In this essay I will examine Rome Open City, Roberto Rosselini, 1945, Italy and M, Frtiz Lang, 1931, Germany as representatives of two majorly influential movements in cinema - German Expressionism and Italian Neorealism. I will examine how the two diametrically different aesthetic approaches to the visual medium reflect similar social atmospheres. I will argue that the exposition of the notional content of the two works is conducted on a different semantic levels – Rome Open City addresses its subject explicitly both pictorially and thematically while M works on a different connotative plane, where visual figures and tropes allude to the essence rather than exposing it directly. First I will discuss how the two films are different in their utilization of cinematic elements.
Fritz Langs, film, appearing in 1931 - at the artistic decline of the German Expressionist movement, marks a certain departure from the classic iconographic and thematic norms of the trend. However, to a great extend it is still deeply rooted in the expressionistic cinematic traditions. What characterizes the movement is, briefly, an absolute abolition of any realism. As Grainge marks it is “broadly anti-naturalistic”, filled with strong “psychological symbolism” and both visually and thematically conveys an “intense feeling of alienation from society”. (Grainge, 2007, p.124). Drawing ideological and structural concepts from two main artistic traditions – The German Romanticism and The Gothic literature, the expressionist cinema was concerned with abstract, ontological topics and especially with existential binary oppositions such as good and evil. This was manifested in a complete harmony of content and form. The iconography of the movement is marked by stark contrasts, polarization and distortion of the elements and graphic conflicts.
Typically for an expressionist film, M is shot entirely in UFA studios. Thus Lang could achieve absolute control over the treatment of the cinematic space. Although the set design is, one may say, rather realistic, and is not as stylized and ornamental as the multidimensional, geometrically distorted sets in The Cabinet of Dr Caligary, Robert Wiene, 1920, Germanyit still carries one crucial attribute of the expressionism – it graphically creates a reciprocal relation between the internal world of the protagonist and the external reality. The expressionistic stylization functions to convey the distorted viewpoint of a madman” (Scheunemann, 2003, p.125). The inner turbulence of the protagonist with all its dramatism is determinant for the surroundings, the outer delineates the inner metaphorically. The somber city and the misty streets imbued with murk and shadows although far from the illustrative extremities of the mise-en-scene decisions in films like Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau, 1922, Germany and Dr Faustus F.W. Murnau, 1926, Germany etc. still allegorically draw a parallel to the twisted corridors of the murderers psyche. On an even broader plane the represented is not only a particular ill-minded human being but a whole nation. I shall return to that later in the essay.
The affiliation of Lang’s film to German Expressionism is most palpable and distinctly articulated through the artistic utilization of lighting techniques. The chiaroscuro low-key illumination is a convention grown into a trademark of the movement. M embraces this and the stark contrast of the picture, the graphic designs that incorporate conflicting areas of dark and light, the binarisation of the iconography serve to visually illustrate a broad psychological, maybe even philosophical, concepts – the dialectic dichotomy of the forces that rage within the human soul. To be more concrete, the presentation of Beckert in the form of a shadow falling over a poster is an expressive element that conceptually traces its roots in the opulent use of shadows in Caligari or Nosferatu. Although the approach is evident in other national cinematic trends such as the early soviet films, in Ivan The Terrible, Sergei Eisenstein, 1936, Soviet Union for example, the artistic purpose of the shadow in M is clearly an expressionist visual accentuation which in turn is a constructive supplementation to the thematic contours. The pictorial dualism of the images symbolically alludes to the semantic gist of the work.
Furthermore, the expressive, though subdued, formalism in M is evident in the acting, most notably in Peter Lorre’s performance. The excessively expressive, intentionally overacted, gestures and facial expressions are indicative of the conscious rejection of naturalism in the film. This is particularly obvious in the final ‘kangaroo court’ scene. The demonic, inhuman creature that Lorre turns his character into is reminiscent of the somnambulist Cesare in Caligari. To a great extent this is linked to the characteristic of the movie to reveal itself implicitly, through the nuances, via a mediator that breaks down the topicality to its building blocks. The mediator is the broadness and generality of the addressed issues, good and evil. Doubtlessly though, these broad themes have a quite concrete reference points in the realism of the times. The grim visual environment brings to surface a sense of mystery and metaphorically conveys the ubiquity of the macabre forces that traverse the human soul, but also the whole society.
