The 1940s were pivotal years for both the Hollywood musical and film noir. We will be discussing these forms a bit later, when we cover genre films, but I would like you to get a head start now.
Review the list of 1940s musicals and the list of classic film noir from the 1940s and find a clip from one of these films.
Analyze the clip you have selected. What assumptions about the genre can you make from it? How does it relate to other genres we have discussed?
This week, I would like you to examine a major director from the studio era. I have posted a list of films by John Ford, Howard Hawks, and Orson Welles. Watch one of the films listed and analyze it based on your expectations based on your own experience as a moviegoer as well as your experience of earlier silent film movements we have discussed in class.
This is primarily a response assignment. There are no right and wrong answers. The objective is to begin to contextualize what some see as the “golden age”of American film in light of what came before and after it.
With films like Battleship Potemkin, it’s understandable to me now what the idea of Soviet Montage theory is. I believe it has something to do with an “anti” agit-filming where the narrative puts more and more negativity on the oppressive class, then blatant positive reinforcement. I believe I saw it in the scene where all the seamen were loitering around, ignoring their dinner when the czar or captain came and started ranting to one of the officers around him about how poor his crew was. This image of behind the back complaining and manipulation is something so human that it’s still used today! Then there were the scenes of mass mutilation and a disregard for the health and well-being of citizens; it was like a chapter of insane genocide from a human version of Animal Farm. I tried looking for a modern scene that had just as much energy and corruption as the life that Sergei Einstein put in some of his shots, that one film in particular found its way to my thought. Included is the scene from Mean Girls that I feel also does a good interpretation of the volleys that could release when an explosion of rebellion happens. This one of course putting a lot more comedic action on purpose to bring laughter from the audience, but I believe that this montage of images also shows what rebellion brings out of people.
Vampires have gone through a variety of incarnations over the decades since Bram Stoker first wrote Dracula and made them a crux of the horror genre. One of the best known versions is the Dracula analog found in the film Nosferatu. Part of the German expressionist movement, the film uses several common techniques from the movement to great effect. Chief among them is the film’s use of shadows, like the scene found in the clip below. The titular Nosferatu slowly approaches one of the film’s characters, and as he gets closer the vampires shadow grows larger and more sinister. This particular scene has been recreated so many times by so many films that people often mistake Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho shower scene as the originator. To be fair, the iconic Psycho shower scene adds music over the creeping shadow, but the two scenes are nearly identical.
Another horror trope that seems to originate from Nosferatu is the slow methodical walking as the vampire leaves the room. He is in no rush to get to where he needs to be since he is an unliving monster, while everyone around him is in a panic. That behavior might predate this film, but the way it is framed and presented here was probably the inspiration for many directors afterwards.
Nosferatu really is an important film in the context of horror films and especially monster movies. While vampires may no longer be the nightmarish creatures they used be in film, Nosferatu will continue to inspire other monster films for decades to come.
The film that I chose to analyze this week is Der Golem by Paul Wegener & Henrik Galeen. This exemplifies multiple story and cinematic elements that would later make their way into contemporary horror films. The first contemporary element that I noticed while viewing this film is the huge influence that religion has in the plot. Supernatural properties have taken a hold of the horror genre as of late. This film also had an influence on some older horror films as well. The most evident influence this film had can be seen in the film Frankenstein. The birth of the monster, especially. Both of these films had extremely similar scenes depicting the inception of the monsters, both had a singular person attempting to resurrect something that had been dormant for a long time. This scene also makes use of some of the light and dark play that we discussed in class. At the beginning of the scene only a small portion of the Golem is seen until it has finally awakened and the rest of it is revealed. This is a common theme among horror films that are being released today. A majority of the time monsters in current horror films are barely or never shown. This creates an intense an anticipation as the audience awaits a visual representation of the antagonist. Something else I noticed in this film is that costume design has a huge impact on the terror an antagonist can invoke. Even costumes as or cued or seemingly dated as the one seen in this film can still have a creepy and unsettling aesthetic.
This clip is from the silent German Expressionist classic, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This film contains many elements that can be seen in both the later Film Noir and Horror movie genres.
The mis-en-scene is one of the most influential elements of the movement, and is shown beautifully in this clip. Dark streets with heavy shadows, sagging and dilapidated buildings that look like they are the spawn of nightmares, they all contribute to an overall feel of uneasiness and potentially fear as well. This type of dark and gloomy look was adopted by Film Noir. With beautifully contrasting lights and shadows, where the shadows were the dominant of the two, Film Noir can easily be seen as an offshoot of (or at least as being heavily influenced by) German Expressionism. Horror borrows from the creepy atmosphere as well, and is the more directly related of the two.
