Ortiz-de-Urbina German Expressionism in the Audiovisual Culture / Der deutsche Expressionismus in den Audiovisuellen Medien

Myths, Fantasy, Horror, and Science Fiction / Mythen, Fantasy, Horror und Science-Fiction
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-8233-0398-5
Verlag: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, Band 7, 282 Seiten

Reihe: Popular Fiction Studies

Zu Beginn des 20. Jahrhunderts machte zeitgleich mit dem Expressionismus eine neue Kunstform ihre ersten Schritte, die Bild, Sprache und Musik in sich vereinte: der Kinofilm. In Deutschland hatte die expressionistische Ästhetik einen enormen Einfluss auf dieses neue Medium, der sich in Filmen wie Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920), Der Golem (1920), Nosferatu (1922) oder Metropolis (1927) zeigt und bis heute seine Spuren hinterlassen hat. Dieser Band analysiert, wie Themen, Motive, Mythen und Ästhetik des expressionistischen Kinos der 1920er Jahre in den audiovisuellen Medien bis ins 21. Jahrhundert fortwirken und welchen Einfluss sie auf Myth Criticism oder auf populäre Gattungen wie Fantasy, Horror oder Science Fiction nach wie vor ausüben.

Prof. Dr. Paloma Ortiz-de-Urbina lehrt seit 1997 Germanistik und Musikwissenschaft an der spanischen Universidad de Alcalá, Madrid. Sie forscht im Bereich der spanisch-deutschen Kulturrezeption, insbesondere in der Musik- und Filmrezeption, und hat zahlreiche Bücher und Artikel zu diesem Thema veröffentlicht. Seit 2012 ist sie Leiterin der Forschungsgruppe Reception Studies (RECETPION) der Universidad de Alcalá und Principal Investigator in der AGLAYA-Gruppe für kulturelle Myth Criticism.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ortiz-de-Urbina, Paloma

