What Is German Expressionism?

By Martin Keady · July 10, 2024

German Expressionism was one of the shortest-lived cinematic movements of the 20th century but also one of the most important. The style of filmmaking full of unusual camera angles, shadowy landscapes, and close-ups of contorted faces lasted for a little over a decade between the two World Wars, and yet it had a profound impact on all of the cinema that followed. Indeed, Expressionism’s influence continues to be felt today, even in some of the biggest movie genres and franchises, nearly a century after it came to an end.

What Is German Expressionism?

German Expressionism (or German Expressionist cinema) was part of the much larger modernist movement in Europe in the early 20th century. Expressionism is notoriously difficult to define, but the Merriam-Webster definition is: “A theory or practice in the art of seeking to depict the subjective emotions and responses that objects and events arouse in the artist.”

Emerging from the Impressionist movement in painting that sought to provide a more realistic “impression” of how we visually perceive the world, Expressionism did not attempt to replicate reality as exactly as possible but instead emphasized an artist’s inner thoughts or feelings.

My definition, or at least an easy way to understand the difference between Impressionism and Expressionism, is that Impressionism focuses on the impression or impressions we receive from the outside world, and Expressionism is the expression or even imposition of our own emotions on the outside world.

Whatever the precise definition of Expressionism, there is no doubting its importance in all the arts of the early 20th century, including the newest art form, cinema. In large part, that was because Expressionism was a reaction to the excesses of the early 20th century, especially industrialization (including the industrialization of warfare) and urbanization, both of which made individuals, even artists, feel overwhelmed or even obliterated by the modern world.

Consequently, however ill-defined, Expressionism had an enormous effect not only on art but on philosophy, for example in Nietzsche’s novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1893-95), and on the rapidly emerging field of psychology, for example in the writing of Sigmund Freud.

Expressionism was particularly important in cinema because up until German Expressionist cinema, which lasted roughly between 1919 and 1931, almost all film-making had been primarily concerned with capturing reality rather than manipulating it. By contrast, Expressionist cinema was essentially about capturing not reality itself but the individual’s reaction or response to reality.

The Origins of German Expressionist Cinema

The unique style of German Expressionist cinema had its origins in the unique situation of Germany at the start of the 20th century. Germany had only been fully formed less than half a century earlier. However, by 1914 it was, except for a few allies such as the Austro-Hungarian Empire, at war with most of Europe and, eventually, it would be at war with the rest of the world, notably the United States.

This geopolitical isolation led to artistic isolation and nowhere was that more pronounced than in cinema. In fact, during WWI the German government banned foreign films because it feared they contained anti-German sentiment, and boosted domestic film production to make up for the shortfall. In turn, most of Germany’s opponents in WWI, including Britain and the US, responded by banning German films from being shown in their countries.

Consequently, German film developed in magnificent isolation from the rest of Europe and even the rest of the world, a process that continued after the end of WWI in 1918 and the subsequent lifting of the bans on German film around the world. Eventually, that process led to the development of German Expressionist cinema.

The First (and Best) Expressionist Film

The first and indeed best German Expressionist film was The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), which was directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. Quite simply, it is one of the most extraordinary films ever made.

As with almost all the greatest films, the starting point for Caligari was its story, which was so incredible and fantastical that it surely deserves the term Expressionist. The simple outline, or even logline as it is now called, is that an evil hypnotist hypnotizes a sleepwalker into murdering on his behalf.

Even this bald outline of its story shows how Caligari was extraordinarily resonant. It was a reaction by its writers to the horrors that they and all Germans had experienced in WWI, when they were forced to fight on behalf of an autocratic government that they did not support. However, it also foresaw the rise of the Nazis less than a decade later, who ultimately would end German Expressionist cinema by forcing most of its major players into exile in America, before plunging the world into a conflict even madder and more horrific than WWI.

The “cabinet” of the film’s title is ostensibly the tomb-like box in which the mysterious Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) keeps Cesare (Conrad Veidt), a somnambulist or sleepwalker, who he exhibits at traveling fairs or circuses, making him obey his every command. Metaphorically, though, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a cabinet or box containing all of the most important elements of German Expressionist cinema.

