The visual imagery in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is relatively strange and twisted. Immediately at the sight of the dark, disproportioned, and rather unusual architecture the tone or mood is set. The visual style conveys a sense of disquieting dread and ambiguity. Moreover, stage properties in this film add to the visual imagery, mood, and ambience. This is successfully provided through the way each scene has specific typography that scrolls upward on the screen, the light changes that focus in on particular scenes or the way the doors, windows, buildings, mirrors, and walls are painted with eccentric patterns, impractically shaped asymmetrical and elongated or curtailed.
Dr. Caligari and Cesare his somnambulist, are often portrayed in
a twisted darker side. The shadows and dark or cold facial exaggerations on both characters create an overemphasized seriousness and creepiness; an unsettling feeling of anxiety. These features seem to imply the villain and his assistant role easily; Victor Frankenstein and his monster. The insanity seen in Dr. Caligari is also quite evident. His attitude often changes in this film, such as when he presents Cesare to the crowd versus when he is confronted with suspicion, the death of a young man by the name of Alan who earlier questioned the Somnambulist about the longevity of his life. It seems Dr. Caligari’s attitude or tone changes from being merely entertaining and inviting of his act, to becoming closed in and recluse at question due to the fact he is sneaky and clearly doing wrong. This film relates to German Expressionism due to the insanity, and disquieting or anxious feeling it evokes in its audience. German expressionism came about at an uncomfortable time for Germany after World War I in the 1920’s when our government in the U.S. gained control. German expressionism seemingly gave its population a way to break away from reality by creating a mix of personality types and imagery of bright and dark moments in its art and film. The insanity in Dr. Caligari is like a paint brush and the camera is its canvas. The inner mind and focus that Dr. Caligari brings forth is painted and scattered throughout the entire film like a Jackson Pollack painting. There is no escaping the mind of this “mad man.” The film focuses on the audience’s attention to interact with the film as well. At often times there are breaks that draw the audience in to read about the scene at hand. I feel this approach awaken the suspense and anxiousness of the viewer's subconscious mind. The tonal contrasts in sound, color, and motion absolutely depict the style of German Expressionism. These contrasts turn simple objects into objects of emotion. Another way German Expressionism seems to be elucidated in this surreal, dreamlike town is the murders that Cesare makes upon his dictator’s request that honestly make no real logical sense. Dr. Caligari’s control over Cesare display power. Nevertheless, it seems Dr. Caligari is issuing these requests on a whim for fun with no purpose behind each act. These deaths are happening without reason, at least, that the audience can discern all the way to the close of the film. He starts to make the people of this unnamed town look crazy and insane when in reality it is Dr. Caligari. The way a soldier would follow orders without hesitation or resistance display a way the country’s government controls them and their acts similar to the acts of Dr. Caligari and Cesare.
The author illustrates the “dim, rundown apartment complex,” she walks in, hand and hand with her girlfriend. Using the terms “dim,” and “rundown” portrays the apartment complex as an unsafe, unclean environment; such an environment augments the violence the author anticipates. Continuing to develop a perilous backdrop for the narrative, the author describes the night sky “as the perfect glow that surrounded [them] moments before faded into dark blues and blacks, silently watching.” Descriptions of the dark, watching sky expand upon the eerie setting of the apartment complex by using personification to give the sky a looming, ominous quality. Such a foreboding sky, as well as the dingy apartment complex portrayed by the author, amplify the narrator’s fear of violence due to her sexuality and drive her terror throughout the climax of the
Recently, an exhibit of his prints and drawings made its way to the United States from The British Museum in London to The New Mexico Museum of Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Once one arrives at the beautiful old adobe museum, it is necessary to enter the main courtyard and walk directly through the large wooden doors. After that, one must enter a closed room with large glass doors where the title of the exhibit is written. In this room, the walls are painted a vibrant crimson red, which accentuates the blacks, greys, and white tones of the prints and drawings. After turning to the right after a short corridor, one must again turn to the right and find the wall labeled, “Los Caprichos.” It is upon this partition that one immediately notices the ominous yet exquisitely crafted masterpiece The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters from c.1798-99.
