Zwanghaften Kunst: How Caligari Ended German Expressionism

1 Zwanghaften Kunst: How Caligari ended German Expressionism By Damon Griffin 2 War does two things for art; it begins art and it ends art. An arguable exception is the German Expressionist movement. Expressionism was introduced in Germany as early as 1905 and continued through the First World War before exploding once again—first artistically, then commercially—after the war. It is one of the more long-lasting and diverse art movements the world has seen, encompassing painting, drawing, woodcuts, lithography, photography and sculpture. All works depicted modern urbanity or mystical rural-ness, with similar reasons for exploring both environments (Brandt). If the war effected Expressionism, at first glance one could easily think it was for the best. But there is a third visual art form to fall under the label of Expressionism, and it is the most commercially viable of them all: Cinema. And with cinema added to the equation, the idea of Expressionism surviving in outlook and style across three decades becomes complicated. There were no Expressionist films made as early as 1905. They came about only when Germany surrendered in the First World War at the end of 1918, a broken, economically turbulent nation. The popular films that are commonly considered “Expressionist” were mostly made in the mid-1920s; a time when some were calling Expressionist painting exhausted if not dead (Brandt). Yet there is one film that outstrips all the others in Expressionist terms. This film is The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). It was the bridge between the art forms; the traditional arts of painting, drawing and etching and the new, modern art of cinema. It is the only film that might truly be considered Expressionistic in the original sense of the word. But 3 to understand how it acted as the bridge, and why expressionistic content became diluted in films and died in the other visual arts, we must understand first the original definition of Expressionism. Then we can understand the ways in which Caligari impacted movies to the extent that they co-opted a term rather than participated in an existing movement. To begin with: Expressionistic Imagery. There is—originally, technically—no such thing. In her essay “German Art 1905-1925: Technique as Expression” Eleanor Hight calls the movement “…more an attitude towards creativity than an actual style...” (Hight). When we consider the force and organization of that attitude, it’s a conclusion that’s hard to deny. The battle cry of that attitude began with Die Brucke (Brandt) . Formed in Dresden, Die Brucke, plainly translated as “The Bridge,” was an organization of artists founded by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt Rotluff and Fritz Bleyl. All four of them would go on to produce key Expressionist works. Die Brucke’s aims were lofty, generalized and, in retrospect, not very original. They meant to bring about social change by challenging existing bourgeois conventions in art. Rather than challenge these conventions in directly stated propagandistic terms these artists meant to return spirituality to art as a reaction against the oppression of industrial society (Hight). The goals were to attain spirituality by means of personalized styles rather than one set of aesthetics (Goll) . Some painters, such as Franz Marc, approached spirituality and revolution by depicting rural and fantastical imagery; others, such as Kirchner and Conrad Felixmuller, expressed intensely different scenes of urban people—most of them common people—in black and white etchings that showed the chaos and bustle of city life. Kirchner’s woodcut Women at Potsdam Square (1914) and Felixmuller’s watercolor 4 painting Markt In Rosswein (Market in Rosswein) (1920) are two such paintings. The Expressionist movement needed a diverse palette of styles, imagery and subject matter; it was a movement of optimism and inclusion, not one of conformity or exclusivity. It was more than an art movement; in the words of critic Ivan Goll, it was a “worldview” (Goll). In the more precise words of the manifesto of Die Brucke, it said; “Everyone belongs to us who directly and undivergently tries to express that which drives them to create” (Die Brucke Manifesto). The optimism of Expressionism did not derive from nowhere. It took inspiration from the French Fauve art movement, and from Impressionism (Hight). Several of the early artists of Die Brucke even spent time in Paris before returning to Germany to form the collective. It was a movement that prided itself on youthfulness and progressive social views. The movement itself was at first confined to Germany, though its works were exhibited in other European countries within a few years. Although Die Brucke itself would dissolve in 1913, its dissolve seemed moot; the Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) collective, formed in 1911, carried on the same approach, as did the journal Der Sturm, which became the central outlet for creating a theory of Expressionism (Brandt). But then the war came. As noted, Expressionism did survive the war. Some of its best works were painted during the war. Even still, something happened to it. Something cynical. Something cinematic. 