Thematically the plot motifs do not carry the esoteric savour of The Student of Prague, 1926, Germany or Caligari, yet the mundane, though dramatic, nature of the events is shrouded in a veil of intangible eeriness and the trivial sight assumes a form of hallucinatory apparition. The story of a murderer that stirs society with his unmitigated cruelty reminds both the detective stories and the gothic tales of Edgar Allan Poe. By often showing the effect and omitting the cause Lang creates a style of ellipsis. Some shots metonymically express the overall meaning – the murders themselves are never seen. Thus the film is truthful to its implicit nature. As a whole, the narrative structures in M adhere to the visual character of the work which tends towards stylization and lack of naturalism.
In Rome Open City the cinematic mechanisms are rather different. Being, arguably, the film that gave birth to the widely acclaimed Italian Neorealism, the film clearly delineates the aesthetic features of the movement. That aesthetic tendency, later followed by Bicycle Thieves De Sica 1948 Italy and La Terra Trema, Visconti, 1948 Italy, is one of complete rejection of artificiality, and pictographic adornment, which is in effect distortion, of the cinematic image in favour of complete authenticity and truthfulness to reality. Thus it is poles apart from the German Expressionism. As Bazin notes the Neorealism “contrasts with previous forms of film in its stripping away of all expressionism’ (Bazin, 1967, p.37). The staged performances, ornamented visuals and intellectual montage techniques that were abundant in the cinematic world at these times were all fervently rejected by the neorealist directors. Their aim was, quite similar to Andre Bazin’s cinematic ideal, to represent life as it is – unique and unadulterated by creative interventions. Heavily influenced by the movies of Marcel Carne and Jean Renoir and following the literary traditions of realism, the movement strove for purity of expression and genuine simplicity of the plot.
Rome Open City lucidly outlines the pivotal feature of neorealism – a polyphonic unity of form and content that aims at candid revelation of life. The screenwriter and ideologist of neorealism Zavattini declares cinema should ‘tell reality as if it were a story; there must be no gap between life and what is on the screen.’ (Grainge, 2007, p.282) which according to Rosselini himself carries within itself a strong moral aspect.(Ruberto, 2007, p.7). Since the film’s aesthetics and ethics are both focused on reality, there could be no other manner the work can addresses the social conditions of its time but one of complete indexicality and directness. This defines the distinctive approach to the elements of cinema that Rome Open City displays.
As stated above Rosselini’s intention to avoid all pictorial embellishment in his work leads to a particular documentary-like iconography. In contrast with Lang’s work, Rome Open City is shot entirely on location. There are no sets constructed and no artificial properties situated in front of the camera that would alter the truthfulness of the depicted reality. The mise-en-scene in the movie is thus treated not as a canvas for plastic manipulations and formalization of the objects but as a solid, unalterable piece of reality that is recorded through the lens as it is. This rejection of the rather theatrical stylization and the adoption of a certain cinematic purism manifested in the complete realism of the image is a hallmark of the movement. This trend follows in the element of lighting. There is no expressiveness in it, no synthetically generated deep shadows and bright lights.
The cinematography and editing in Rome open City are again subordinate to the aspiration towards architectonical unity of the naturalism of the formal cinematic properties and components and the realism of the plot. The editing is simple and consistent in its inclinations; there are no overtonal, analytical or intellectual juxtapositions of shots and greatly characteristic for the soviet montage cinema and films like Battleship Potemkin,1929, Eisenstein, USSR and Man with a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov, 1929, USSR. In Rosselini’s film the shots are rather long and joined according to their simplest properties –time and space. This is a result of the seeking to preserve the spatial and temporal unity as well as the narrative continuity. The editing is marked by inconspicuousness and simplicity that tries to preserve the life-like atmosphere of the work. Cinematographically, what typifies the film is the abstinence from any unnatural angles as well as the overt propensity for deep-focus photography, which in Bazinean terms enhances a film’s closeness to life. All these pictorial and structural aspects of the visuals are serving as a complementation and affirmation of the storyline and thematic facet of the movie.
