The production of Expressionist films was most intense between 1920 and 1924. During the final years of the trend, only two films were released, both made by Ufa: Murnau’s Faust and Lang’s Metropolis. The latter’s release in January 1927 marked the end of the movement. Two major factors in Expressionism’s decline were the excessive budgets of the later films and the departure of Expressionist filmmakers to Hollywood.
Pommer, who had produced many of the Expressionist films at Decla, Decla-Bioscop, and Ufa, allowed Murnau and Lang to exceed their budgets on these two films. The resulting restructuring of Ufa and departure of Pommer meant that Expressionist filmmakers would no longer enjoy such indulgence. This aspect of late Expressionist films parallels what happened to some of the French Impressionists; two ambitious projects, Napoleon and L’Argent, curtailed Gance and L’Herbier’s power within the film industry.
It might have been possible to make inexpensive Expressionist films, especially given that some of the early Expressionist successes had had low budgets. But by 1927, there were few filmmakers left who seemed interested in working in the style.
Robert Wiene, who had initiated the style with Caligari, went on to direct three more Expressionist films. The last of these, The Hands of Orlac, was made in Austria, where Wiene went on working, making nonExpressionist films. After the appearance of Waxworks, Paul Leni was hired by Universal in 1926; he made a series of successful films there before his death in 1929. Fox hired Murnau on the basis of the critical plaudits for The Last Laugh, and he departed for America after finishing Faust.
Other personnel closely associated with the Expressionist movement also went to Hollywood. Both Conrad Veidt and Emil Jannings, who were among the most prominent Expressionist stars, left Germany in 1926, and each acted in several U. S. films before returning to Germany in 1929. Set designers were also snapped up. Rochus Gliese, Murnau’s set designer, went with the director to Fox to do Sunrise and stayed on briefly to work for Cecil B. De Mille. Walter Reimann, who had worked on Caligari and other Expressionist films, left Germany to design the sets and costumes for Lubitsch’s last silent film, Eternal Love (1929). Perhaps most crucial, after resigning as head of Ufa in early 1926, Pommer went to America. His most important project there was Swedish emigre director Mauritz Stiller’s Hotel Imperial (1926). By late 1927, after frustrating stints at Paramount and at MGM, Pommer returned to Ufa, no longer as head of the studio but merely as one producer among many. His brief absence coincided with the depletion of Expressionist film personnel and with a move toward more cautious policies in the German film industry.
In 1927, Lang was the only major Expressionist director left in Germany. He left Ufa to start his own production company. His next film, Spione (“Spies,” 1928) used sets that were closer to the clean lines of Art Deco than to the distortions of Expressionism. Although Lang and other German directors used Expressionist touches in their later films, the movement was over.
Its influence, however, was considerable. Expressionism had proved an effective way of providing atmospheric settings for horror and other genre stories. As these films were seen in America and later as filmmakers fleeing Nazi Germany found their way to Hollywood, echoes of the style appeared in Universal horror films of the late 1920s and 1930s and somewhat
5.26 George Grosz, Street Scene (1925).
Later in the stark highlights and shadows of the moody crime thrillers known as films noirs. Expressionism has continued to crop up occasionally, as in some of the sets in the American comic horror film Beetlejuice (1988, Tim Burton).
World History
