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Essay / Research Paper Abstract
A 4 page essay in which the writer first addresses the topic of Expressionism, focusing on the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and then discusses how this legacy applies to 2 later films, Fritz Lang’s M and Alfred Hitchcock’s Spellbound. Bibliography lists 6 sources.
Page Count:
4 pages (~225 words per page)
File: D0_khexfilm.rtf
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Unformatted sample text from the term paper:
that is, psychological or spiritual truths were conveyed to the audience by "distorting the surface of the material world," rather than presenting it realistically (Delahoyde, 2007). Directed by Robert Wiene
in 1919, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is considered to the quintessential example of German Expressionist film (Expressionism, 2007). In this film, Caligari, as an "evil mountebank," is pictured as
exhorting fairgoers to some see the amazing Cesare, a man who has been asleep for twenty-five years (Heffernan, 2003, p. 56). In turns out that Caligari is both "mountebank showman
and insane psychiatrist" and seeming reality of the narrative hides the fact that Caligari is actually the head of a mental asylum (Heffernan, 2003, p. 56). The features of German
Expressionism, that is, horror, "madness, murder, and sexual threat," within a mise-en-scene that is "distorted, artificial, shadowy and disorienting" can be seen as highly influencing the films that followed this
movement (Expressionism, 2007). For example, Fritz Langs M (1931) shares the same sense of foreboding as the film explores the paranoid and dark pathology of a twisted serial killer who
preyed on children (Morris, 2000). The cinematography is impressionistic, as there are shots of a "blind man selling balloons, a little girl taking the hand of a stranger, a ball
rolling down a hillside and coming ominously to rest" (Morris, 2000). Following the template set by Caligari, Lang also delves into the dark recesses of psychosis. In the mock-trial scene
in which the murderer tries to defend his actions, the murderer ask of the mob demanding his death, "But can I...can I help it he scream. Havent I got this
curse inside me? The fire? The voice? The pain? ...Who knows what it feels like to be me?" Morris, 2000). Beginning with Caligari, "distorted compositions and angled shots" have
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