The story told and the people portrayed in Rome Open City come directly from reality. The partisan resistance in fascist Italy during the Second World War is narrated without any idealization or hyperbole. The events in the film are severe and served without any excessive pathos. Thus the film depicts reality without altering it even in its approach to storytelling. The protagonists are not valiant heroes but common people and their life is show with all its trivial aspects. De Sica goes even further in Bycicle Thieves where the mundane actuality of the plot is even stronger. To sum up, Rosselini’s film is one that relishes the idea of complete realism in both and the content.
As illustrated until this point, M and Rome Open City are two works that are aesthetically poles apart. The first communicates metaphorically and symbolically while the second addresses its topics in an explicit and immediate manner. I would argue, however, that the two works share a crucial fundament – the social conditions they are created in. Lang’s film is created during a dark period of German history marked by the rise of the Nazism. It was a period of galloping inflation, mass unemployment and a drastic rise in poverty which had a heavy impact on the psychological state of the nation. As Kracauer reasons, ‘The psychological situation in those crucial years’ has been ‘ wavering between the notions of anarchy and authority’. (Kracauer, p.222) This explains some of the visual motifs in M, the images of spirals for example (staircase shot, rotating disc in the bookshop). These visual motifs allude to the psychological complexity of a period stamped by ‘loss of consciousness’ (Corrigan, 2009, p.131) and ‘collective hysteria’ (Kaes, 1999, p.22) Due to purely political reasons this austere social atmosphere couldn’t be attacked or even described overtly but had to be referred to allegorically. This assumption leads some theorists to conclude that the whole German expressionism cinema is a ‘premonition to Nazism’. (Elsaesser, p.130) in film histories.
Similarly, the social conditions in Italy shortly after the end of the war and the execution of Mussolini weren’t really bright. The shattered economy lead to mass unemployment among the working class. Poverty was ubiquitous and though fascism was gone people were still mentally agonizing and ‘struggling to overcome the dolorous memories from the war’. (Milev, 1998, p.145). Nevertheless, the political status quo at the time of the production of Rome Open City differed from the 30s in Germany in that there was creative latitude for artistic criticism. The fascists were already in history and Rosselini could freely attack and condemn the atrocities committed during their regime. It can be argued that to an extent this is a determining factor in variance of the cinematic decisions taken by Lang and Rosselini and on a larger scale between expressionism and neorealism.
M and Rome Open City are two landmarks of European cinema that on the surface appear to be complete binary oppositions both in form and content. The first work is formalistic, stylized and metaphorical, while the second one, naturalistic, unaffected and straightforward. What unites the seemingly incompatible is the underlying societal environment of commotion and unrest. The two works of art both revolt against the depravity, they just do it in a different way.
Bibliography
Bazin, Andre, 1967, What is Cinema Vol. 1, University of California Press, Berkeley
Corrigan, Timothy & White, Patricia, 2009, The Film Experience: An Introduction, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills
Graigne, Paul; Jancovich, Mark & Monteith, Sharon, 2007, Film Histories: An Introduction and Reader, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh
Kaes, Anton, 1999, M, British Film Institute, London
Kracauer, Siegfried, 1974, From Caligary to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film, Princeton University Press, United States of America
Milev, Nedelcho, 1998, Theory of the elements of cinema, St. Kliment Ohridski University press,Sofia
Ruberto, Laura & Wilson, Kristi, 2007, Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema, Wayne State University Press, Detroit
Scheunemann, Dietrich The Double, the Décor and the Framing Device in Expressionist Film: New Perspectives, 2003, Boydell & Brewer Inc, Suffolk
Filmography
Bicycle Thieves , Vitorio De Sica, 1948, Italy
Battleship Potemkin , Sergei Eisenstein, 1929, USSR
Faust , F.W Murnau, 1926, Germany
Ivan the Terrible , Sergei Eisenstein, 1945, USSR
La Terra Trema, Visconti, 1948 Italy
M , Fritz Lang, 1931, Germany
Man with a Movie Camera , Dziga Vertov, 1929, USSR
Nosferatu , F.W Murnau, 1922, Germany
Rome Open City , Roberto Roselini, 1945, Italy
The Cabinet of Dr Caligary , Robert Wiene, 1920, Germany
The Student of Prague, Paul Wegener, 1913, Germany
Fritz Langs, film, appearing in 1931 - at the artistic decline of the German Expressionist movement, marks a certain departure from the classic iconographic and thematic norms of the trend. However, to a great extend it is still deeply rooted in the expressionistic cinematic traditions. What characterizes the movement is, briefly, an absolute abolition of any realism. As Grainge marks it is “broadly anti-naturalistic”, filled with strong “psychological symbolism” and both visually and thematically conveys an “intense feeling of alienation from society”. (Grainge, 2007, p.124). Drawing ideological and structural concepts from two main artistic traditions – The German Romanticism and The Gothic literature, the expressionist cinema was concerned with abstract, ontological topics and especially with existential binary oppositions such as good and evil. This was manifested in a complete harmony of content and form. The iconography of the movement is marked by stark contrasts, polarization and distortion of the elements and graphic conflicts.