In addition to its bizarre, nightmare-like story, which has led to it being called the first real horror film, Caligari had sets and costumes that were bizarre, obviously unreal (or at least unrealistic), and therefore Expressionist. The film’s designers chose to forego naturalistic style for graphic—indeed, fantastical—visual style, which included using costumes from different periods to give it an atemporal or timeless quality. They also distorted town or city scenes, some of which were paintings on canvas rather than actual sets.

The direction and cinematography of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari were also bizarre, with distortions of perspective, dimension, and scale, to create an unbalanced, even at times insane, appearance. Similarly, the acting, especially of the lead actors, was Expressionist rather than realistic, in that it was overblown, exaggerated, and always off-kilter, brilliantly conveying the increasing madness of the main characters.

4 Other German Expressionist Cinema Masterpieces

In the wake of WWI and the subsequent ending of the ban on German films in other countries, Caligari was hugely successful both domestically and abroad, including in the US. Its success led to a succession of other German Expressionist masterpieces throughout the 1920s and into the early 1930s. Here are just four of them:

1. The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920)

Screenplay by: Paul Wegener and Henrik Galeen

A golem was a monstrous figure from Jewish folklore that was brought to life from clay or mud. It has been called “The Jewish Frankenstein” and was traditionally created by Jewish communities that felt themselves under threat from hostile Gentiles (non-Jewish people). A golem was capable of deploying enormous physical power as if it were a proto-Hulk, but it was also capable of turning against its creators and destroying them.

As with the story logline for Caligari, the myth of the golem lent itself perfectly to German Expressionist cinema, conveying through an ancient tale all the anxieties about what man was capable of creating in the 20th century. The 1920 silent film was not set in Germany but in medieval Prague, where a desperate rabbi creates a golem to protect himself and other Jews from persecution by Christians. However, it would assume truly monstrous overtones within Germany as the Nazis came to power and began not only persecuting Jewish people but killing them.

2. Nosferatu (1920)

Screenplay by: Henrik Galeen

Cinematic horror, which in the 21st century has become probably the second most profitable movie genre after sci-fi, was effectively invented by German Expressionist cinema, including Nosferatu (1920). Indeed, the subtitle of Nosferatu was “A Symphony of Horror,” a phrase that perfectly combines the high brow and the low brow.

Nosferatu’s director was F.W. Murnau, one of the greatest German Expressionist directors, who left Germany for Hollywood in the 1920s, several years before so many of his compatriots (especially the Jewish ones) followed him. The film was based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but Murnau did not seek permission to use the novel. In another grim foreshadowing of the events that would follow in the 1930s, all the German prints of Nosferatu were eventually burnt. Only the foreign prints survived.

3. Metropolis (1927)

Screenplay by: Thea Von Harbou

1927, the last year of silent cinema before The Jazz Singer (1927) brought sound to the screen, saw two great German Expressionist films, one produced in Hollywood and one in Germany. The one produced in Hollywood was Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans (1927), Murnau’s masterpiece about urbanization and its dangers, which employed so many of the visual and storytelling techniques that he had developed in making Nosferatu.

The Expressionist masterpiece produced in Germany itself was Metropolis (1927), which was directed by Fritz Lang, who, alongside Wiene and Murnau, would complete a truly unholy trinity of great German Expressionist directors. Indeed, Lang was arguably the greatest German Expressionist director because he produced not one but two Expressionist masterpieces in completely different genres.

If The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (which Lang was originally scheduled to direct before working on another movie) is the first true horror film, Metropolis is the first true science-fiction film, whose influence continues to be felt in sci-fi cinema today. In its tale of a wealthy man’s son falling in love with a poor girl in a future dystopia where rich and poor are more divided than ever, Metropolis aped Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (1597) but also foresaw numerous later science-fiction films, right up to Francis Ford Coppola’s similar-sounding (and similarly plotted) Megalopolis (2024), which has just premiered in Cannes. But notwithstanding the genius of Coppola, it is extraordinarily unlikely that Megalopolis will have anything like the same influence as Metropolis.

