Watch: How German Expressionism Influenced Cinema's Dark Side

[Editor's Note: This video essay, a collaboration by Press Play and No Film School, will be the first in a series on different film movements, their histories, and their enduring influence. Familiarity with movements of the past is crucial to understanding of current cinematic trends. The following introduction was written by Max Winter, editor of Press Play.]

There are few film movements which have traveled quite as far as German Expressionism. It was born out of the ferment of post-WWI Europe, where the last notes of fin-de-siecle decadence clashed with the yearning for the constructive change modernity could bring as the world clambered out of the wreckage of battle.

The darkness and intensity of these films was what literary critics might call an objective correlative for the general mood of Germany—but perhaps more broadly the mood of a continent, or even a planet. It’s all there: the shadows representing dread, as well the bursts of light which, rather than bringing positivity or hope, merely cast the darkness into greater relief. 

And so the movement has persisted, in the work of Tim Burton most notably, but elsewhere, too: directors from Guillermo del Toro to Ridley Scott could be said to have benefited from this movement’s influence. Tyler Knudsen’s video essay, the first in new a series, zips us through the history of this movement with admirable efficiency: watch, and you may see the darker side of many of your favorite movies reflected in the depths of such early films as Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, or Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse the Gambler.