Typically for an expressionist film, M is shot entirely in UFA studios. Thus Lang could achieve absolute control over the treatment of the cinematic space. Although the set design is, one may say, rather realistic, and is not as stylized and ornamental as the multidimensional, geometrically distorted sets in The Cabinet of Dr Caligary, Robert Wiene, 1920, Germanyit still carries one crucial attribute of the expressionism – it graphically creates a reciprocal relation between the internal world of the protagonist and the external reality. The expressionistic stylization functions to convey the distorted viewpoint of a madman” (Scheunemann, 2003, p.125). The inner turbulence of the protagonist with all its dramatism is determinant for the surroundings, the outer delineates the inner metaphorically. The somber city and the misty streets imbued with murk and shadows although far from the illustrative extremities of the mise-en-scene decisions in films like Nosferatu, F.W. Murnau, 1922, Germany and Dr Faustus F.W. Murnau, 1926, Germany etc. still allegorically draw a parallel to the twisted corridors of the murderers psyche. On an even broader plane the represented is not only a particular ill-minded human being but a whole nation. I shall return to that later in the essay.
The affiliation of Lang’s film to German Expressionism is most palpable and distinctly articulated through the artistic utilization of lighting techniques. The chiaroscuro low-key illumination is a convention grown into a trademark of the movement. M embraces this and the stark contrast of the picture, the graphic designs that incorporate conflicting areas of dark and light, the binarisation of the iconography serve to visually illustrate a broad psychological, maybe even philosophical, concepts – the dialectic dichotomy of the forces that rage within the human soul. To be more concrete, the presentation of Beckert in the form of a shadow falling over a poster is an expressive element that conceptually traces its roots in the opulent use of shadows in Caligari or Nosferatu. Although the approach is evident in other national cinematic trends such as the early soviet films, in Ivan The Terrible, Sergei Eisenstein, 1936, Soviet Union for example, the artistic purpose of the shadow in M is clearly an expressionist visual accentuation which in turn is a constructive supplementation to the thematic contours. The pictorial dualism of the images symbolically alludes to the semantic gist of the work.
Furthermore, the expressive, though subdued, formalism in M is evident in the acting, most notably in Peter Lorre’s performance. The excessively expressive, intentionally overacted, gestures and facial expressions are indicative of the conscious rejection of naturalism in the film. This is particularly obvious in the final ‘kangaroo court’ scene. The demonic, inhuman creature that Lorre turns his character into is reminiscent of the somnambulist Cesare in Caligari. To a great extent this is linked to the characteristic of the movie to reveal itself implicitly, through the nuances, via a mediator that breaks down the topicality to its building blocks. The mediator is the broadness and generality of the addressed issues, good and evil. Doubtlessly though, these broad themes have a quite concrete reference points in the realism of the times. The grim visual environment brings to surface a sense of mystery and metaphorically conveys the ubiquity of the macabre forces that traverse the human soul, but also the whole society.
