Expressionist Narrative

Expressionist Narrative

Movie Poster - Metropolis by Fritz Lang (1926)

Chosen Narratives to suit Style
1) Like the French Impressionists, Expressionist filmmakers gravitated to certain types of
   narratives that suited the traits of the style.
2)The movement’s first film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, used the story of a madman
   to motivate the unfamiliar Expressionist distortions for movie audiences.
3)Because Caligari has remained the most famous Expressionist film, there is a lingering
    impression that the style was used mainly for conveying character subjectivity.

Narrative - Set in Past or Exotic loctions - Horror & Fantasy
1)In most Expressionist films, the stylization was used for narratives that were set in the past
   or in exotic locales or that involved elements of fantasy or horror—genres that remained
   popular in Germany in the 1920s.
2)Der Schatz takes place at an unspecified point in the past and concerns a search for a
   legendary treasure.
3)The two feature-length parts of Die Nibelungen, Siegfried and Kriemhild’s Revenge,
    are based on the national German epic and include a dragon and other magical elements
    in a medieval setting.
4)Nosferatu is a vampire story set in the mid-nineteenth century, and in The Golem,
    the rabbi of the medieval ghetto in Prague animates a superhuman clay statue
    to defend the Jewish population against persecution.
5) In a reversal of this emphasis upon the past, the last major Expressionist film,
     Metropolis, is set in a futuristic city where the workers labor in huge underground factories
    and live in apartment blocks, all in Expressionist style.