5 If one looks at an artist such as Max Beckmann, perhaps the most overtly stylized painter of his time in Germany, one can see both cinema and cynicism in the foreground. By virtue of working at the same time and some similar political sensibilities, Beckmann is often lumped in with the Expressionists. But Beckmann himself was opposed to the idea of Expressionism (Hight) and most of his work is decidedly darker in tone. In a painting such as Adam and Eve (1917), Beckmann portrays the two biblical figures as rumpled, ugly and oversized people who seem revolted by one another despite being almost physically conjoined. His more famous work Die Nacht (1919) shows a gaggle of people stuffed in to a room, some physically tormenting each other, all in a state of restlessness and chaos. Beckmann’s paintings reflect a feeling of claustrophobia and alienation that the earlier Expressionists, if they had it, expressed with a positive and progressive angle. In its inventive use of a rectangular space and its implications of complex motion, Die Nacht looks darkly cinematic. It is the personal expression of an individual and it may also have been a reaction against bourgeois art, but its outlook feels hopeless. Is it mere coincidence, then, that this painting was completed when the war had recently ended? Is it a coincidence still that it was painted in the same year as the completion of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari? The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari should be understood as a landmark in the history of cinema for the simple reason that it was the first motion picture that felt and still feels like art. It feels like a moving version of painting, sculpture, and woodcuts: the traditional arts. The film’s production design by Hermann Warm has been duly lauded for its haunting psychological look. It is a look that undeniably does bear similarities to earlier 6 Expressionist paintings. The distorted perspectives and canted angles of the houses, lampposts and streets draw immediate comparisons to the aforementioned works Women in Potsdam Square by Kirchner and Markt In Rosswein by Felixmuller. The comparison to Market in Rosswein in particular lends an incredibly specific similarity to the film. Many wide shots in the film show the protagonist Francis and his ill-fated friend Alan walking down the city streets, crowded above by slanted and pointy buildings. These ingredients and their arrangements are the same as the composition of Felixmuller’s painting almost to a tee. On the other hand, the film’s chock-full compositions in the fair scenes bring to mind Beckmann, but moreover, so does its plot. At the start, a shell-shocked Francis recounts a tale of a strange aristocratic man entering his small town during fair season with a somnambulist who predicts the townspeople’s futures. A series of killings occurs, including the killing of Alan, and the eventual kidnapping of their mutual love-interest, Jane. It all leads to a revelation that the aristocratic man, who calls himself Dr. Caligari, is in fact an insane authority figure at a mental asylum who has taken on the persona of an ancient Italian practitioner of black magic. From that point on, the film looks like leftover sketches of Die Nacht. It is hard to deny that director Robert Wiene and his writers, Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz, were trying to convey the same cynicism, the same anguish at the unjustness of the world order, as Beckmann’s paintings and other late “Expressionist” artworks. 7 All these similarities point to a visual style of Caligari that might be lumped in with late Expressionism. But when we consider the original tenets of Expressionist Art—the revolutionary, progressive and optimistic principles—the film’s link to the movement feels less convincing. It starts to feel outright unwarranted when we consider its themes and its message. It is commonly accepted that the message of the film’s original narrative was not simply diluted by Robert Wiene, but perverted (Roberts). The body of the film—in which Francis, our good-natured and initially naïve protagonist encounters Caligari and eventually unmasks him as the cause of murder and mayhem in his town—comprised the entirety of the original screenplay by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. Their message was that the old establishment is reactionary, insane and murderous; the young (represented by Francis) are the only ones who can bring down this establishment. But when the film premiered, something had been added to this narrative. A framing narrative begins the film, showing Francis telling the story of Dr.

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