1 00:00:00,090 --> 00:00:02,500 The following content is provided under a Creative 2 00:00:02,500 --> 00:00:04,030 Commons license. 3 00:00:04,030 --> 00:00:06,360 Your support will help MIT OpenCourseWare 4 00:00:06,360 --> 00:00:10,730 continue to offer high quality educational resources for free. 5 00:00:10,730 --> 00:00:13,330 To make a donation or view additional materials 6 00:00:13,330 --> 00:00:17,212 from hundreds of MIT courses, visit MIT OpenCourseWare 7 00:00:17,212 --> 00:00:17,837 at ocw.mit.edu. 8 00:00:27,240 --> 00:00:29,980 DAVID THORBURN: This afternoon I talked a bit about Russian film 9 00:00:29,980 --> 00:00:32,159 and suggested that among other things 10 00:00:32,159 --> 00:00:36,050 that the cultural environment in which the Russian film emerged 11 00:00:36,050 --> 00:00:41,840 was an environment of revolution and of ideological turmoil. 12 00:00:41,840 --> 00:00:44,670 And we could say, therefore, in some degree, 13 00:00:44,670 --> 00:00:48,000 if Russian film served revolutionary ideals 14 00:00:48,000 --> 00:00:51,720 and the ideology of the Bolsheviks, 15 00:00:51,720 --> 00:00:58,220 the German film had its own sort of boss, its own authorities 16 00:00:58,220 --> 00:00:59,260 that it was following. 17 00:00:59,260 --> 00:01:04,420 But it was not in a narrow sense political or ideological 18 00:01:04,420 --> 00:01:06,530 as the Russian example was. 19 00:01:06,530 --> 00:01:09,610 But it was something similar. 20 00:01:09,610 --> 00:01:11,220 The German film I want to suggest 21 00:01:11,220 --> 00:01:15,170 for a good part of life, a silent film, 22 00:01:15,170 --> 00:01:17,890 was in thrall to established culture. 23 00:01:17,890 --> 00:01:19,870 It's an example of the sort of thing 24 00:01:19,870 --> 00:01:22,070 I was saying this afternoon about the difference 25 00:01:22,070 --> 00:01:24,940 between European cinema and American cinema. 26 00:01:24,940 --> 00:01:28,000 American cinema grew up in an atmosphere 27 00:01:28,000 --> 00:01:31,910 of wild populist freedom, almost untouched 28 00:01:31,910 --> 00:01:34,820 by the cultural authorities who mostly 29 00:01:34,820 --> 00:01:37,170 on the east coast of the country dominated 30 00:01:37,170 --> 00:01:41,890 literature, drama, and so forth-- music. 31 00:01:41,890 --> 00:01:43,840 In contrast, in Germany, the film 32 00:01:43,840 --> 00:01:46,530 grew up in the cultural centers of the society, 33 00:01:46,530 --> 00:01:50,420 and the dominant cultural figures, the major writers, 34 00:01:50,420 --> 00:01:54,440 the major dramatists, the major poets and musicians, 35 00:01:54,440 --> 00:01:57,140 the established theater actors and directors 36 00:01:57,140 --> 00:01:58,850 all migrated into the film. 37 00:01:58,850 --> 00:02:02,810 And it gave German film a tremendous intellectual 38 00:02:02,810 --> 00:02:05,595 ambition and authority from its various earliest stages, 39 00:02:05,595 --> 00:02:07,690 and I'll show you some examples of this. 40 00:02:07,690 --> 00:02:11,210 It made the German film, especially the German film 41 00:02:11,210 --> 00:02:15,400 in the period between the end of the First World War 42 00:02:15,400 --> 00:02:17,890 and the advent of sound that sometimes 43 00:02:17,890 --> 00:02:19,890 is called-- I don't know if this is correct-- 44 00:02:19,890 --> 00:02:22,190 but some people call it the golden age 45 00:02:22,190 --> 00:02:26,110 of German silent film, the golden age of German film, 46 00:02:26,110 --> 00:02:28,820 because an extraordinary number of very 47 00:02:28,820 --> 00:02:30,950 important and influential films were made 48 00:02:30,950 --> 00:02:34,660 in this period, roughly from about 1916 or '17 49 00:02:34,660 --> 00:02:37,550 through the '20s, through about 1926 50 00:02:37,550 --> 00:02:40,410 or '27 before the advent of sound. 