spring 1988.

Gordon, Mel. "German Expressionist Acting" The Drama Review. 19 (September 1975) : 34 - 50.

Hoberman, J. "From Caligari to Fassbinder." American Film. 8 (January/February 1983): 62-3.

Kaiser, Georg. Plays Volume One. translated by B.J. Kenworthy, Rex Last, and J. M. Ritchie. New York: Riverrun Press, 1985.

Knight, Arthur. The Liveliest Art. New York: New American Library, 1979.

Kornfeld, Paul. "Epilogue to the Actor." translated by Joseph Bernstein. Sokel 6 - 8.

Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler. New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1947.

Metropolis. Directed by Fritz Lang. Ufa, 1926.

Mitry, Jean. "Cinema" Richard 213 - 242.

Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens. Directed by F. W. Murnau. Prana, 1922.

Pam, Dorothy. "Murderer, the Women's Hope" The Drama Review. 19 (September 1975) : 5 - 12.

Richard, Lionel. The Concise Encyclopedia of Expressionism. New Jersey: Chartwell Books, Inc., 1978.

Rubiner, Ludwig. "Man in the Center" translated by Walter H. Sokel. Sokel 3 - 5.

Salt, Barry. "From Caligari to Who?" Sight and Sound. 48 (Spring 1979): 119 - 123.

Sokel, Walter H. An Anthology of German Expressionist Drama. New York: Anchor Books, 1963.

Titford, John S., "Objective - Subjective Relationships in German Expressionist Cinema." Cinema Journal. 13 (Fall 1973): 17 - 24.

Von Morgens Bis Mitternachts. Directed by Karl Heinz Martin. Ilag, 1920.

Willet, John. Expressionism. London: World University Library, 1970.

---. The Weimar Years: A Culture Cut Short. New York: Abbeville Press Publishers, 1984.

Dr. Giesenfeld's Comments On The Oral Presentation

Expressionists like Goll and other critics thought film could be the ideal Gesammtkunstwerk ("total art work" . Like the operas of Wagner they were a combination of all the other arts: painting, acting, music, literature, etc., (Giesenfeld)

Nosferatu falls in the tradition of fantastic irreality in the cinema: Fantomas, Homunculus, and the mystic serials of Maurice Turner.


Here in the heart of Expressionist thought lay the foundation of Expressionist acting: the conflict between individuality and conformity. (Calandra "Kaiser" 53-54)

This tendency to treat men as somehow inorganic, even mechanical, was not unusual for Expressionism. According to Sokel the subjective Ich dramas were all centered around an enlightened protagonist who moved all the play's action. Although some of the other characters might be antagonistic, they acted primarily as foils and were incapable of offering real conflicts. (xxi - xxii) They were a depersonalized, unified chorus of character types with no roles outside of their relationship to the protagonist. (Gordon 46; Eisner 209) As Richard Weichert said of Der Sohn: "All the characters that the son struggles with lack objective reality, are only the extensions of his own inner being." (Bablet 190) Often the choreograph reflected this convention.

For example in Murderer the Hope of Womankind, the chorus was organized into unified geometric patterns such as circles, chains, and columns.

(Pam 9) This type of choreography was a major device used by Jessner in plays such as Richard The Third.

"In Germany as in other countries the working class was often viewed as an undifferentiated mass even by those who saw it as the hope of mankind." (Willett, Years, 129)

"One critic saw German dance as essentially Expressionistic and related it to the women's movement: 'sanctification of the body, without recourse to men'. Artists could use it: thus Kandinsky caught Palucca's rhythms (1926) while Schlemmer graphically planned the evolution of a 'gesture dance'." (Willett, Years, 103) through telegraphic delivery and puppet-like movements that the sets were illustrating through distorted lines, dissymmetries, and unnatural color.

Oskar Schlemmer's theatre at the Bauhaus. (not truly Expressionist): "Building Block Game" - 1927 - a dance. "Mechanical Ballet" - Kurt Schmidt, Bogler, and Georg Teltscher - 1923 - a mechanical happening. (Willett Years 91)

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