What caused major changes at home and abroad increasing the demand for American/Hollywood films not only from the MPCC group but also several independent producers

- successfully fighting the patent lawsuits of Edison and MPPC

-recognizing the public’s appetite for feature-length productions

·      that a famous face despite higher cost could attract larger audiences 

·      Adolph Zucker and specialized in high- class dramas and epics 

·      As a result the studio was best known for its gangster films and depression-era melodramas

King Kong

Citizen Kane

·      between Fox Film Corp founder William Fox and director F.W. Murnau a key figure in the German Expressionist movement

·      A film-score including sound effects was assembled and released using Fox’s brand new Movietone sound-on-film process

·      Told almost entirely in close-ups, features one of cinemas most enduring dramatic performances in Renee Falconetti’s portrayal of Joan of Arc

·      Hollywood/ Euro Art Style

·      Dark, Deep Shadows/ Light, Flat, Backgrounds

-       the rise of the Nazi party, which effectively ended the product of commercial German films.

The Cabinet of Dr. Cagliari

-Robert Wiene’s film used expressive lighting and set design (by Designer Hermann Warm) to create a new style of filmmaking

--       This new style, partially inspired by the look of D.W. Griffith’s last masterpiece Broken Blossoms, came to be known as “Expressionism”.

Fritz Lang

Originally intended to direct Caligari, and many of his ideas about its design were carried out in the film.

- went on to direct several important expressionist film, including Dr. Mabuse: the Gambler (1922) Metropolis (1927) and the first German sound film, M (1931).

F.W. Murnau

-       His Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (1922) is widely considered to the first vampire film, while The Last Laugh (1924) mixed realistic Mise-en-scene with expressionistic camerawork.

films were another popular trend in German silent cinema.

Like The Last Laugh, the camera focused on small, character driven narratives rather than large spectacles, usually centered around a private crisis. 

G.W. Pabst

-       Rejected Expressionism, and instead a style known as New Realism. Known as “Street Films”.

-       Films like The Joyless Street (1925) and Pandora’s Box (1929) attempted to display the hardships of German modernity through a cold and unforgiving aesthetic. 

-       the 1930s final leaving to escape Nazi pressure.

for all world movements in silent cinema 

The Soviets used the term montage to refer to 

the carefully constructed editing in their films

·      focusing on structure rather then plot/story

In addition to directing films

Eisenstein also wrote texts on film theory explaining how the cinema functioned often using his own films as examples

Eisenstein’s best known works include 

Strike (1924) Battleship Potemkin (1925) and October (1928)

·      Eisenstein’s major theory was a play of the Kuleshov Effect:

“thesis + antithesis= synthesis”

            Example: the factory workers and cattle

Vsevolod Pudovkin theory to Eidenstiens

·      where Eisenstein felt images should collide (collision), Pudovkin felt they should link (linkage) 

 Mother (1926) and The End of St. Petersburg (1927)

·      Pravda (“film-truth,” a notion later adopted by the French as cinema-verite)