4. M (1931)

Screenplay by: Lang and Thea Von Harbou

With all due respect to the Coppolas—Francis and Eleanor, his wife, who directed the amazing making of Apocalypse Now (1979) documentary Hearts of Darkness (1991)—Fritz Lang and Thea Von Harbou are probably the greatest husband and wife film-making team in history.

After making Metropolis, a sci-fi masterpiece, they came back down to earth with M (1931), the first great Expressionist sound film and arguably the first great crime film or film noir.

The original title of M was Mörder unter uns (Murderer Among Us), but it was shortened to M because the Nazis, who by the early 1930s were on the brink of ruling Germany, thought it was anti-Nazi. The cruel irony, of course, was that ultimately the Nazis would effectively make all Germans murderers, turning the entire state into a killing machine.

In that respect, M was emphatically in the tradition of the greatest German Expressionist films, stretching back to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari over a decade earlier, in being both a response to the horrors of WWI and a tragic prefiguring of the even greater horrors of WWII.

The End of German Expressionism—or Not?

German Expressionist cinema foresaw the rise of the Nazis and ultimately it was ended by the Nazis. By the time, Hitler formally gained power in Germany in 1933, most of the leading lights of Expressionist cinema had followed the lead of Murnau and fled Germany to Hollywood.

There was one last great masterpiece of the movement—Vampyr (1932)—but it was directed by a non-German, the great Danish director, Carl Theodor Dryer. However, as a broad and vibrant film-making movement, German Expressionism was effectively over. Indeed, it was arguably the first great German “institution” to be curtailed by the Nazis, and German democracy and the rule of law would soon follow.

Fortunately for world civilization and especially world cinema, the Nazis may have driven individual Expressionist film-makers into exile but they could not completely kill Expressionism itself. It had an incalculable effect on all subsequent cinema, particularly Hollywood cinema.

Exiled German film-makers reinvigorated Hollywood and in turn, were reinvigorated by Hollywood. For example, Fritz Lang made a few American films to match his greatest German movies, particularly Fury (1936), in which an innocent man is pursued by a lynch mob, just as European Jews were being lynched or burned (and indeed just as African-Americans were being lynched or burned in America, especially the South).

The effect of exile was less obvious on other German or German-speaking directors, but it was still enormous. For example, Billy Wilder, one of the greatest Hollywood directors ever, may not have made an Expressionist film, but he always felt himself to be a man on the run, and his greatest films, particularly Sunset Boulevard (1950) and Some Like It Hot (1959), were about men on the run.

Even non-German filmmakers were profoundly influenced by German Expressionism. In the mid-1920s, Alfred Hitchcock, who was then a fledgling filmmaker, was sent to Germany by Britain’s Gainsborough Studios to learn from German Expressionists. He returned a changed film-maker, almost immediately making his first masterpiece, The Lodger (1927), a thriller loosely based on Jack the Ripper, and the great Expressionist theme of innocence under threat from cruel external forces became the enduring theme of his career.

Similarly, Charles Laughton, in his only directorial outing, made probably the greatest American Expressionist film since Murnau’s Sunrise when he filmed The Night of the Hunter (1955), a dark, phantasmagorical tale of two children on the run from a killer.

Expressionism’s influence can also be seen in the later 20th century and even the 21st century, especially in the now dominant movie genre of science fiction. In Star Wars (1977), C3PO was consciously modeled on the robot from Metropolis and the seemingly exploding cityscapes of Blade Runner (1982) were directly influenced by the distorted landscapes of Caligari and Metropolis. And perhaps even the most radically imaginative film of the 21st century so far, Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest (2023) betrays the influence of Expressionism, especially in its central idea of a din (the endless noise created by the infernos of Auschwitz) that cannot be silenced.

A still of a house and its yard in 'The Zone of Interest'

‘The Zone of Interest’ (2023)

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One could argue that German Expressionism might be the most influential national cinematic movement. Only the fabled French New Wave of the early 1960s, which led to the New Hollywood of the 1970s (American cinema’s last truly great decade), can rival it for overall, indeed universal, influence. But the French New Wave is a relative whipper-snapper compared to German Expressionism, whose influence has already lasted for over a century. And no other film-making movement or style can make that claim.