The artists of the Baroque had a remarkably different style than artists of the Renaissance due to their different approach to form, space, and composition. This extreme differentiation in style resulted in a very different treatment of narrative. Perhaps this drastic stylistic difference between the Renaissance and Baroque in their treatment of form, space, and composition and how these characteristics effect the narrative of a painting cannot be seen more than in comparing Perugino’s Christ Delivering the Keys of the Kingdom to St. Peter from the Early Renaissance to Caravaggio’s Conversion of St. Paul from the Baroque.Perugino was one of the greatest masters of the Early Renaissance whose style ischaracterized by the Renaissance ideals of purity, simplicity, and exceptional symmetry of composition. His approach to form in Christ Delivering the Keys of the Kingdom to St.Peter was very linear. He outlined all the figures with a black line giving them a sense of stability, permanence, and power in their environment, but restricting the figures’ sense of movement. In fact, the figures seem to not move at all, but rather are merely locked at a specific moment in time by their rigid outline. Perugino’s approach to the figures’themselves is extremely humanistic and classical. He shines light on the figures in a clear, even way, keeping with the rational and uncluttered meaning of the work. His figures are all locked in a contrapposto pose engaging in intellectual conversation with their neighbor, giving a strong sense of classical rationality. The figures are repeated over and over such as this to convey a rational response and to show the viewer clarity. Perugino’s approach to space was also very rational and simple. He organizes space along three simple planes: foreground, middle ground, and background. Christ and Saint Peter occupy the center foreground and solemn choruses of saints and citizens occupy the rest of the foreground. The middle distance is filled with miscellaneous figures, which complement the front group, emphasizing its density and order, by their scattered arrangement. Buildings from the Renaissance and triumphal arches from Roman antiquity occupy the background, reinforcing the overall classical message to the
... study for the overall concept they appear rather as abstract patterns. The shadows of the figures were very carefully modeled. The light- dark contrasts of the shadows make them seem actually real. The spatial quality is only established through the relations between the sizes of the objects. The painting is not based on a geometrical, box like space. The perspective centre is on the right, despite the fact that the composition is laid in rows parallel to the picture frame. At the same time a paradoxical foreshortening from right to left is evident. The girl fishing with the orange dress and her mother are on the same level, that is, actually at equal distance. In its spatial contruction, the painting is also a successful construction, the groups of people sitting in the shade, and who should really be seen from above, are all shown directly from the side. The ideal eye level would actually be on different horizontal lines; first at head height of the standing figures, then of those seated. Seurats methods of combing observations which he collected over two years, corresponds, in its self invented techniques, to a modern lifelike painting rather than an academic history painting.
He suggests that the use of “electronic imaging prevents imagining and promotes thinking about architecture rather than bring architects, contractors, clients and critics to think within architecture” (275). Inspired by Frascari, the strategy of technography is encouraged (278). This is a “different way of thinking about the relationship between a [working] drawing and a future building. Rather than “simply Cartesian, technical lines showing edges, corners and joints these technographic drawings reveal both the symbolic and instrumental representations of the future building.. it is to make visible what is invisible”. Ridgway remarks, “The fact that any of this could be considered contentious indicates that extent to which architects have become alienated from the heart of their profession” (279). He asserts, “Part of any technography must be an acknowledgement of the historical context of construction knowledge. This is not only so we can better understand our rich architectural ancestry, but because it re-establishes a connection with the origins of our profession in building” (279). Rather than a “miniature projected representation of an imagined building, details are drawn as poetic constructions themselves, following the logic of drawing and not building and representing the “built detail symbolically, in addition to instrumentally. The symbolic and practical are one and the same thing” (280). “What are the symbolic qualities we are trying to embody in our buildings and how would we represent them in drawings?” becomes the question (278). These drawing “may not be easy or straightforward to understand or interpret.
The decursio sides are representations of Antoninus Pius’ deification and funerary rites. The depiction consists of the cavalry circling the standing figures, two of whom carry military standards, while the rest are wearing their cuirass. These scenes represent the ceremony that is essential for the deification of the imperial members. The style that is used within these sides is in relief form, yet they also break from the traditional Classical style. The variation of the Classical style is prominent by depicting stocky human forms and using two types of perspective within a single space. The figures also lack the gracefulness of other works during this time that follow the Classical style. The perspective of the piece is unclear where the figures seem to be suspended in space for what seems to be an overhead view while at the same time using a single perspective. Despite the deviation of the Classical style this p...
