“To the expressionist, it would be absurd to reproduce the world as purely and simply as it is.” - Lotte H. Eisner

Germany, 1920. Europe had just began to pull itself out of the trenches dug for the First World War, attempting to reestablish itself in the world while while simultaneously preparing for the conflict. The effort had cost some 16 million people their lives, this mass loss of live created a post-war socio-political environment unique to Europe, and most importantly Germany. The German Expressionism movement grew, partially, as a reaction to this environment; a distrust of authority figures, disorienting and architecturally absurd set designs, elongated shadows & the use of sharp black and white contrasts, and fear of the foreigner, of the “other”; Germany audiences understood instantly the unsettling nature the Expressionism movement; recognition of the familiar, no matter how strange.

Robert Weine’s 1920 release Das Cabinet der Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari)made heavy use of these aesthetics to captivate his audience as well as capitalize on their fear and political-sensibilities. The titular Dr. Caligari is introduced to the audience as shambling, traveling, snake-oilsmen; a carnival freak-show presenter of unknown origin, with heavy-set eyes that constantly shift as he plans his next murder. Through the power of hypnotism, Dr. Caligari exerts total control over the somnambulist Caesar, who he beckons to life nightly to commit various acts of ill-will upon the local townsfolk, preying most heavily upon the women. Caesar himself clad in all black, allowing him to slink about the distorted shadows and pallid asymmetrical landscaping indicative of the German expressionism movement.

These visual elements came no doubt from the vision that most Germans held about their current world. Having just ended the First World War, their outlook was bleak and dark; uncertain. Trust in their leaders and authority figures were rocky, their methods and competence and motives questioned; Dr. Caligari, using his position of authority, sends out a sleeping, mindless, Caesar to commit his murders while Caligari himself is protected safely in his wagon. Much in the same vein that German soldiers had been sent out to kill en-mass by their superiors, who were tucked away safely in bunkers and fortified areas far away from the horrors of trench warfare.

Also noticed was the fear of foreigners and outside-cultures (Caligari and Caesar), who were seen as scheming and untrustworthy. Although the German government had recently lifted its ban of foreign films, fear and resentment of outsiders, or at least those perceived as such, was still prominent amongst German peoples; resentments that would pave the road to World War 2 and subsequently the Holocaust. Caesar is seen scurrying to and from shadows, hiding behind corners and creeping in through windows at night to steal-away, or otherwise harm the virtuous German women. Who were dressed in white; depicting their pure, virginal, qualities, a trait Caligari and his monster Casesar otherwise sought to defile or tarnish. Siegfried Kracauer spoke of its effect “…to a revolutionized people, expressionism seemed to combine the denial of bourgeois tradition with faith in man’s power feely to shape society and nature. On account of such virtues it may have cast a spell over many Germans upset by the breakdown of their universe.”

The use of powerful abstract aesthetics to create mood and atmosphere is not a trait reserved solely for German Expressionism. Use of strong visual elements, that is to say, production design, use of color & sound, wardrobe, shot design and pacing is one of the defining characteristics of the Giallo film; the Italian mystery/thriller, often incorporating moments of extreme violence intermixed with sexually charged images. Giallo, as a genre of film, traces its roots back to cheap Italian pulp-fiction murder-mysteries, which were noted for their giallo (Italian for “yellow”) covers they were often bond in. Mario Bava would take inspiration from this books, creating his 1963 piece The Woman who Knew Too Much, followed by Blood and Black Lace in 1964; films credited as the first giallo releases. The 60s were an important time for the development of Italian cinema; Fellini’s 8 ½ released in 63, Sergio Leone’s “Dollars Trilogy” (64-66) & Sergio Corbucci’s Django (66) giving rise to the “spaghetti western” genre. This films, as well as American film-noir, would inspire Dario Argento’s 1970’s debut The Bird with the Crystal Plumage, 75’s Perfondo Rosso (Deep Red),and subsequently 1977’s Suspiria.

Italian director and collaborator, Luigi Cozzi explains:

“When I was working with Dario early in the Seventies we were trying to create a new genre, to create an Italian way to the giallo style… Our giallo aesthetic came partly from Raymond Chandler and, most of all, from writer Cornell Woolrich: he was the greatest of all mystery writers, he had already done wonderfully what we were trying to do again. Only, he had done it in the printed page, and now we wanted to recreate the same effect and the same noir atmosphere on the silver screen. In trying to do so, we came to create a new style: the giallo style, which we invented, also partly taking it from Sergio Leone.”

