Caligari Mise en Scene and German Expressionism Mise en Scene What matters is the way space is cut up the precision of what happens within the magical space of the frame where I refuse to allow the smallest ID: 404267
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Slide1
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Mise en Scene and German ExpressionismSlide2
Mise en Scene
“What matters is the way space is cut up, the precision of what happens within the magical space of the frame, where I refuse to allow the smallest
clumsiness.”
Federico Fellini
Mise
en Scene
– staging a scene through the artful arrangement of actors, scenery, lighting, and props; creates the look of the world in the story (narrative film)
and/or
arranges chosen elements in the frame (documentary)Slide3
Mise en Scene in The Godfather Trilogy
Wedding Scene Part IEmphasizes the secular, wealth, and
business
Wedding Scene
Part
I
Emphasizes
religion, tradition, family, communitySlide4
ExpressionismExpressionism
– 20th century modernist art that is the result of the artist’s unique inner or personal vision and that often has an emotional dimension (created through abstract shapes and vivid colors). Expressionism contrast with art focused on visually describing the empirical world
Anti-mimetic vs. mimeticSlide5
German Expressionism: Two Schools
Die Brücke (The Bridge): sought to bridge
the
old and new; focused on detrimental effects of industrialization and alienation of the individual in a modern city
Der
Blaue
Reiter (The Blue Rider): focused on capturing feeling in visual form
Ernst Ludwig Kirchner,
Street, Dresden
, 1908
Vasily
Kandinsky,
Picture with an Archer,
1909Slide6
Dr. Caligari’s Significance for Film
dramatic use of m
ise
en scene distinguishes the film’s importance
u
ses avant-garde/expressionist techniques such as:
c
hiaroscuro lighting – the use of contrasting areas of lightness and darkness to create compositional effectsdiagonal linesb
izarre, artificial sets and shadowscombined techniques with a narrative involving a sleepwalker and a murderous madmanSlide7
Expressionist work, Das Kabinett des Dr.
Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1919)
The
film recounts a series of brutal murders that are committed in the north German town of
Holstenwall
by a
somnambulist
at the bidding of a demented mountebank
, who believes himself to be the incarnation of a homicidal 18th-century hypnotist named Dr. Caligari.Slide8
s
omnambulist = sleepwalker
Erich
Pommer
,
Caligari
’s
producer at Decla-Bioskop (production company), added a scene to the original scenario so that the story appears to be narrated by a madman confined to an asylum of which the mountebank is director and head psychiatrist.
Incarnation of
Dr.
Caligari
(mountebank)
mountebank=a
person who deceives
othersSlide9
To represent the narrator’s tortured mental state, the director, Robert Wiene, hired three prominent Expressionist artists—Hermann Warm, Walter
Röhrig, and Walter Reimann—to design sets that depicted exaggerated dimensions and deformed spatial relationships. Slide10
To heighten this architectural stylization (and also to economize on electric power, which was rationed in postwar Germany), bizarre patterns of light and shadow were painted directly onto the scenery and even onto the characters’ makeup.Slide11
Writer Hans Janowitz claims to have gotten the idea for the film when he was at a carnival one day. He saw a strange man lurking in the shadows. The next day, he heard that a girl was brutally murdered there. He went to the funeral, and saw the same strange man lurking around. He had no proof that the strange man was the murderer, but he fleshed the whole idea out into his film.
Trivia!Slide12
As you watch the
film:Keep in mind the previous descriptions/definitions, the examples of Expressionist painting, and the other films we’ve watched in class.
T
ake notes, including specific observations, in your journals on the following as you
watch:
set
design
lighting
makeup After you view each day
, reflect how the
German
Expressionist
style and the narrative
work together to achieve a desired effect:
How does the a
ct establish
mise
en scene?How does it fit the style of German
Expressionism?
Make a prediction about what you think will happen at the end of the
act.
** You will use these notes**