Thematically the plot motifs do not carry the esoteric savour of The Student of Prague, 1926, Germany or Caligari, yet the mundane, though dramatic, nature of the events is shrouded in a veil of intangible eeriness and the trivial sight assumes a form of hallucinatory apparition. The story of a murderer that stirs society with his unmitigated cruelty reminds both the detective stories and the gothic tales of Edgar Allan Poe. By often showing the effect and omitting the cause Lang creates a style of ellipsis. Some shots metonymically express the overall meaning – the murders themselves are never seen. Thus the film is truthful to its implicit nature. As a whole, the narrative structures in M adhere to the visual character of the work which tends towards stylization and lack of naturalism.
In Rome Open City the cinematic mechanisms are rather different. Being, arguably, the film that gave birth to the widely acclaimed Italian Neorealism, the film clearly delineates the aesthetic features of the movement. That aesthetic tendency, later followed by Bicycle Thieves De Sica 1948 Italy and La Terra Trema, Visconti, 1948 Italy, is one of complete rejection of artificiality, and pictographic adornment, which is in effect distortion, of the cinematic image in favour of complete authenticity and truthfulness to reality. Thus it is poles apart from the German Expressionism. As Bazin notes the Neorealism “contrasts with previous forms of film in its stripping away of all expressionism’ (Bazin, 1967, p.37). The staged performances, ornamented visuals and intellectual montage techniques that were abundant in the cinematic world at these times were all fervently rejected by the neorealist directors. Their aim was, quite similar to Andre Bazin’s cinematic ideal, to represent life as it is – unique and unadulterated by creative interventions. Heavily influenced by the movies of Marcel Carne and Jean Renoir and following the literary traditions of realism, the movement strove for purity of expression and genuine simplicity of the plot.
Rome Open City lucidly outlines the pivotal feature of neorealism – a polyphonic unity of form and content that aims at candid revelation of life. The screenwriter and ideologist of neorealism Zavattini declares cinema should ‘tell reality as if it were a story; there must be no gap between life and what is on the screen.’ (Grainge, 2007, p.282) which according to Rosselini himself carries within itself a strong moral aspect.(Ruberto, 2007, p.7). Since the film’s aesthetics and ethics are both focused on reality, there could be no other manner the work can addresses the social conditions of its time but one of complete indexicality and directness. This defines the distinctive approach to the elements of cinema that Rome Open City displays.
As stated above Rosselini’s intention to avoid all pictorial embellishment in his work leads to a particular documentary-like iconography. In contrast with Lang’s work, Rome Open City is shot entirely on location. There are no sets constructed and no artificial properties situated in front of the camera that would alter the truthfulness of the depicted reality. The mise-en-scene in the movie is thus treated not as a canvas for plastic manipulations and formalization of the objects but as a solid, unalterable piece of reality that is recorded through the lens as it is. This rejection of the rather theatrical stylization and the adoption of a certain cinematic purism manifested in the complete realism of the image is a hallmark of the movement. This trend follows in the element of lighting. There is no expressiveness in it, no synthetically generated deep shadows and bright lights.
The cinematography and editing in Rome open City are again subordinate to the aspiration towards architectonical unity of the naturalism of the formal cinematic properties and components and the realism of the plot. The editing is simple and consistent in its inclinations; there are no overtonal, analytical or intellectual juxtapositions of shots and greatly characteristic for the soviet montage cinema and films like Battleship Potemkin,1929, Eisenstein, USSR and Man with a Movie Camera, Dziga Vertov, 1929, USSR. In Rosselini’s film the shots are rather long and joined according to their simplest properties –time and space. This is a result of the seeking to preserve the spatial and temporal unity as well as the narrative continuity. The editing is marked by inconspicuousness and simplicity that tries to preserve the life-like atmosphere of the work. Cinematographically, what typifies the film is the abstinence from any unnatural angles as well as the overt propensity for deep-focus photography, which in Bazinean terms enhances a film’s closeness to life. All these pictorial and structural aspects of the visuals are serving as a complementation and affirmation of the storyline and thematic facet of the movie.