51 00:02:40,410 --> 00:02:42,860 And it certainly is a very distinctive and influential 52 00:02:42,860 --> 00:02:45,620 moment in the history of cinema, but as you 53 00:02:45,620 --> 00:02:48,770 will see in the examples I'm going to give you, influential 54 00:02:48,770 --> 00:02:50,460 as many of these films were, they 55 00:02:50,460 --> 00:02:52,520 were influential in what we might 56 00:02:52,520 --> 00:02:55,800 say-- they were influential in part 57 00:02:55,800 --> 00:02:58,400 not because they were wonderful examples 58 00:02:58,400 --> 00:03:00,930 of exploratory innovative cinema, 59 00:03:00,930 --> 00:03:05,690 but because of the grandeur or the disturbing authority 60 00:03:05,690 --> 00:03:08,120 of the themes they encompassed. 61 00:03:08,120 --> 00:03:11,200 In other words, the German film, as I suggested this afternoon, 62 00:03:11,200 --> 00:03:13,560 because it was guided by cultural authorities who 63 00:03:13,560 --> 00:03:16,530 were adept at earlier media, at older media, 64 00:03:16,530 --> 00:03:19,960 they already came to the making of film, of their films, 65 00:03:19,960 --> 00:03:22,210 with high artistic intentions. 66 00:03:22,210 --> 00:03:25,130 I'm not so sure they realized those intentions, because they 67 00:03:25,130 --> 00:03:27,030 didn't explore the full nature of film 68 00:03:27,030 --> 00:03:28,970 as much as might have been done. 69 00:03:28,970 --> 00:03:32,330 But they were interesting and deeply influential films. 70 00:03:32,330 --> 00:03:35,180 And I should also admit that my perspective 71 00:03:35,180 --> 00:03:36,450 is, perhaps, biased. 72 00:03:36,450 --> 00:03:38,230 There are certainly many, many people 73 00:03:38,230 --> 00:03:41,070 who have written magnificently and seriously 74 00:03:41,070 --> 00:03:44,570 on this era of German film, who would not be negative 75 00:03:44,570 --> 00:03:47,210 as I am about what I'm calling the sort 76 00:03:47,210 --> 00:03:49,880 of uncinematic or unvisual qualities of some 77 00:03:49,880 --> 00:03:53,350 of the masterpieces, early masterpieces in the category. 78 00:03:53,350 --> 00:03:56,670 It's a contested argument, and I don't want you to simply accept 79 00:03:56,670 --> 00:03:58,410 my word for this. 80 00:03:58,410 --> 00:04:00,740 Take it as a perspective that could be qualified 81 00:04:00,740 --> 00:04:04,065 or even challenged by other folks, 82 00:04:04,065 --> 00:04:06,160 and especially by certain film scholars 83 00:04:06,160 --> 00:04:11,780 who see this moment in German cinema as a really 84 00:04:11,780 --> 00:04:15,750 fruitful and generative moment. 85 00:04:15,750 --> 00:04:19,950 Much of the basic understanding that we 86 00:04:19,950 --> 00:04:23,600 have of German silent film comes from one remarkable book 87 00:04:23,600 --> 00:04:25,470 by a woman named Lottie Eisner, and I 88 00:04:25,470 --> 00:04:26,900 wanted to mention it here. 89 00:04:26,900 --> 00:04:28,860 I borrowed a tremendous amount of what 90 00:04:28,860 --> 00:04:33,210 I'm going to say from her book, learned a great deal from it. 91 00:04:33,210 --> 00:04:37,830 Eisner was a wonderfully important historical figure, 92 00:04:37,830 --> 00:04:45,680 worked as a film historian and annotator and film archivist 93 00:04:45,680 --> 00:04:47,310 for a good part of her career. 94 00:04:47,310 --> 00:04:49,280 Some of you who are film buffs may 95 00:04:49,280 --> 00:04:53,200 know that Wim Wender, as the great contemporary experimental 96 00:04:53,200 --> 00:04:56,130 German director, dedicated his film Paris, 97 00:04:56,130 --> 00:04:58,950 Texas to Lottie Eisner. 98 00:04:58,950 --> 00:05:02,820 She worked for a long time in the French Biblioteque, 99 00:05:02,820 --> 00:05:09,010 the first great archive of movies in the Western world. 100 00:05:09,010 --> 00:05:10,810 She also wrote books, separate books 101 00:05:10,810 --> 00:05:14,630 about Murnau and Fritz Lang, two of the great figures 102 00:05:14,630 --> 00:05:19,520 in this tradition we're looking at briefly this evening. 103 00:05:19,520 --> 00:05:22,180 And her arguments in The Haunted Screen 104 00:05:22,180 --> 00:05:25,830 are still widely accepted. 