The art direction of the film was given by Walter Reimann and Walter Roehrig, old components of the "Der Sturm group" Berlin Expressionist movement. Both created an original atmosphere and fantastic film that fills the delirious atmosphere and emphasizes the protagonist's mental self-destruction.
Interior/exterior Doctor´s home
In the street
Nature spaces
Exterior/interior Doctor´s cabinet
.Task
.Description of why this work is an example of Modernism.
The irregular geometry of windows and doors, stairs, roads and roofs, streets that are lost obliquely, and asymmetrical house fronts. Most of these elements are arranged as oblique lines which are crossed, twitching action and directing the viewer's gaze.Closely related to the sets, is the lighting and shadows, which is a main feature of Expressionism. The contrast between light and shadow highlights the dramatic intent of the action and the qualities and moods of the characters. It is so important that even the paint on the sets light and shadow to have total control over it. They are used indoors, small and claustrophobic,heavily decorated to transmit to the spectator the feeling of restlessness and discomfort.
.Description of the work and its context.
It is impossible to ignore the historical moment it was made "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" because it is the key to understanding the proposal raises this film. Made a year after the end of the First World War, Robert Wiene's film materializes the tension of a humiliated country, aggravated by a severe economic crisis, and a frenzied political and social agitation, showing a distorted reality, altered, constantly located the edge of chaos..Artist´s intentions for, meanings of the work.
Caligari's dominance over his sleepwalker / zombie Cesare is easily interpreted as a metaphor for fascist and authoritarian regimes that emerged in Europe in the first half of the twentieth century. The film expresses symbolically the events that occurred as a result of post-war and had the vision of the events that effectively occurred as a result of that first great war.
.How reflects the period in which it was made(social, political influences).
Expressionism is an art translation, despair and fear of the German people in a dark age. After the First World War, and even the height of Nazism in the early 30's, Germany was the birthplace of a new style of making films based on the stylistic features of the expressionist movement, such as the use of chiaroscuro, dreamlike atmospheres and exaggerated angles and compositions..Nosferatu set design and lighting (1922)_ Nosferatu is distinguished over other works of its time in telling a story unreal, full of symbols, in a real, real sets, shaking the viewer using signs everyday that recognizes and turn against it. The most noticeable change in Nosferatu was the real locations and outdoors.
Although the exteriors, Murnau also recharge the frame with thick forests, castles with jagged towers, roads oblique fronts actual buildings give the feeling of asymmetry for the same effect of anxiety and discomfort produced in Caligari. It is precisely the use of external and real spaces in Nosferatu which increases the feeling of a gloomy and frightening environment, making it more real for the viewer.
Another aspect by which Murnau innovations was the lighting.Exaggerated lighting, reserved only for the particular light of Count Orlock(Nosferatu). Murnau reserve the main characteristics of the expressionist films to describe the vampire´s supernatural universe . On the contrary, everything that does not belong to that world is treated with an almost documentary naturalism.
A very characteristic technique is the use of light as a building, in some scenes of sudden enlightenment of the characters leave the rest of the decor in the dark. The shadows also serve to tell the story.Example of this would be the scene where you see the shadow of Count Orlock climbing the stairs of the house of Nina or after that scene where the shadow of the hand of Count Orlock is reflected in Nina's body and pretend to squeezes the heart.
Era Cinema_Alicia Roxanne East Waking Dreams: F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu and Weimar
http://www.filmnirvana.com/howto/how-analyse-%E2%80%98mise-en-scene%E2%80%99/4098