The story told and the people portrayed in Rome Open City come directly from reality. The partisan resistance in fascist Italy during the Second World War is narrated without any idealization or hyperbole. The events in the film are severe and served without any excessive pathos. Thus the film depicts reality without altering it even in its approach to storytelling. The protagonists are not valiant heroes but common people and their life is show with all its trivial aspects. De Sica goes even further in Bycicle Thieves where the mundane actuality of the plot is even stronger. To sum up, Rosselini’s film is one that relishes the idea of complete realism in both and the content.
As illustrated until this point, M and Rome Open City are two works that are aesthetically poles apart. The first communicates metaphorically and symbolically while the second addresses its topics in an explicit and immediate manner. I would argue, however, that the two works share a crucial fundament – the social conditions they are created in. Lang’s film is created during a dark period of German history marked by the rise of the Nazism. It was a period of galloping inflation, mass unemployment and a drastic rise in poverty which had a heavy impact on the psychological state of the nation. As Kracauer reasons, ‘The psychological situation in those crucial years’ has been ‘ wavering between the notions of anarchy and authority’. (Kracauer, p.222) This explains some of the visual motifs in M, the images of spirals for example (staircase shot, rotating disc in the bookshop). These visual motifs allude to the psychological complexity of a period stamped by ‘loss of consciousness’ (Corrigan, 2009, p.131) and ‘collective hysteria’ (Kaes, 1999, p.22) Due to purely political reasons this austere social atmosphere couldn’t be attacked or even described overtly but had to be referred to allegorically. This assumption leads some theorists to conclude that the whole German expressionism cinema is a ‘premonition to Nazism’. (Elsaesser, p.130) in film histories.
Similarly, the social conditions in Italy shortly after the end of the war and the execution of Mussolini weren’t really bright. The shattered economy lead to mass unemployment among the working class. Poverty was ubiquitous and though fascism was gone people were still mentally agonizing and ‘struggling to overcome the dolorous memories from the war’. (Milev, 1998, p.145). Nevertheless, the political status quo at the time of the production of Rome Open City differed from the 30s in Germany in that there was creative latitude for artistic criticism. The fascists were already in history and Rosselini could freely attack and condemn the atrocities committed during their regime. It can be argued that to an extent this is a determining factor in variance of the cinematic decisions taken by Lang and Rosselini and on a larger scale between expressionism and neorealism.
M and Rome Open City are two landmarks of European cinema that on the surface appear to be complete binary oppositions both in form and content. The first work is formalistic, stylized and metaphorical, while the second one, naturalistic, unaffected and straightforward. What unites the seemingly incompatible is the underlying societal environment of commotion and unrest. The two works of art both revolt against the depravity, they just do it in a different way.
Bibliography
Bazin, Andre, 1967, What is Cinema Vol. 1, University of California Press, Berkeley
Corrigan, Timothy & White, Patricia, 2009, The Film Experience: An Introduction, Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills
Graigne, Paul; Jancovich, Mark & Monteith, Sharon, 2007, Film Histories: An Introduction and Reader, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh
Kaes, Anton, 1999, M, British Film Institute, London
Kracauer, Siegfried, 1974, From Caligary to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film, Princeton University Press, United States of America
Milev, Nedelcho, 1998, Theory of the elements of cinema, St. Kliment Ohridski University press,Sofia
Ruberto, Laura & Wilson, Kristi, 2007, Italian Neorealism and Global Cinema, Wayne State University Press, Detroit
Scheunemann, Dietrich The Double, the Décor and the Framing Device in Expressionist Film: New Perspectives, 2003, Boydell & Brewer Inc, Suffolk
Filmography
Bicycle Thieves , Vitorio De Sica, 1948, Italy
Battleship Potemkin , Sergei Eisenstein, 1929, USSR
Faust , F.W Murnau, 1926, Germany
Ivan the Terrible , Sergei Eisenstein, 1945, USSR
La Terra Trema, Visconti, 1948 Italy
M , Fritz Lang, 1931, Germany
Man with a Movie Camera , Dziga Vertov, 1929, USSR
Nosferatu , F.W Murnau, 1922, Germany
Rome Open City , Roberto Roselini, 1945, Italy
The Cabinet of Dr Caligary , Robert Wiene, 1920, Germany
The Student of Prague, Paul Wegener, 1913, Germany