Caligari’s Children

Between 1919 and 1924 the offspring of Caligari, the Schuerfilme (films of fantasy and terror), flourished in Germany.  You can see one of them, Der Golem(1920), in the previous post I did about Expressionism.   However, in actuality most horror films today as well as numerous science-fiction films derive from German Expressionism.

There were two notable artists to mention in regards to Expressionism.  The first is Fritz Lang,  one of the masters, he gave us films such as Der müde Tod(Destiny, 1921).  For some reason many of the hard to find silent films are only available online in Spanish, not sure why this is but dust off your español for this one.

der müde Tod 1/2 by desfilms
der müde Tod 2/2 by desfilms

Notice that the theme of this film is pure Expressionism, doom, gloom and Teutonic mythology.  What Lang added to cinema was the use of lighting to emphasize lighting and space. This was because Lang was a trained architect and it’s that skill that becomes so readily apparent in his other, more famous, Schuerfilme, Metropolis(1926). 

An inspiration for many science fiction and other films to come, Metropolis is a story about a totalitarian future society, a dystopia,  brilliantly rendered through architecture and film process.  There’s a lot of different versions of this movie floating around.  Here’s one, it’s not a great print but I think is fairly authentic.

Lang managed the conversion to sound and directed several sound films, the most brilliant of which is M(1930).  M seems to be more of an indictment of German culture at that time than the story of a man on the brink of collapse due to the guilt from his past deeds.  Either way, M is not Expressionism, it’s what followed Expressionism, Kammerspiel.  More on Kammerspiel later, first M.

The second notable artist to come out of German Expressionism is F.W. Murnau.  His film, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horrors, 1922) is considered the prime example of the Expressionism movement.   The most incredible thing about this film is that it was made with very limited resources.  The Expressionism comes from camera angles and lighting, rather than expensive studio sets.

So many directors were inspired by this film and the techniques used in it are continually copied.  For example, Orson Wells shot Kane from a low angle – which comes directly from this film, it’s how Nosferatu is shot to make him seem menacing.

And that brings us back to Kammerspiel (intimate, or instinct film).   A film that forgoes the dramatic and tries to bring forth a more realistic portrait of the oppressiveness of contemporary middle-class life.  Kammerspiel retains aspects of Expressionism, they have similar themes and they look similar, but Kammerspiel avoid theatrics.  Instinct films are constructed for their specific media.

Murnau’s next important film is the first truly in this genre.  It’s called Der letze Mann(The Last Man aka The Last Laugh, 1924) and it was written by the same writer as Caligari.    The Last Laugh was one of the first films to make use of camera tracking, the camera is a character in this film.  It was the first film to move its camera backward and forward, as well as up and down and from side to side, in scenes of substantial duration. 

Beyond that Murnau also liked to use subjective camera techniques whereby the camera shot represents the view of the scene from a character’s perspective.

Around 1924,  Hollywood, sensing a rival, started flooding the German market with films.  They also started stealing the German talent,  Murnau was one of the artists who moved to Hollywood.  But there were many and some went on to make important films.

Meanwhile, Germany was recovering from the war and returning to social normalcy. As a result, taste changed, away from the morbid psychological themes of Expressionism and Kammerspiel and  onto die neue Sacklichkeit (the new objectivity).   The new genre was realism, intended to show life as it is, “street” films. 

G.W. Pabst was unquestioningly the master of this new genre.  His film Die freudlose Gasse(The Joyless Street, 1925) was the German screen debut of Greta Garbo.  The film rejects the subjective camera of Murnau and strives to present the grim story of two girls forced into prostitution, all without sentimentality or symbolism.  I’m not certain of the authenticity of this print – it could be the censored version – the only other online choice was a Russian version that had an irritating narration.

G.W. Pabst was also one of the first western directors to be influenced by Sergei Eisenstein's theory of montage.  Which also happens to be the topic of the next blog entry.  

 

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First article Before Film

A Nightmare on Elm Street

I noticed while surfing that the remake of this film was getting lots of attention.  I’m still wondering why, I guess it was just released on DVD.  However, I did find out an interesting tid-bit while investigating this.

But before I go into that I would like to say that I loved the initial trilogy of Nightmare films.  Before they got too full of their own franchise.

They were cutting-edge (see what I did there) horror for their time and they introduced us to a number of actors we would see much later.  Johnny Depp (before he was nicknamed Stinky) and  Patricia Arquette.

I recently watched the first one again and it holds up – even after all these years.  That is film-making.

I haven’t seen the remake but it looks good.

I can already tell from the trailer that there are plot holes.  The original didn’t dwell on this as much as the new movie promises but if Freddy Krueger went after little kids while he was alive, why is he going after late teens now?  Wouldn’t it make much more sense if the people having the nightmares were younger?

Plus this film seems to take itself far too seriously.  That’s usually a recipe for disaster in just about any horror film.  They’ve thrown out all of Freddy’s one-liners when they replaced Robert Englund with Jackie Earle Haley

The reviews for this film seem pretty much to agree.  This is the same type of remake as Halloween was.  The same sort of thing as Batman Begins where we find out a bit more about what makes our hero or villain tick.  Where the film-maker tries to make them more human or less.   

The reviews also suggest that the effects, however primitive, worked better in the first film.

The interesting tid-bit I found out was the Wes Craven was not pleased about them remaking the film because he wasn’t consulted about it.  I would be a bit ticked off too.

If you’ve seen this film, let me know what you thought. 

The horror of having your short screenplay filmed

It’s been a while, but I’ve been busy. I know we all say that at one time or another but it’s true…I’ve been busy.

However, I wanted to share with you a short post about having one of my screenplays filmed by someone else. I’ve been through this situation before but I’m a fringe author so it doesn’t happen too often.

Anyway, this film was made from a short script I wrote called The Honeymoon is Over. I wrote the script for a web series script call because my log line was chosen. However, the log line was supposed to be for a finished script. So when they asked me for the script I only had a few hours to produce one. I wrote this in 6 hours.

The web series never seemed to get off the ground as so many of them don’t. Very soon after I finally gave up on the series, the director of this film asked if he could produce it.

After all the agreements were signed it took nearly forever for the film to be completed. Or at least it was very late compared to the schedule given me. So late that I actually gave up trying to find out if it was finished.

Then one day while going through my email I came across my last email to the director and decided to ask him one last time before I made the script available again. To my surprise he replied that it was done and gave me a link which I could use to view it.

He did a good job with the film, I couldn’t really complain. He changed my script a bit without asking but nothing I couldn’t handle. But then the credits flashed by. I was all ready and excited to see my name in white at the end -- but it never happened. There was no writing credit for me in the film.

At first I was furious, I posted a few angry posts in forums. I figured it was likely that I wouldn’t get him to add the credit and the film would have to be forcibly removed from the web. But if I approached it with all the anger I was feeling, then he would respond with anger and it would definitely end with the film being removed.

So, I calmed down and wrote him a gentlemanly email asking if he would correct the oversight. Which he did, surprisingly quick and he apologised profusely for forgetting to put the credits in. There’s a valuable lesson in there somewhere but I’m not sure exactly where.

So without further ado, here is the film. Give Anniversary (yes he changed the title) a watch and let me know what you think.