Many of the themes of German Expressionism have carried on to the horror genre. Vampires for example, were a common archetype among German Expressionist films, while today they mostly appear only among Horror films. Many horror films, like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, also have psychological aspects to the film, and play with the possibilities of the frailty of the mind and the unsure fluidity of perception. Not only does this appear in horror films, but yet again Film Noir also has many psychological aspects to it. The genre is a breeding ground for double crosses, twist endings, unreliable narrators, and misleading events.
When I began watching Fritz Lang’s M for notes of horror and noir, I was looking largely at the use of mise-en-scène. But once I reached this scene, I realized the true horror inspiration is in the audio. This was Fritz Lang’s first sound film and his mastery of the technology can be seen here.
The first thing you’ll notice in this scene is a sharp cut in the audio as the camera cuts from one position on the street to a new position inside a window. This reminded me of one of the final scenes in Ridley Scott’s Alien. Ripley is working her way down a series of corridors filled with smoke. As the camera cuts around her, the audio levels jump significantly. It creates a sense that we, the audience, are present wherever the camera is, equally vulnerable to the action on screen.
The other early horror inspiration comes from the music. The choice to use a popular song, “In the Hall of the Mountain King”, to signify a killer calming his thoughts, poses an eerie sense of familiarity in the viewer. It is not unlike the use of “Singing in the Rain” in Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.
In addition to the music’s familiarity outside of the film, it is also used in a recurring fashion inside the film. This is done by most horror films today, but a great example would be John Carpenter’s Halloween. By establishing the theme as belonging to an evil character, the audience can be scared just by hearing the music. It acts as a sort of warning alarm that prepares us for horror, even if it never comes.
I chose the film Nosferatu (1922), now I have to be honest and say that this was an easy choice for me because I have always been fascinated by this film. I think is one of the few genuine pieces of horror in the history of cinema. Just the character of Nosferatu himself and the way he was created and portrayed in this particular film blows my mind. I find him genuinely creepy, by definition creepy is something that has a human or familiar quality yet we now it is something completely different that we can quite define. Out of all the versions of Dracula Through the years this being perhaps the oldest does the best job at capturing the creepy allure that comes with the Dracula persona. Beyond just the way Nosferatu look the entire film is a chill educing masterpiece. There is a darkness about it that is almost tangible, color plays a huge role in making this happen. They where pretty straight forward in the fact that Nosferatu wears black and blends or melts into the shadows like the creature of the night that he is while the hero stands out with a lighter attire. Even though the concept of vampires today has strayed quite a bit from horror and more into fantasy, vampires are still meant to instill a sense of fear or danger and even if they appear “prettier” they still are creepy blood thirty beings. I feel like Nosferatu brought to life at least in regards to film the genre of vampire horror which even if they try to destroy it today with films such as “Twilight” it will remain to be the essence of this type of movement.
I chose the film Metropolis as a clear example of the German expressionist movement. This film has all the elements of expressionism all trough out beginning to end. If you were to make a list you can virtually check off every element that characterized this movement based on the film Metropolis. First there is the obvious and grand scale mise-en-scene
which absolutely dominates this production. There are larger than life buildings with exaggerated shapes and a complex and futuristic system of roads.The play on colors is a clear indicative of light and darkness. You can see that the main characters where white or lighter colors to personify good and liveliness while others like the workers wear darker greys to give off a strong sense of sadness and perpetual monotony. The colors also make the characters blend or disappear in the background especially the workers making them look like pieces of equipment or machinery rather than human beings. Another strong expressionist element in Metropolis is that if brought to tight problems that real life Germany was were facing after the war, a sense of a constant rebuilding that felt eternal and even unjust. Lastly you can certainly see the science fiction or even horror attributes that this film has and an overall extremely complex and highly styled narrative which is the core of German Expressionism.
For this weeks media post, I chose to find a clip from Robert Wiene’s 1920 classic film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
We watched a few clips from the film in class and I was really intrigued by it. As I said in my previous post, one of my favorite genres is horror. It is pretty amazing to be able to watch a genre of film being created on screen, especially one that is so popular and profitable in modern times.
This particular scene that I chose is somewhat of a spoiler for the entire film. So if you ever plan on watching this, I would stop reading about…..now.
I hate spoilers, a lot. In this case, however, I feel it is important to briefly talk about one of the techniques that this film uses that really comes to define a lot of horror movies, and a lot of other movies for that matter, in modern film. That is the art of the twist ending.
Putting a twist ending in a movie has become a very entrenched trope in modern horror, probably due in part to the wild success of The Sixth Sense, but in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, we are exposed to one of films first twist endings. We learn that the entire film is the fantasy of our protagonist, Francis. It’s a pretty amazing twist, especially for its time, and really takes the creepiness and bizarre events that transpired throughout the film to an entire new level.
Viewing this movie is very eye opening for fans of the horror genre and an interesting window into the genres past.
Film History Class Blog 