German Expressionism

In a film of 1920 the walls lean, the windows are lozenges and the shadows are painted directly onto the set: The Cabinet of Dr Caligari gave cinema the idea that space itself can express a state of mind. The Berlin studios then pushed the device further, with Murnau's vampire whose shadow climbs a staircase alone, Lang's underground workers' city, Wegener's clay golem. This post-war cinema, haunted by madness and authority, would be exported to Hollywood by its film-makers exiled from 1933 onwards.

works 5

• CinemaThe Cabinet of Dr. CaligariDas Cabinet des Dr. CaligariRobert Wiene · 1920A small fairground town of crooked houses, painted on canvas, where a showman and his sleepwalker sow murder.Cinema
• CinemaThe Golem: How He Came into the WorldDer Golem, wie er in die Welt kamPaul Wegener · 1920A rabbi of Prague animates a clay creature to save his people, in a ghetto built entirely for the film.Cinema
• CinemaNosferatuNosferatu, eine Symphonie des GrauensF. W. Murnau · 1922A German port in 1838, where rats and plague come ashore along with a count from the Carpathians.Cinema
• CinemaMetropolisFritz Lang · 1927A future city split in two, the towers of the masters and the underground city of the workers, in the most expensive film in German cinema of its time.Cinema
• CinemaPandora's BoxDie Büchse der PandoraG. W. Pabst · 1929Berlin in the late 1920s, around a young woman who fascinates everyone who comes near her.Cinema