Expressionism is a movement that arose in northern Europe during the 20th century and involves using distorted and exaggerated art styles to invoke emotion and mood.

Examples of Expressionist art:

The film production company was created with the goal of exercising political influence. It was expected to make money without being a pure propaganda institution, but rather a company that reaches the audiences with its films.

In the 1950s, UFA was newly founded with the backing of the German government. Then, too, Germany was interested in having a major German film production company. That said, the years after Bertelsmann took control in 1964 are really the first time there was no state influence at all.

These films now are typical for German TV, and what they believe the audience want to see, feature films about German history as UFA started to cater to people’s interest in recent history.

Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it radically for emotional effect in order to evoke moods or ideas.

The economic disruption of the Weimar period produced an expressionist style in German film-making, with films often having unrealistic sets and featuring exaggerated acting techniques. Expressionist film-makers favoured darker storylines and themes, including horror and crime. The shortage of funding gave rise to the Kammerspielfilm movement, with atmospheric films made on small sets with low budgets, providing easier access for more people to go to the cinema as it was cheaper.

expressionism is art in which the image of reality is distorted in order to express the artists inner feelings. As a result, artworks were profoundly emotive, unrestrained and shocking, as they attempted to convey ideas over the type of reality that was being experienced.

combining jagged brush marks, incongruous colours, and simplistic shapes, the style created went against what was considered traditional art.

‘Choose your favourite scene from the film and explain why this is the case. You should consider Welles’ use of microelements.’

One of my favourite scenes from ‘Citizen Kane’ is when Mrs Alexander performed on stage for the first time. The use of mise-en-scene created a busy, yet controlled atmosphere that presented how stressful performing was for Mrs Alexander and how it wasn’t as dreamlike as she’d previously expected. This was further expressed through the use of sound as the number of voices heard helped to convey how much pressure and anxiety Mrs Alexander was feeling, especially with her vocal coach yelling at her on stage, making the scene even more overwhelming.

Along with that, the slow zoom out of the camera allows the shot to change from a mid shot of Ms Alexander to an extreme long shot, showing the rest of the stage. This makes Mrs Alexander look small in comparison to everything else surrounding her, representing how small and nervous she feels on stage. This is further shown due to the staging as she’s farther forward on the stage compared to everyone else, implying that she’s isolated from the others and doesn’t belong there. Alternatively, it could represent how much pressure she feels as everyone is watching her and expecting her to give a flawless performance despite her lack of experience and the fact being it’s her debut show.

‘The Union Forever!’

This is my favourite scene because I feel it can be seen as very elaborate from a micro-element aspect. For example, the mise-en-scene includes elaborate blocking which allows the viewer to see who is in power in the scene, the mother is closest to the screen because she is the one making the decision, a decision which Mr Thatcher is entertaining and/or persuading her to make so, therefore, he is second closest to the camera. On the other hand the father is obviously shown to be distanced from them to show that he has little to no control in this situation, the wall on the right of figure 1 almost acts as framing to illustrate the idea that Mr Thatcher and Mrs Kane are creating a figurative wall between the 3 off them which is further supported by the fact that the father is the one who disagrees with the two but because of his lack of control in the situation, his word becomes meaningless. To further emphasise this sense of power/control Welles uses a tracking shot to follow Mrs Kane to the window which then cuts to a medium close-up (MCU) which uses diegetic gaze to emphasise not only hers but all seen characters thoughts and opinions on the situation while also maintaining the elaborate blocking of the characters. Welles creates a detailed soundscape which not only furthers the verisimilitude by creating a believable atmosphere but includes all the characters, this ensures that the viewer is aware that Kanes’ mother can hear her child playing but still signs over guardianship without displaying any emotion.