Masterworks of Expressionist Cinema: Caligari and Metropolis
Expressionist cinema of the 1920s, so masterfully realized in two iconic examples, Dr. Caligari (1920) and Metropolis (1927), had a lasting impact on visual culture, giving rise to such popular genres as film noir, horror, and science fiction. Filmmakers Robert Wiene and Fritz Lang drew upon the broader Expressionist movement, which emerged in the 1910s and encompassed literature, theater, dance, and the graphic arts. The installation includes projected sequences, vintage posters, and set stills from these two iconic films, as well as selected prints from the Robert Gore Rifkind Collection demonstrating the stark black-and-white contrasts, off-kilter compositions, and exaggerated gestures that found their way from page to screen during the Weimar Republic (1919–33). The Expressionist legacy continues to inspire the imaginations of filmmakers, graphic novelists, and artists today.
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Image: Set photograph from the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1919. Gelatin silver print, 11 x 14 ins., The Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies.
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Throughout October, LACMA’s Exhibition Film Series will span nearly a century of cinema and a surfeit of styles. The bleak deliriums of German Expressionist cinema will be on full display as we screen a (quite) abridged selection of its baleful marvels: Robert Wiene’s scene setting, madly distorted The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari kicks off our four-film sampler followed by...
Expressionist Films and the German Trauma
When I look at the harsh dark shadows, the distorted angles, and the magnified expressions on people’s faces in the exhibition Masterworks of Expressionist Cinema: Caligari and Metropolis, I feel at home. What might be disturbing to other viewers seems to be ingrained as a nostalgic memory in me, as part of the German collective subconscious...
