Terms to know:

Associative Montage Iconography

Avant-garde Mise-en-scene

Expressionism Montage

Framing Point of view -- camera, narrative

The Avant-garde tradition:

Separate from narrative or documentary traditions

Characterized by experimentation, the unconventional

Generally shorter than narrative films and uses alternatives to storytelling

Often aligned with avant-garde traditions in other art forms

Production and distribution are almost entirely outside of narrative channels, as they're generally produced by individual artists.

Expressionism: (from Katz's Film Encyclopedia and Cinemania '95)

A style of art which developed early in the 20th century into an influential movement in German painting, sculpture, literature, drama, and, finally, cinema. Expressionism, as defined by one of its exponents, seeks to "present the inner life of humanity rather than its outward appearance." Another has defined it as a "heightened reality, often via the non-objective use of symbols, stereotyped characters, and stylization, in order to give objective expression to inner experience." In German cinema, in the years immediately following WWI, expressionism was characterized by extreme stylization of sets and decor as well as in the acting, lighting, and camera angles. The grossly distorted, largely abstract sets were as expressive as the actors, if not more. To assure comlete control and free manipulation of the decor, lighting, and camera work, expressionist films were always shot in the studio, never outdoors, even when sces called for exterior shooting. Lighting was deliberately artificial, emphasizing deep shadows and sharp contrasts; camera angles were chosen to emphasize the fantastic and the grotesque; and the actors externalized their emotions to the extreme. Among the leading directors of the movement were Robert Wiene, Fritz Lang, Paul Leni, and F.W. Murnau. The influence of German expressionism was global and long-lasting. Traces of it are recognizable in the films of Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles, among many others.

Caligari: CHAOS RULES

I. Narrative Structure

A. Frame -- should've been reality; plot turned upside down

B. Flashbacks

C. Ambiguous ending -- set design=still expressionistic v. realistic

D. Narrator

- almost all of film is his memory and he is nuts -- distortion

E. Characters are not as they seem -- can't trust anyone

F. Anarchic/nihilistic -- denies order, structure, control

G. Mistrust of the scientific, rational, intellectual

- extremes of Caligari/Sonnow: patient and psychiatrist, murderer and physician

II. Visual Techniques

A. make-up -- esp. eyes

B. clothes -- ex. Jane, Cesare

C. acting style

D. set design -- no 90 degree angles in film, Jane's room, etc.

(cartoon-like). Distortion of objects, lack of balance.

E. use of color -- dark v. light

III. Film Techniques

A. Methods of cuts, cutaways, crosscuts, inserts; iris in, iris out

B. Camera movement, angles

C. Lighting

D. Music

Split from beginning within filmmaking:

1. Those interested chiefly in properties of simply recording events -- "actualities" (Lumiere bros.)

2. And those interested in creating a new art form through the creative and expressive capacity of the camera. (Melies)

Although Melies relied upon narrative technique -- the telling of a story -- and thus opened the door for commercially successful and popular film, he may also be considered the father of avant-garde and experimental film as he stressed the dissociation between the camera and reality. Remember his use of seemingly magical appearances and disappearances?

Animation was the first avant-garde film form : the animated world is completely separate from the "real world," operating under independent laws. Animated worlds don't operate under the same laws of causality and logic and "natural" laws.

U.S. artists used the cartoon to develop surrealism and impressionism. As artists left for Europe in the 1920s, filmmakers there became caught up in such movements as German expressionism, Dadaism, and surrealism. Traditional notions of reality and representation were rejected. Artists were disillusioned with the world, politics, war. The modern art which exploded in Paris in the 1920s was a response to the complex and ambitious nature of reality in a modern world.

-- Industrialization and development of industrial discipline

--Space and time (radio and film nationalized and internationalized the world)

--WWI -- 1st mass killing with machines

--Sigmund Freud -- unconscious, sex, power, and fantasy, once taboo subjects, now discussed fairly freely

Expressionists, constructivists, cubists, futurists, Dadaists, and surrealists all developed their artistic manifestos.

Due to the possibility of realizing the impossible and transforming time and space in the medium of film, film seemed an excellent medium for exploring and representing abstraction and the human unconscious. Also seemed great medium to shock audiences into new awareness of their world, to break away their complacency. (Bertolt Brecht)

First consciously artistic, abstract and avant-garde films were: Robert Wiene's 1919 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (seminal film of German expressionism), and Hans Richter and Viking Eggelingg's Rhythmus 21 and Symphonie Diagonale (experimented with abstract forms, geometric shapes and using black and white to explore those shapes)

Incongruity, illogic, and shock were valued ends for many of these artists. They embraced the liberating possibilities presented by the unconscious, as the unconscious was not fettered by reason, morality, and a planned aesthetic, as was the conscious id. The unconscious was not civilized, socialized, and constrained. Rational connections and cause and effect are often inoperative. Emotions are privileged because they are the opposite of discipline and order. Emotions, instead, are chaotic and privileged over action. If the world is chaotic, can one depend on action as useful?

Germany spawned expressionistic films which explored dreams, nightmares, and the psyche and which relied on emotion rather than action. The emotions and psychological subjectivity of both filmmaker and characters were revealed through stylization, fantasy and distortion in acting, sets, costumes, and lighting. Weine used angular sets and heavy shadows in Caligari, for instance, to develop a macabre and horrific atmosphere. It was typical of the early German preoccupation with nightmarish themes conveyed by subjective and expressive images.

Other filmmakers also experimented with narrative form and other filmic conventions. Dreyer, Clair, Gance, and Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko, and Vertoz are among these. F. W. Murnau, in his 1924 film The Last Laugh, used a realistic subject but developed it expressively. A subjective camera was used, through which the audience sees through the eyes of several characters, including a drunk. Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Dovzhenko and Vertoz, influenced by the Russian Revolution of 1917 and Griffith's Intolerance and other Griffith movies, became masters of editing, manipulating narrative time and meaning.