105 00:05:25,830 --> 00:05:28,780 The book focuses on the Weimar period, the period 106 00:05:28,780 --> 00:05:31,720 before the rise of Hitler, after the First World War, 107 00:05:31,720 --> 00:05:36,880 in which German culture was an astonishingly rich, fermenting, 108 00:05:36,880 --> 00:05:42,310 stew of innovation and anxiety. 109 00:05:42,310 --> 00:05:44,410 It's the era of the great cabarets, 110 00:05:44,410 --> 00:05:47,710 and you will return to this era in an imaginative way 111 00:05:47,710 --> 00:05:49,740 when you come to see the film Cabaret later 112 00:05:49,740 --> 00:05:52,510 in the term, which tries to reimagine that moment. 113 00:05:52,510 --> 00:05:55,540 And it actually dramatizes the era 114 00:05:55,540 --> 00:05:58,610 in which the German films I'm talking about this evening 115 00:05:58,610 --> 00:06:00,570 were made. 116 00:06:00,570 --> 00:06:07,570 One way I can begin to identify or explain 117 00:06:07,570 --> 00:06:09,840 the distinctive qualities of these German films 118 00:06:09,840 --> 00:06:13,750 is to talk briefly about the idea of expressionism. 119 00:06:13,750 --> 00:06:16,420 The broad word expressionism refers 120 00:06:16,420 --> 00:06:19,380 to movement in modernist art that 121 00:06:19,380 --> 00:06:22,340 involves principles of distortion and surreal 122 00:06:22,340 --> 00:06:24,230 exaggeration. 123 00:06:24,230 --> 00:06:27,030 So an expressionist work of art, either a painting 124 00:06:27,030 --> 00:06:30,830 or a poem or a film, is in some degree 125 00:06:30,830 --> 00:06:36,280 interested in finding equivalents for the inner life, 126 00:06:36,280 --> 00:06:39,960 dramatizing not the external world, but the world within us, 127 00:06:39,960 --> 00:06:42,550 and especially the tormented world within us-- 128 00:06:42,550 --> 00:06:46,310 our anxieties, our fears, our sexual fantasies, 129 00:06:46,310 --> 00:06:47,980 our murderous impulses. 130 00:06:47,980 --> 00:06:52,420 There's a dark, disturbing side to expressionism, especially 131 00:06:52,420 --> 00:06:54,860 to German expressionism. 132 00:06:54,860 --> 00:06:59,290 There are expressionist artists who appear in other traditions, 133 00:06:59,290 --> 00:07:05,580 and expressionism is a movement that goes far beyond Germany. 134 00:07:05,580 --> 00:07:09,990 But one might say that German expressionism is the expression 135 00:07:09,990 --> 00:07:13,070 of modernism in German culture. 136 00:07:13,070 --> 00:07:14,740 It's almost indistinguishable. 137 00:07:14,740 --> 00:07:16,880 If we talked about modernism more generally, 138 00:07:16,880 --> 00:07:19,150 we would say that not every aspect of modernism 139 00:07:19,150 --> 00:07:20,300 involves expressionism. 140 00:07:20,300 --> 00:07:24,040 But in Germany, we would say the modernist impulse was embodied 141 00:07:24,040 --> 00:07:27,090 in the expressionist tendencies of the art forms that 142 00:07:27,090 --> 00:07:28,560 appear in that period. 143 00:07:28,560 --> 00:07:30,070 Let me talk a bit about them. 144 00:07:30,070 --> 00:07:32,100 They involve the external representation 145 00:07:32,100 --> 00:07:33,970 of the inner life, as I've said. 146 00:07:33,970 --> 00:07:36,740 And they're interested, the expressionists, 147 00:07:36,740 --> 00:07:41,250 in elemental emotions like fear, love, hatred, anxiety. 148 00:07:41,250 --> 00:07:44,110 They're interested in our aggressive and appetitive 149 00:07:44,110 --> 00:07:45,580 impulses. 150 00:07:45,580 --> 00:07:48,810 The sources of this expressionist movement 151 00:07:48,810 --> 00:07:50,944 are in German romanticism. 152 00:07:50,944 --> 00:07:52,360 This is the literary movement that 153 00:07:52,360 --> 00:07:55,180 gave rise to important poets and painters 154 00:07:55,180 --> 00:07:57,450 in the earlier part of the 19th century. 155 00:08:00,190 --> 00:08:03,980 And also in economics, in the historical realities 156 00:08:03,980 --> 00:08:06,620 of German culture, because the period we're 157 00:08:06,620 --> 00:08:09,860 talking about when these films were made, 158 00:08:09,860 --> 00:08:14,530 the Weimar period was a period of-- was 159 00:08:14,530 --> 00:08:16,760 a unstable and turbulent period. 