[See p. [86]]
We had to do, first of all, with the oft-repeated objection to this much-praised and much-calumniated film, that in that insanely distorted milieu the actors moved about in their own human, unfractured, and undeformed bodies. Werner Krauss alone, who played the title rôle, was so unqualifiedly successful in making his being fit in and seem at home with the spooky element of this heap of distortions that the environment apparently enveloped this magician with a singularly magical veil. The unnaturalness of his predicament was made to appear natural. With the others it was altogether different. The magic circle in which they moved left the impression that it was merely a ghostly and ghastly mantle that flopped about their figures. It simply is not possible to squeeze such inherently contradictory material and motivation into a single frame. The decoration, always easily changed and varied, must adapt itself to the form and figure of the actor, which is unvariable and cannot be changed. This being the case, the following basic law compels formulation and observance: Setting dare not distort reality.
This law has a meaning of its own: it applies to the whole business of art as this is exploited in the interests of caricatured and twisted expressionism. That expressionism has about fought its last fight and displayed its ultimate lunacy, is a safe and reasoned assumption. The “deformation” of nature as an aid to the inadequate ability of the artist is a hopelessly unsatisfactory emergency aid invoked on behalf of a foul and decayed naturalism in its desperate attempt to conjure up a new style—un coin de la nature, vu à travers d’un tempérament.
One saw an irrationally perverse and eccentric, painted and plotted picture of a city (the surface in the background of illustration No. 1). Two insane people stood before it, one of whom pointed at the singular picture and said: “My native city!” Of the feeling of art there was not a trace. The spectator, going at the thing in a purely rational way, figured it out as follows: the lunatic was born in a little hilly city. The magic of the words “native city” was not even hinted at, to say nothing of being exhausted. In a mimic and sensuous moving picture it does not suffice to portray a painted surface as a picture. Such scenery will do on the legitimate stage, but, in the motion picture, the symbolism of it fails to reach the heart. The decoration of the film must be plastic.
Such a film can have only one meaning; it can be important in only one way: it is an experiment, and experiments are rarely useless. They may even be quite valuable; for to start out on a wrong road is not useless in itself, since we thereby learn that it is the wrong road. We learn that we are in a blind alley, that there is no use to try to go any farther, that any attempt at a new creation is beaten at the beginning, and can hope to end only in the most wretched of conditions—such as those find themselves committed to who have arrived late. Any achievement in the way of film scenery can have and be of enduring value then and only then when it serves as a stimulus to colleagues in other branches of the same art; it must leave some room for many minds.
A film such as that of Dr. Caligari, which begins with irony and ends with resignation, can never be regarded as more than a curiosity. The Decla Company made another expressionistic film entitled Genuine, die Geschichte einer Blutsäuferin (“The Tale of a Vampyre”). It revealed the same artistic principles as those of Dr. Caligari, but with this difference: they had now become petrified after the fashion of a regular mask. I am of the opinion that for an achievement in this field to be of real value, in technique as well as in art, it has got to be taken from life and follow lifelike lines. For this reason, the possibility of a fruitful development in this direction seems remote indeed.
This gigantic spring-tide which surged forth with unqualified suddenness from the chaos of film evolution has about ebbed away and been absorbed by a few remarkable decorations. Its effects are still noticeable here and there on the upper surface; this much must be conceded. But the great storm that reached down to the depths and brought about a complete revolution and reformation in the domain of film scenery, has never taken place, though it was prophesied and promised by its leading adherents at the time. Wherever we can still recognize a faint echo of it, it has quieted down into a milder, calmer form which first coquettes with nature and flirts with life, only to become gradually but completely reconciled to them in the end.
The tendency to invention of phantastic settings was immensely aroused by Dr. Caligari. Illustration No. 3. for example, shows what may be done in the way of an art form that is supposed to follow nature, though it is conceived in error, and though it is a specimen of such nature as we get when it is constructed rather than allowed to grow, and constructed with the inescapable contortions that characterize this type of thing. The unreasoned and unbalanced twisting and the laborious padding of these mountain lines are without a trace of either warmth or truth; they lack inner genuineness. The sunflowers in the foreground at the left are simply idiotic. Illustration No. 4 is a trifle better in the calm flow of its lines. It is astonishingly true to life, though the thought of a castle that has been chiseled from the solid rock does not exactly remind one of home, or if so, it merely emphasizes the saying that there is no place like home.
Illustration No. 5 is thoroughly saturated with the romantic clarity of feeling for nature. The reconciliation of the inventive artist with the forms of nature has been perfected; it is complete. There is, moreover, a remarkable freedom of invention coupled with astonishing fidelity to nature.
In all of these pictures we recognize an ever-increasing moderation, an intimate and sympathetic pressing forward to the forms of reality that are not slavishly copied; they are felt, and that in a vigorous and natural way. Before we enter upon the open road of scenery that is faithful to reality, however, we must follow for a season romantic setting by way of familiarizing ourselves with a number of its amiable ramifications.