Masters of European Formalist Cinema From German Expressionism

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; Harmony of Blue and Gold in Dull Weather; Full Sunlight, 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 subservient 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

European Avant-garde 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 decentred • 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 scene juxtaposition 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)

Luis Buñuel • Luis Buñuel - friend of Salvatore Dali and Federico Garcia Lorca • Founded film club in Madrid and wrote film reviews • Entered film producing circles in Paris and made his first film Un Chien Andalou in 1928 • Film of instinct, Freudian and Surrealistic

Luis Buñuel • Left Spain after fighting in the Spanish Civil War. Found difficult to get work in US, he settled in Mexico. Returning to Europe after the war, he made a series of films attacking the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie and the church. • The Discreet Charm of Bourgeoisie (1972)

Federico Fellini • Fellini is the most original and independent film director with the most distinctive film style. • Helped inaugurate Neorealismo as a screenwriter but developed his own distinctive cinema style when he became a director.

Federico Fellini Recurring motifs and themes • Circus, festivals, music halls, parades, marches • Clowns, angelic figures, holy fools

Federico Fellini • Whores, nurturing mother figures, large women

Federico Fellini • Childhood and young adulthood memories and recollections

Federico Fellini • Empty seashores, desolate roads, deserted town squares at night

Federico Fellini • Hallucinatory or dreamlike imagery

Federico Fellini • Characters at their most bizarre

Federico Fellini • Mesmerizing images

8 1/2 (1963)

Ingmar Bergman • Bergman’s films are noted for the bleak depiction of human vulnerability, loneliness and torment. • Several stages of Bergman’s directorial career. • Early films - adolescent crises, the instability of first love and spiritual malaise

Ingmar Bergman • Wild Strawberries (1957) - meditation of old age and the regret and guilt of adolescence

Ingmar Bergman • Films in the 60 s are about narcissistic but confused and alienated humans. Persona (1966)