160 00:08:16,760 --> 00:08:20,570 There were power outages all the time, for example, frequently, 161 00:08:20,570 --> 00:08:23,700 even in the major cities like Berlin. 162 00:08:23,700 --> 00:08:27,290 And the visual style of the expressionists-- 163 00:08:27,290 --> 00:08:30,550 there were expressionist painters, expressionist poets, 164 00:08:30,550 --> 00:08:33,970 expressionist musicians, expressionist dramatists. 165 00:08:33,970 --> 00:08:36,220 Virtually all the art forms in Germany 166 00:08:36,220 --> 00:08:41,650 in some degree participated in this interest in the irrational 167 00:08:41,650 --> 00:08:50,160 and in the hidden and in the turbulent night 168 00:08:50,160 --> 00:08:52,420 side of our personalities. 169 00:08:52,420 --> 00:08:55,400 And I can, perhaps, very quickly capture 170 00:08:55,400 --> 00:08:57,670 some of the essence of this movement 171 00:08:57,670 --> 00:09:02,340 by showing you a couple of paintings that are examples 172 00:09:02,340 --> 00:09:04,354 of this expressionist movement. 173 00:09:04,354 --> 00:09:06,270 Let me show you one image first, and then I'll 174 00:09:06,270 --> 00:09:07,894 do a slideshow while I talk a bit more, 175 00:09:07,894 --> 00:09:09,860 and you can watch the slideshow. 176 00:09:09,860 --> 00:09:17,600 This is a painting by the German painter Beckmann, 177 00:09:17,600 --> 00:09:21,140 and it's called "The Family." 178 00:09:21,140 --> 00:09:23,890 It sometimes has been used as the illustration on the cover 179 00:09:23,890 --> 00:09:26,354 of Kafka's The Metamorphosis. 180 00:09:26,354 --> 00:09:28,020 And we might say incidentally, if you're 181 00:09:28,020 --> 00:09:31,000 looking for examples of what expressionism would be like, 182 00:09:31,000 --> 00:09:33,000 how many of you have read Kafka? 183 00:09:33,000 --> 00:09:34,000 Only a couple. 184 00:09:34,000 --> 00:09:34,569 OK. 185 00:09:34,569 --> 00:09:36,360 How many of you remember the first sentence 186 00:09:36,360 --> 00:09:38,910 of The Metamorphosis? 187 00:09:38,910 --> 00:09:39,410 All right. 188 00:09:39,410 --> 00:09:43,470 I'll tell it to you in some translations. 189 00:09:43,470 --> 00:09:49,720 Gregor Samsa awoke one morning after a night of uneasy dreams 190 00:09:49,720 --> 00:09:54,780 to find himself transformed into a gigantic insect. 191 00:09:54,780 --> 00:09:58,240 Maybe the most famous first sentence in modern literature. 192 00:09:58,240 --> 00:10:00,130 But think about that. 193 00:10:00,130 --> 00:10:01,870 And then the whole story proceeds 194 00:10:01,870 --> 00:10:03,516 from that shocking transformation. 195 00:10:03,516 --> 00:10:05,890 So one of the things that's characteristic of these forms 196 00:10:05,890 --> 00:10:08,880 of expression of are principles of exaggeration 197 00:10:08,880 --> 00:10:13,970 that take you into surrealism and into modes of exaggeration 198 00:10:13,970 --> 00:10:16,550 that attempt to illuminate reality not by giving you 199 00:10:16,550 --> 00:10:19,420 a realistic picture of it, but by exaggerating 200 00:10:19,420 --> 00:10:22,880 certain elements in reality so intensely that you understand 201 00:10:22,880 --> 00:10:25,870 them more deeply and fully than you might have otherwise. 202 00:10:25,870 --> 00:10:28,930 It's important to recognize that surreal impulses like this 203 00:10:28,930 --> 00:10:31,090 or expressionist impulses like this 204 00:10:31,090 --> 00:10:33,790 do not mean that the stories or art forms that 205 00:10:33,790 --> 00:10:35,530 are committed to these strategies 206 00:10:35,530 --> 00:10:39,550 are unrealistic in the broadest sense. 207 00:10:39,550 --> 00:10:41,947 That is to say they still talk about reality. 