Leseproben

The debate over cinema in expressionist literature
Carmen Gómez García
Es gibt kein anderes Mittel, als das Kino. Was ist daneben das Buch? Was ist daneben das Theater? […] Sie [Die Welt] stünde still, nähme man das Kino heraus. […] Wer das Kino hat, wird die Welt aushebeln.1 The origins
In 1920, when Carlo Mierendorff wrote these lines in his essay Hätte ich das Kino!, barely 25 years had passed since, according to the most accepted conventions, the history of cinema had begun (on 28 December, 1895).2 Quite contrary to the fervour they express, the integration of the silent film into the first wave of expressionism would be marked by a debate that fluctuated between the rejection of its trivial content and a fascination with its visual appeal. While that projection by the Lumiere brothers is generally considered to be the first in history, earlier, on 1 November 1895, the brothers Max and Emil Skladonowsky, the inventors of the bioscope, had exhibited their own moving images for the first time (and to a paying public) at Berlin’s Wintergarten Theatre. Eight films (at the time referred to “living photographs”), each only a few seconds in duration, showed a series of acrobatic feats, circus stunts, displays of boxing and other technical wonders.3 It is true, however, that the early cinema cannot be disassociated, on the one hand, from other turn-of-the-century institutions of entertainment: cabaret, vaudeville, musicals, magic shows, circuses… those expressions of Schaulust and Unterhaltungslust that the public demanded and which were being shaped by the times. As Mierendorff would formulate it in the text already cited: “In einer Zeit, die alle in Beziehung setzt mit allen, konnte das starre Bild nicht mehr genügen”4. On the other hand, cinematography was a product of 19th-century industrialization, combining, accumulating and perfecting techniques that were already known and practiced in fairs, variety theatres and travelling cinemas, at the same time that it embodied the premises of 20th-century aesthetics. On this point, one might include Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity, Ernst Mach’s loss of rationality in human thought, or Georg Simmel’s “intensification of the nervous life”5, concepts in which, as in the cinema, there is a splitting apart of unitary images into diverse perspectives of varying duration and focus. To direct one’s attention rapidly for very brief instants to ever-different locations is to discover the principles of the cinematographic being, a term used by the “cine-sceptic” Henri Bergson in L’évolution créatrice (1907). This influence of the cinema on the viewer’s psyche was duly noted in what the journalist Hermann Keizl would refer to as “Großstadt-Psychologie”.6 The cinema, then, answered to the new emotional needs of a primarily urban public, the same that attended cabaret performances and on which the cinema depended economically. For this, in 1913 two extremely important Lichtspiel-Paläste were inaugurated: Berlin’s Marmorhaus and, in Leipzig, Europe’s first open-air cinema, with capacity for 1,000 spectators.7 Cinema spread in direct competition with conventional theatre, in 1909 sparking the inevitable debate over its value, and stimulating a fruitful aesthetic and sociological reflection on literature as well. The debate
The opinions of the expressionists themselves ranged from antipathy toward the new medium to the greatest of enthusiasm. Indeed, the first cinematic programs repeated and expanded upon the themes of established popular entertainment. Logically, gehobene Literatur was excluded from this: Und wie sich die Welle der Schundliteratur über die Massen ergoß, so entstanden von hunderten kleiner Filmfirmen gedreht die Unsummen von Schundfilmen: in 250 derartiger Streifen stellte man 1910 97 Morde, 45 Selbstmorde, 51 Ehebrüche, 19 Verführungsszenen, 22 Entführungen, 35 Betrunkene und 25 Dirnen fest.8 It is thus to Schundliteratur (pulp literature) that we owe the “autonomous” beginnings of cinematic narrative. Nevertheless, as the cinema industry also hoped to win over the bourgeoisie–who had shown themselves to be adamantly in opposition–, more appropriate venues were sought (hence the so-called Lichtspiel-Paläste), as well as more sophisticated subject matter. The reaction of the intellectuals was immediate: the harsher critics (such as Franz Pfemfert or Alfred Lichtenstein)9 railed against the damage that cinematic adaptations would do to the literary and theatrical industry, extending to the work of actors and the development of audiences. Other authors, meanwhile, such as Ferdinand Hardekopf and Walter Hasenclever,10 praised the visual power, immediacy and concentration of cinematic storytelling. Indeed, a good number of expressionists were fascinated by this new world of fleeting, strident and penetrating impressions, of images never seen before, of stories told with such ingenuity that they seemed to function as “extracts” of the powerful emotions generated by industrial mass-production. Thus, these living or animated photographs stimulated a new perception and, from this, a new aesthetic. Jakob van Hoddis would employ the Reihungsstil to convey this rapid succession of images in verse, as can be observed in his poem Schluß: Kinematograph from the cycle Varieté (1911): Der Saal wird dunkel. Und wir sehn die Schellen Der Ganga, Palmen, Tempel auch des Brahma, Ein lautlos tobendes Familiendrama Mit Lebemännern dann und Maskenbällen. Man zückt Revolver, Eifersucht wird rege, Herr Piefke duelliert sich ohne Kopf. Dann zeigt man uns mit Kiepe und mit Kropf Die Älplerin auf mächtig steilem Wege. Mit Lebemännern dann und Maskenbällen. Man zückt Revolver, Eifersucht wird rege, Herr Piefke duelliert sich ohne Kopf. Dann zeigt man uns mit Kiepe und mit Kropf Die Älplerin auf mächtig steilem Wege. Es zieht ihr Pfad sich bald durch Lärchenwälder, Bald krümmt er sich und dräuend steigt die schiefe Felswand empor. Die Aussicht in der Tiefe Beleben Kühe und Kartoffelfelder. Und in den dunklen Raum – mir ins Gesicht! - Flirrt das hinein, entsetzlich! nach der Reihe! Die Bogenlampe zischt zum Schluss nach Licht - Wir schieben geil und gähnend uns ins Freie.11 Essential to this, in any case, was the fact that the viewer, as Walter Benjamin observed years later,12 would wonder whether there were something “optically unconscious” hidden in the images he has seen, and which therefore transcended his understanding of the cinematic form. This question would be addressed by Alfred Döblin, psychiatrist and dedicated cinema-goer, in his Berliner Programm (1913), in which he also proposed the Produktivkraft of the word, in a Kinostil or Döblinism, that is to say: a paratactic style built upon suggestive terms, neologisms, sparse vocabulary, and the use of rapid shifts that suggest to the reader the speed, complexity and disconcerting novelty of modern life. Little value is given to the action itself, and psychological characterization is rejected, as well as all description, explanation and commentary.13 In 1910, Döblin had recommended to dramatists: “Lernen Sie die Kürze und Gedrängtheit vom Kinema” and advocated the Kinostil: “höchste Gedrängtheit und Präzision”, as well as Plastik und Lebendigkeit in prose.14 Precepts like these, combined with montage and the use of terse telegrammatic language, can be observed paradigmatically in Döblin’s Berlin Alexanderplatz and in his novel Die drei Sprünge des Wang-lung. Chinesischer Roman (1915), a clear example of the Döblinist style. The narrator of that work lives in a big city, which he observes through an open window. This allows him to explore the ambivalent relationships of gestural-visual language, employing a collage technique and the Reihungsstil: Daß ich nicht vergesse–. Ein sanfter Pfiff von der Straße herauf. Metallisches Anlaufen, Schnurren, Knistern. Ein Schlag gegen meinen knöchernen Federhalter. Daß ich nicht vergesse–. Was denn? Ich will das Fenster schließen. Die Straßen haben sonderbare Stimmen in den letzten Jahren bekommen. Ein Rost ist unter die Steine gespannt; an jeder Stange baumeln meterdicke Glasscherben, grollende Eisenplatten, echokäuende Mannesmannröhren. Ein Bummern, Durcheinanderpoltern aus Holz, Mammutschlünden, gepreßter Luft, Geröll. Ein elektrisches Flöten schienenentlang. Motokeuchende Wagen segeln auf die Seite gelegt über das Asphalt; meine Türen schüttern. […] Ich tadle das verwirrende Vibrieren nicht. Nur finde ich mich nicht zurecht.15 Without question, the representatives of the literary avant-garde understood that, thanks to these new forms of optical narration, more could be transmitted than before. Characters could be described by their gestures, by mimickry; that is, not from within, but from without. The intention here was to emphasize the...