Released in 1977, Argento’s Suspiria drove much of its story through a highly stylized palette; liberal use of bright primary colors; red playing a prominent role throughout the film, used to signify impending acts of violence and death. The color green used when mystical elements are at play. Sets designed around dizzying colors with heavy use of symmetry and geometric patterns, subverting depth perception and creating the illusion of characters trending through an unbalanced, otherly, world; similar in fashion to the décor of early works of German Expressionism, although taken several steps further. Perhaps most noticeably, was the ever present soundtrack provided by the band Goblin (credited as The Goblins) who had been asked Argento to score. Their themes consists mainly of indecipherable chants, bells, droning drums, melodic keyboard work, and thumbing bass.

The bleak monochromatic landscapes of Dr. Caligari could, visually, not be more antithetical to Suspiria’s. However, they both meant to serve the same purpose; unsettling or disorienting the viewer, allowing the characters (and creatures) of their respective worlds to move to and fro as they deem fit. As Caesar stalks the streets under cover of shadow and night, Madame Blanc and her brood traverse the dance academy through trap doors and secret entrances hidden in plain sight; masked by the bright patterns and dizzying architecture.

As in Dr. Caligari, authority figures, again, are depicted as untrustworthy, scheming, and master manipulators; Dr. Caligari and his assassinations; the court judge perched upon a throne, high above the common man; Miss Turner and his dismissal of Suzy’s illness; Madame Blanc’s satanic rituals; all the school masters plotting the death of Suzy and her classmates.

Though their use of visual language was apt, I find Argento’s to make greater use (attributed no doubt to his technological advantage over Weine) of these visual elements to produce a more visceral, more powerful, experience. The opening murder scene is perfect culmination of these aesthetic values: ethereal music plays as a woman stares out of a pink room into the darkness (represented by the color blue) when she is grabbed by a figure, as she struggles, a friend in brightly painted blue room fights to save her. Once on the rooftop, she is splashed with accents of red light each time she is stabbed.

Her friend beats on a bright green door in the upper balcony of the red main lobby, framed above a set of hyper-symmetrical stairs that pained red, white, and blue. The friend runs downstairs to the checker-board patterned floor of the lobby, the checker-pattern being broken a circular pattern, which encases a giant red square, which, in turn, encases a red circle, encasing a red diamond. All of which are placed directly underneath a kaleidoscopic mashing of stain glass hanging high overhead. The woman is eventually flung through the stain-glass, noose tied around her neck, crashing through the glass, literally showering the scene (and her would-be rescuer) with piercing shards of color and creating a new piece of geometry patterns with in the floor.

Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a seminal work of film, not only as an exemplary piece of German Expressionism or as the first horror film, but as a film that crafted an environment unique onto its own; a dark and twisted false-reality born out of a need to reflect the nature of a dark and twisted reality. Weine crafts a story through the aesthetics of these set pieces; the contorted towers and puzzling dimensions as it was how he, and many of his countrymen, perceived the world. Argento on the other hand does not use these visual elements in hopes of creating a world that mirrors any type of discernibly reality. Instead he creates his own, a world subject to the whims of the palette; a world where red spells instant death and the world’s inhabitance are can be trapped and tricked by geometry and pattern. This could be seen as a continuation of style; an expansion of the ideas and groundwork laid out by German Expressionism and Weine; perhaps a type of neo-expressionism.

“Yes. Impressionistic films are very important to me. I remember when I was in the famous film museum in Munich it’s very important, one of the biggest in the world and they were having a retrospective of my films. Every morning, I would go down to the basement where they had a small room where you could watch films and I watched impressionistic films, very rare films that almost nobody had seen. I spent wonderful days there! I also saw expressionist films “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, which was the only colour-tinted copy from the Murnau institute. The colour was marvellous and unique to this copy as it was coloured by hand at the time. It was like a treasure and I was so proud to see these films.”

- Dario Argento, Electric Sheep Magazine, July 3rd, 2009

- C