208 00:10:41,947 --> 00:10:43,780 It's just that the realities they talk about 209 00:10:43,780 --> 00:10:48,150 do not allow themselves to be represented 210 00:10:48,150 --> 00:10:50,680 in straightforward ways, because they're either hidden, 211 00:10:50,680 --> 00:10:54,580 or the intensity that they represent 212 00:10:54,580 --> 00:10:57,970 is so hidden within us that if you represent them externally, 213 00:10:57,970 --> 00:10:59,250 you need to exaggerate. 214 00:10:59,250 --> 00:11:00,420 You need to highlight. 215 00:11:00,420 --> 00:11:03,350 You need to enlarge. 216 00:11:03,350 --> 00:11:06,860 So we might think of Kafka as a literary embodiment 217 00:11:06,860 --> 00:11:09,380 of this principle of expressionism, 218 00:11:09,380 --> 00:11:11,680 and we might think of paintings like this 219 00:11:11,680 --> 00:11:14,070 as the painterly embodiment of it. 220 00:11:14,070 --> 00:11:14,779 And look at this. 221 00:11:14,779 --> 00:11:16,486 We won't have to spend much time on this, 222 00:11:16,486 --> 00:11:17,500 but look closely at it. 223 00:11:17,500 --> 00:11:20,020 Look at how the whole family is crammed together 224 00:11:20,020 --> 00:11:22,881 in an incredibly tight space, the ceiling pressing down 225 00:11:22,881 --> 00:11:23,380 on them. 226 00:11:23,380 --> 00:11:25,230 Look how grotesque each of them is. 227 00:11:25,230 --> 00:11:28,130 But what's the most obvious thing about the painting? 228 00:11:28,130 --> 00:11:30,179 Can you see what it looks like? 229 00:11:30,179 --> 00:11:32,220 None of the characters are looking at each other. 230 00:11:32,220 --> 00:11:33,678 There's no connection between them. 231 00:11:33,678 --> 00:11:36,640 They're all isolated in their own little space. 232 00:11:36,640 --> 00:11:39,400 Not only are they physically grotesque and a little weird, 233 00:11:39,400 --> 00:11:43,470 but they're all caught in their own narcissistic or, perhaps, 234 00:11:43,470 --> 00:11:47,720 drug-induced stupor. 235 00:11:47,720 --> 00:11:49,040 Calling it "The Family?" 236 00:11:49,040 --> 00:11:51,520 Think of what an unromantic unsentimental view 237 00:11:51,520 --> 00:11:52,590 of the family this is. 238 00:11:52,590 --> 00:11:55,360 But it's the principles of distortion 239 00:11:55,360 --> 00:11:59,590 and surreal exaggeration that you can see in this image 240 00:11:59,590 --> 00:12:02,000 that we might say are the essence of what 241 00:12:02,000 --> 00:12:05,030 is meant by expressionism. 242 00:12:05,030 --> 00:12:06,590 Do the slideshow now. 243 00:12:06,590 --> 00:12:09,570 While I'm talking, I'll show you a series of images 244 00:12:09,570 --> 00:12:11,860 by other painters, and we can put this 245 00:12:11,860 --> 00:12:14,750 on so they'll see what's what. 246 00:12:20,080 --> 00:12:22,820 So just play this, Kristen, while I continue. 247 00:12:22,820 --> 00:12:29,940 So one of the things that-- so this expressionist movement 248 00:12:29,940 --> 00:12:34,350 was central to all the high arts of German society at the time. 249 00:12:34,350 --> 00:12:36,510 And it's, therefore, not an accident, 250 00:12:36,510 --> 00:12:38,870 not at all, not even remotely an accident 251 00:12:38,870 --> 00:12:41,630 that such energies would express themselves 252 00:12:41,630 --> 00:12:46,220 in the new medium of the movies, because so 253 00:12:46,220 --> 00:12:49,660 much of the German art establishment 254 00:12:49,660 --> 00:12:52,850 was already embracing principles of this kind. 255 00:12:52,850 --> 00:12:54,590 And some very remarkable, of course, 256 00:12:54,590 --> 00:12:57,090 and significant, immensely influential 257 00:12:57,090 --> 00:13:00,140 films grew out of this movement. 258 00:13:00,140 --> 00:13:03,760 They emphasized atmospheric qualities like lighting and set 259 00:13:03,760 --> 00:13:05,720 design, and they were interested, 260 00:13:05,720 --> 00:13:08,240 as I've already implied, in morbid states 261 00:13:08,240 --> 00:13:12,270 and in distortion, in inner fears and anxieties. 262 00:13:12,270 --> 00:13:15,380 And what one of the things that the expressionist moment 263 00:13:15,380 --> 00:13:17,220 in German cinema certainly did was 264 00:13:17,220 --> 00:13:19,530 it tremendously furthered our sense 265 00:13:19,530 --> 00:13:24,150 of the power of the cinema to explore human subjectivity. 