To begin, Tarkovsky’s cinema is not about historical realism or exposing the everyday as it really is. Cinema is unavoidably an especially paranoid representation of experience. Sculpture hewn in time resembles everyday events no more than wood sculpture does stumps. What makes Tarkovsky interesting might be gotten at in terms of doors and windows. Dalle Vacche[1] approaches the array of moments and differences in the style:
Both the Chuorinkan house and the Koganei house are in the To kyo suburbs and were designed at about the same time. Though they differ structurally and visually, they represent one approach to the problems they involve. The starting points of both are deliberate quotations and reorganizations of architectural compositional elements that can be called representative of the early modern period. I have used the same kind of design approach in other works. For example quotations from motifs used by Le Corbusier and Charles Rennie Mackintosh are found in the interior of PMT Building No. 1 (JA, September, 1978). Project W and PMT Building No. 2 entail reorganizations of elements from Le Corbusier's La Roche-Jeanneret House in Paris. And the facade of the Osaka PMT factory quotes the facade of Le Corbusier’s Villa Stein, at Garches. The aims behind quoting and reorganizing operations of this kind are (1) producing the effect of collages of heterogeneous elements and (2) visual ization of surface elements. Though the Chuorinkan house resembles PMT Building No. 1 in that its facade consists o...
The Alfred Hitchcock film; Vertigo is a narrative film that is a perfect example of a Hollywood Classical Film. I will be examining the following characteristics of the film Vertigo: 1)individual characters who act as casual agents, the main characters in Vertigo, 2)desire to reach to goals, 3)conflicts, 4)appointments, 5)deadlines, 6)James Stewart’s focus shifts and 7)Kim Novak’s characters drives the action in the film. Most of the film is viewed in the 3rd person, except for the reaction shots (point of view shot) which are seen through the eyes of the main character.(1st person) The film has a strong closure and uses continuity editing(180 degree rule). The stylistic (technical) film form of Vertigo makes the film much more enjoyable. The stylistic film form includes camera movements, editing, sound, mise-en-scene and props.
The true greatness of the building is in the main room, the atrium is a huge open area in a radial style with a central point being in the center of the room. The room is filled with a combination of circles and squares which illustrates the Romans fascination with geometric shapes. Along with geometric shapes the inside of this building full of brilliant shades of oranges, blues and purples. There are ionic style pillars around the base of the room as well as sculptures of different gods. Just above the main room there is a frieze of false windows that make a band around the midlevel of the room. Although the windows are false there ar...
Under the orders of her husband, the narrator is moved to a house far from society in the country, where she is locked into an upstairs room. This environment serves not as an inspiration for mental health, but as an element of repression. The locked door and barred windows serve to physically restrain her: “the windows are barred for little children, and there are rings and things in the walls.” The narrator is affected not only by the physical restraints but also by being exposed to the room’s yellow wallpaper which is dreadful and fosters only negative creativity. “It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough to constantly irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide – plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of contradictions.”
The link between expressionism and horror quickly became a dominant feature in many films and continues to be prominent in contemporary films mainly due to the German expressionist masterpiece Das Kabinett des Doctor Caligari. Wiene’s 1920 Das Kabinett des Doctor Caligari utilized a distinctive creepiness and the uncanny throughout the film that became one the most distinctive features of externalising inner mental and emotional states of protagonists through various expressionist methods. Its revolutionary and innovative new art was heavily influenced by the German state and its populace in conjunction with their experience of war; Caligari took a clear cue from what was happening in Germany at the time. It was this film that set cinematic conventions that still apply today, heavily influencing the later Hollywood film noir genre as well as the psychological thrillers that has lead several film audiences to engage with a film, its character, its plot and anticipate its outcome, only to question whether the entire movie was a dream, a story of a crazy man, or an elaborate role play. This concept of the familiar and the strange, the reality, the illusion and the dream developed in Das Kabinett des Doctor Caligari, is once again present in Scorsese’s 2010 film Shutter Island. It is laced with influences from different films of the film noir and horror genre, and many themes that are directly linked to Das Kabinett des Doctor Caligari shot 90 years prior.
But these contrived differences give rise to esthetic difficulties too. Because inherent differences—those that come from genuinely differing uses—are lacking among the buildings and their settings, the contrivances repre...
Pedro Almodovar’s 1997 film Live Flesh (Carne Tremula), is rich in both visual and story elements, making in the perfect candidate for a scene analysis. Upon writing this paper, however, this was almost to my disadvantage. I watched it through and whittled it down to about five scenes I considered analyzing. This self-challenge is a testament to not only this film, but Almodovar’s whole body of work; he has created so many thoughtful, intricate, and all together entertaining films in his career, I had to somehow forgive myself for just choosing one short scene out of only one of his movies for analysis. So, without further ado, here is an analysis of a scene from Live Flesh.
“ The paintings of Filippo Lippi are frequently characterized by two features: an interest in minimizing the divide between world, image and the presence of humor, both bodily and representational. Although these two aspects of Lippi's art might initially seem unconnected, this paper suggests that both can be associated with the use of scientific perspective. Lippi's spatial concerns can be understood as a reaction to the distancing of the iconic image that accompanied the invention of perspective.”