Analyse how the German Expressionst or the French new wave film you have studied developed a distinctive style that has contributed to film aesthetics.

German Expressionism:

Visual distortion

Hyper-expressive performance

Inner conflicts of 1920's 

Dramatic, revolutionary interpretations of human conditions

Chiaroscuro lighting

All Movements:

German Expressionism

French Impressionist Cinema

Soviet Montage

Italian neorealism

Japanese New wave

British new wave

French new wave

Hong Kong new wave        

Metropolis:   

High angle/establishing shots

Long shots of the city

Metropolis contained images of slavery after WW1, as it showed the economic destruction caused by the war. The rich benefits from hyper-inflation whereas poor suffer and have to work even harder for their money. 

Rich vs Poor (Claude Levi Strauss) Binary opposites

Class conflict and division:

Introduction

What is German expressionism?: consists of Visual Distortion, Hyper-expressive performance, inner conflicts of 1920's, dramatic interpretations of human conditions and uses chiaroscuro lighting.

I am studying Metropolis, which is a German Expressionist film. German expressionism explored visual distortions using the inner conflicts of the 1920's. It used chiaroscuro lighting. It was a distinctive style of film that emerged after World War 1 in Germany. The film used aesthetics, which is the study of film art and the role that various aesthetic perspectives have in the development of film as an art form. I will be look at 3 key scenes which are: The opening scene that shows the workers and the poor conditions where Feeder discovers this and is mortified,  the second scene is where robot Maria is used to bewitch the men of the club with there dancing, and finally the last key scene I will discuss is the strike and the chaos that arose from this.

In the first scene, we see images of slavery as the groups of workers stumble to the positions. Using cinematography and miss-en-scene, we can see that they are mistreated workers and possibly underpaid. Firstly, their costumes look cheap and tatty and they all wear dark, single layered clothing, which suggests they can't afford enough clothing to keep them warm and they can't afford coloured clothing because they are severely underpaid. The lighting is dark, which connotes that the people that it is singing on may be depressed or anxious and they can't afford to lose the job but can barely live with the job. The opening sequence uses performance to create a narrative of submission and poverty, as each person walks in the same motion, suggesting none of them want to walk out of place. The set is huge and id highly detailed for the time it was made. The set included huge buildings that the slaves had to walk into to work and live.  Metropolis also uses cinematography to achieve the narrative of poverty. Firstly, the scenes use high angle shots to connote weakness and cowardliness.

Conclusion