266 00:13:24,150 --> 00:13:26,550 Even the films that, for me at least, 267 00:13:26,550 --> 00:13:28,810 looked more like historical artifacts 268 00:13:28,810 --> 00:13:32,297 than living works of art have this fascination for us, 269 00:13:32,297 --> 00:13:34,000 for me. 270 00:13:34,000 --> 00:13:35,890 We might also very quickly acknowledge 271 00:13:35,890 --> 00:13:38,330 how profoundly influential the movement was. 272 00:13:38,330 --> 00:13:40,350 Can you think-- any of you know what 273 00:13:40,350 --> 00:13:43,840 famous directors after the-- not even German directors-- 274 00:13:43,840 --> 00:13:46,770 are linked repeatedly with German expressionism, 275 00:13:46,770 --> 00:13:48,570 have connections to them? 276 00:13:48,570 --> 00:13:50,280 One of them is Alfred Hitchcock, who 277 00:13:50,280 --> 00:13:53,230 actually, his very first film was a co-production 278 00:13:53,230 --> 00:13:54,712 with German producers. 279 00:13:54,712 --> 00:13:56,920 And he carried it-- if you think of Hitchcock's work, 280 00:13:56,920 --> 00:14:01,090 Hitchcock carries the some of the darkness and the distortion 281 00:14:01,090 --> 00:14:06,260 and the interest in our inner convulsive lives 282 00:14:06,260 --> 00:14:09,280 that is present in German expressionism. 283 00:14:09,280 --> 00:14:12,190 But there are other examples as well. 284 00:14:12,190 --> 00:14:15,770 The American gangster film shows the influence 285 00:14:15,770 --> 00:14:20,280 of German expressionism very powerfully, 286 00:14:20,280 --> 00:14:23,040 and the great American director Orson Welles 287 00:14:23,040 --> 00:14:25,420 was steeped in German expressionism, 288 00:14:25,420 --> 00:14:27,860 and some of his greatest effects and the atmospheres 289 00:14:27,860 --> 00:14:31,830 of his films could be said to be a direct outgrowth 290 00:14:31,830 --> 00:14:35,850 of expressionist directing, of expressionist movies. 291 00:14:35,850 --> 00:14:39,960 So it's a critical and powerful movement. 292 00:14:39,960 --> 00:14:42,800 So let me now turn to a couple of examples 293 00:14:42,800 --> 00:14:46,100 to give you a sense in film of how this expressed itself. 294 00:14:46,100 --> 00:14:49,320 And my first example comes from the film, the very famous film 295 00:14:49,320 --> 00:14:55,080 directed by Robert Wayne, called The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. 296 00:14:55,080 --> 00:15:00,314 It's a story about a murderer, who when he goes to sleep, 297 00:15:00,314 --> 00:15:01,980 he turns into a monster, and he wakes up 298 00:15:01,980 --> 00:15:04,650 and he walks around like a somnambulist ready to kill 299 00:15:04,650 --> 00:15:05,380 people. 300 00:15:05,380 --> 00:15:10,960 And it may be there were, of course, 301 00:15:10,960 --> 00:15:12,820 lurid stories in the public press 302 00:15:12,820 --> 00:15:14,410 of these kinds of all the time. 303 00:15:14,410 --> 00:15:17,417 So there may have been, in the watching of the film, 304 00:15:17,417 --> 00:15:20,000 there may have also been a kind of [INAUDIBLE] in the audience 305 00:15:20,000 --> 00:15:24,450 of feeling that what they were watching potentially 306 00:15:24,450 --> 00:15:27,750 was possibly real or reflected certain forms 307 00:15:27,750 --> 00:15:29,800 of certain possibilities in reality. 308 00:15:29,800 --> 00:15:34,350 But as you'll see, the film is tremendously stylized. 309 00:15:34,350 --> 00:15:43,020 It's tremendously planned in a way. 310 00:15:43,020 --> 00:15:46,700 One of the most interesting things about the film 311 00:15:46,700 --> 00:15:49,210 is that the sets were designed and painted 312 00:15:49,210 --> 00:15:52,350 by prominent expressionist artists, 313 00:15:52,350 --> 00:15:54,520 and then the fact is it was as much an artwork 314 00:15:54,520 --> 00:15:55,730 as it was a movie. 