german expression

German Expressionism is a term used to represent the number of creative movements that began in Germany before the First World War that reached a peak in Berlin, during the 1920s. These developments in Germany were part of a larger Expressionist movement in north and central European culture in fields such as architecture, painting and cinema. The German Expressionist movement was largely confined to Germany due to the isolation the country experienced during WWI.

Various European cultures of the 1920s embraced an ethic of change, and a willingness to look to the future by experimenting with bold, new ideas and artistic styles. The first Expressionist films made up for a lack of lavish budgets by using set designs with non-realistic, geometrically absurd sets, along with designs painted on walls and floors to represent lights, shadows, and objects. The plots and stories of the Expressionist films often dealt with madness, insanity, betrayal. These are all subject topics that people of this time era can relate to as a lot people suffered with these problems during the 1920’s when WWII was commencing.

The extreme realism of Expressionism was short-lived, fading away after only after a few years. However, the themes of Expressionism were integrated into later films of the 1920s and 1930s, resulting in an artistic control over the placement of scenery and light to enhance the mood of a film. This genre of film making was brought to the United States when the Nazis gained power and a number of German filmmakers emigrated to Hollywood. These German directors found U.S. movie studios willing to embrace them, and several German directors and cameramen flourished there, producing a repertoire of Hollywood films that had a profound effect on the film industry.

Two genres that were especially influenced by the German Expressionism are horror film and film noir. German silent cinema was far ahead of cinema in Hollywood. As well as the direct influence of film makers who moved from Germany to Hollywood, developments in style and technique which were developed through Expressionism in Germany impressed contemporary film makers from elsewhere and were incorporated into their work and so into the body of international cinema from the 1930s onward.

Fritz Lang

Friedrich Christian Anton "Fritz" Lang was an Austrian-American filmmaker, screenwriter, and occasional film producer and actor. One of the best known emigrants from Germany's school of Expressionism, he was dubbed the "Master of Darkness" by the British Film Institute. His most famous films are the ground breaking ‘Metropolis’ which was the world's most expensive silent film at the time of it’s release. He also produced M, made before he moved to the United States, his iconic precursor to the film noir genre.

Early in his career, after the move from Austria to the Decla Company in Berlin in 1917, Lang worked out how studio sets and lighting could be used to create an atmosphere that would ensnare the audience in a world of fantasy. His writing was brief, as Lang soon started to work as a director at a German film studio, and later Nero-Film, just as the Expressionist movement was building.

 

history of horror

Hammer Horror

Launched in 1934, Hammer's first production was “The Public Life of Henry the Ninth” and, following a period of inactivity during WW2, the first picture from the newly incorporated Hammer Film Productions Ltd. was 1949's “Dr. Morelle: The Case of the Missing Heiress.” The new company's first colour film was “The Men of Sherwood Forest” in 1954, and in 1955 the success of “The Quatermass Xperiment” led to Hammer's move into horror films including “The Curse of Frankenstein” in 1957 and “Dracula” in 1958.

A hugely successful run of Gothic monster movies cemented the company's reputation as 'Hammer House of Horror', and deals with Universal Studios and Columbia kept the production base at Bray Studios busy with an incredible volume of films produced during this period.

 Half-way through the 1960s deals were struck with Seven Arts and Twentieth Century Fox, which led to further horror classics including “The Plague Of The Zombies”, “Quatermass And The Pit”, and “The Devil Rides Out” in addition to successful adventure films including One Million Years B.C. The 1960s also saw Hammer's first move into television production with Journey to the Unknown and in 1968 the company received the Queen's Award for Industry. The 1970s saw a clutch of vampire movies and some lucrative movie spin-offs from British sitcoms. To The Devil a Daughter was the last Hammer horror feature in 1976, but production continued into the 1980s with two influential and well-loved TV anthology series: Hammer House of Horror and Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense.

"Video nasty"

"Video nasty" was a colloquial term coined in the United Kingdom by 1982[1] which originally applied to a number of films distributed on video cassette that were criticized for their violent content by the press, commentators such as Mary Whitehouse, and various religious organizations. While violence in films released to cinemas had received attention from an official body, the British Board of Film Censorship, for many years, the lack of a regulatory system for video sales combined with the claim that any film could fall into children's hands led to public debate. Many of these "video nasties" were low-budget horror films produced in Italy and the United States. The furore created by the response to video nasties led to the introduction of the Video Recordings Act 1984 which imposed a stricter code of censorship on videos than was required for cinema release. Several major studio productions ended up being banned on video, falling within the scope of legislation designed to control the distribution of video nasties.