Unlike the Expressionist techniques achieved in The Cabinet of Dr. The court ruled that Nosferatu was indeed a derivative work and ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed, but one print had already been distributed worldwide Nosferatu was subsequently revived by a cult following. Because it was based on Bram Stoker's original Dracula novel (though with character names, setting, and plot details changed), the Stoker estate sued for copyright infringement. Not only is Nosferatu a seminal horror film, but it is also one of the most influential films of the silent era-and one of the first major public cases of intellectual property law. Caligari can be seen to represent the brutal German war regime, while the sleepwalker stands in for the common man who shows deference to a murderous authority. In addition to its fantastical use of set design, Robert Wiene's film bears significant historical importance Dr. Shot entirely in a limited studio space, each set was restricted to 20 feet in width and depth. The sets were designed with distorted perspectives-they feature not a single right angle-in order to create a disorienting and unhinged world. Cinematographer Willy Hameister used no-frills camera work to emphasize the film's elaborate hand-painted sets, featuring twisted cityscapes, spiraling streets, and nightmarish forms. Caligari is the story of a deranged hypnotist who uses a sleepwalker to commit murders.
Caligari (dir. Robert Wiene, 1920)Ĭonsidered the quintessential work of German Expressionism, The Cabinet of Dr. The film also features complex narrative structural elements, such as meta-flashbacks (or flashbacks-within-flashbacks) that diverge from stories as they are being told, fusing past and present into one ethereal reality.Ĭredit: Decla-Bioscop 2. Jaenzon followed them with a hand-held camera that was capable of exceptionally deep focus-highly unusual for the time-made possible with studio lighting.
Each "ghost" was lit differently with a filter. The superimpositions were layered up to four times, providing the illusion of ghosts wandering in and out of the film's elaborate sets. To tell the story of a ghostly coachman who comes to steal the souls of the dead after the clock strikes midnight, director Victor Sjöström and DP Julius Jaenzon employed double exposures, at the time a highly innovative special effect. This Swedish film has widely influenced directors throughout cinema history-most notably, Ingmar Bergman, whose film The Seventh Seal pays direct homage to The Phantom Carriage, and Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, which features multiple thematic and visual similarities, such as the famous ax scene. The Phantom Carriage (dir. Victor Sjöström, 1921) With their game-changing technical innovations, surreal imagery, and the power of subjectivity, these 14 masterpieces changed the course of cinematography-and the horror genre-forevermore.Ĭredit: Criterion Collection 1. Cinematography is one of the most important elements of a horror film.
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