315 00:15:55,730 --> 00:15:59,290 Let me show you part of it, and you could see for yourself 316 00:15:59,290 --> 00:16:05,010 the consequences of an artistic movement that 317 00:16:05,010 --> 00:16:10,550 grows out of traditional art being transferred 318 00:16:10,550 --> 00:16:12,460 to the movies. 319 00:16:12,460 --> 00:16:14,010 Here's a scene from the film. 320 00:16:14,010 --> 00:16:14,900 Do we have sound? 321 00:16:25,170 --> 00:16:26,240 No sound, I guess. 322 00:16:26,240 --> 00:16:26,740 Sorry. 323 00:16:26,740 --> 00:16:29,320 There would have been music, of course, and very scary music. 324 00:16:31,741 --> 00:16:32,990 Maybe you can hear some of it. 325 00:16:36,760 --> 00:16:38,560 I think their soundtrack is also a new one. 326 00:16:38,560 --> 00:16:42,920 It was superimposed and made for the film later. 327 00:16:42,920 --> 00:16:46,250 But I suppose in a certain way, this has a kind of interest. 328 00:16:46,250 --> 00:16:49,370 But do you see how static it is, how uncinematic it 329 00:16:49,370 --> 00:16:57,330 is, how stable the camera is, how the emphasis is 330 00:16:57,330 --> 00:16:58,854 on-- I don't know. 331 00:16:58,854 --> 00:16:59,770 What could we call it? 332 00:16:59,770 --> 00:17:03,910 On set design, on surreal angles, 333 00:17:03,910 --> 00:17:10,900 on this strange form of lighting? 334 00:17:10,900 --> 00:17:14,230 This chiaroscuro black and white lighting, very great emphasis 335 00:17:14,230 --> 00:17:16,490 on contrast between black and white, of course, 336 00:17:16,490 --> 00:17:21,180 becomes a trademark element of expressionistic films 337 00:17:21,180 --> 00:17:24,220 and then is carried over in many other film traditions, 338 00:17:24,220 --> 00:17:26,410 including the American tradition called film 339 00:17:26,410 --> 00:17:29,510 noir-- dark film, black film. 340 00:17:29,510 --> 00:17:32,670 So here's this somnambulist walking over 341 00:17:32,670 --> 00:17:33,890 to the sleeping woman. 342 00:17:33,890 --> 00:17:36,230 We might note parenthetically, isn't interesting 343 00:17:36,230 --> 00:17:39,720 how long one might say that this is one of the earliest horror 344 00:17:39,720 --> 00:17:40,650 films? 345 00:17:40,650 --> 00:17:42,420 How long has the horror film used 346 00:17:42,420 --> 00:17:45,760 as one of its central elements violence 347 00:17:45,760 --> 00:17:50,460 against women, and especially sexual violence against women? 348 00:17:50,460 --> 00:17:51,140 Look at this. 349 00:17:51,140 --> 00:17:53,300 Do you see how he looks like an actor on a stage? 350 00:18:21,230 --> 00:18:23,885 Now surely it was intentional that they put those two men who 351 00:18:23,885 --> 00:18:29,170 were woken up by the noise in a space that seems without space. 352 00:18:29,170 --> 00:18:32,230 There's a surreal ungrounded element in the film. 353 00:18:35,081 --> 00:18:35,580 All right. 354 00:18:35,580 --> 00:18:37,965 So they're looking for her now, and they're 355 00:18:37,965 --> 00:18:39,317 going to be [INAUDIBLE]. 356 00:18:39,317 --> 00:18:40,900 Can you speed up, Kristen, so we don't 357 00:18:40,900 --> 00:18:43,720 watch the whole thing in slow motion, in full, 358 00:18:43,720 --> 00:18:44,720 but we get near the end? 359 00:18:44,720 --> 00:18:46,030 Is that possible to do? 360 00:18:48,780 --> 00:18:55,940 So they're-- keep-- let it speed up a little bit more. 361 00:18:55,940 --> 00:18:56,890 OK. 362 00:18:56,890 --> 00:18:59,620 Now we're near the ending here. 363 00:18:59,620 --> 00:19:02,234 Again, see how static it is, how that's impressive, 364 00:19:02,234 --> 00:19:04,400 the building of the sets might have been impressive. 365 00:19:04,400 --> 00:19:08,510 But you see how in some sense how uncinematic 366 00:19:08,510 --> 00:19:09,645 this is in certain ways? 367 00:19:18,220 --> 00:19:21,820 Seeing the camera stable in one spot, active moving toward it, 368 00:19:21,820 --> 00:19:24,520 moving in and out of the camera's range. 369 00:19:24,520 --> 00:19:27,530 This is a theatrical idea of what the camera should do. 370 00:19:27,530 --> 00:19:30,110 It's sitting in the audience watching a set, 371 00:19:30,110 --> 00:19:34,120 and in fact, you can feel the theatrical authority here. 372 00:19:34,120 --> 00:19:35,390 Watch this image now. 373 00:19:37,835 --> 00:19:39,960 And then it's something clever if you're interested 374 00:19:39,960 --> 00:19:43,690 in silhouettes, creating an image of darkness and horror, 375 00:19:43,690 --> 00:19:44,190 I guess. 376 00:19:46,780 --> 00:19:49,150 But you can also see the limitations of it. 377 00:19:54,154 --> 00:19:56,570 I want to show you one other example, a more distinguished 378 00:19:56,570 --> 00:19:58,960 example, an example that does begin 379 00:19:58,960 --> 00:20:02,310 to manipulate the visual image in somewhat more 380 00:20:02,310 --> 00:20:06,360 rich and significant ways, a film even more influential 381 00:20:06,360 --> 00:20:09,270 than Caligari, what is called so often 382 00:20:09,270 --> 00:20:11,080 the first science-fiction film. 383 00:20:11,080 --> 00:20:14,480 It was the very first feature length science-fiction film 384 00:20:14,480 --> 00:20:15,240 in the world. 385 00:20:15,240 --> 00:20:19,310 Its title is Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang. 386 00:20:19,310 --> 00:20:22,440 And at the time, many film scholars 387 00:20:22,440 --> 00:20:25,720 claim it cost something like five million Reichsmarks 388 00:20:25,720 --> 00:20:26,252 to make. 389 00:20:26,252 --> 00:20:28,710 I don't know if Reichsmarks were the equivalent of dollars, 390 00:20:28,710 --> 00:20:31,700 but let's assume they were. 391 00:20:31,700 --> 00:20:34,570 In 1926, this was the most expensive film 392 00:20:34,570 --> 00:20:36,780 that had ever been made up to that point, 393 00:20:36,780 --> 00:20:39,990 and it is a measure of the authority and the prestige 394 00:20:39,990 --> 00:20:42,320 that movies had in German society, 395 00:20:42,320 --> 00:20:44,454 that so much money would be invested in a film. 396 00:20:44,454 --> 00:20:46,620 This would never have happened in the United States. 397 00:20:46,620 --> 00:20:49,440 They weren't spending that level of money on American movies. 398 00:20:49,440 --> 00:20:51,360 They didn't have to. 399 00:20:51,360 --> 00:20:54,140 They couldn't. 400 00:20:54,140 --> 00:20:57,450 And in some sense, it shows you the authority 401 00:20:57,450 --> 00:21:00,570 and the centrality, but it also explains 402 00:21:00,570 --> 00:21:03,810 why we had to wait before the German film fully 403 00:21:03,810 --> 00:21:07,580 discovered its cinematic or its filmic essence. 404 00:21:07,580 --> 00:21:09,190 And I'm going to show you what I think 405 00:21:09,190 --> 00:21:13,070 is the moment or one of the moments in which this discovery 406 00:21:13,070 --> 00:21:14,100 was made. 407 00:21:14,100 --> 00:21:19,540 And the director we're looking at tonight, FW Murnau, 408 00:21:19,540 --> 00:21:21,400 is the director who made this discovery 409 00:21:21,400 --> 00:21:26,130 and freed the camera from the constraints of high art, 410 00:21:26,130 --> 00:21:29,640 from the constraints of the inherited attitudes toward art 411 00:21:29,640 --> 00:21:33,360 that the established culture in Europe and especially 412 00:21:33,360 --> 00:21:37,820 in Germany imposed upon the making. 413 00:21:37,820 --> 00:21:41,970 So here are a couple of scenes from Metropolis. 414 00:21:41,970 --> 00:21:44,240 Still, I think we're not fully there yet, 415 00:21:44,240 --> 00:21:46,330 but it's a significant film. 416 00:21:46,330 --> 00:21:50,470 It's much admired by certain film scholars, 417 00:21:50,470 --> 00:21:51,720 although not by me. 418 00:21:51,720 --> 00:21:55,101 [MUSIC PLAYING] 419 00:22:05,730 --> 00:22:08,040 Some of you may notice how Chaplin borrowed 420 00:22:08,040 --> 00:22:09,885 from this introduction. 421 00:22:17,310 --> 00:22:19,890 And you could certainly see how this film influenced 422 00:22:19,890 --> 00:22:20,695 Modern Times. 423 00:22:48,310 --> 00:22:49,950 Feel a lot of Chaplin there, I hope. 424 00:23:21,810 --> 00:23:24,270 You think there's an idea or an attitude toward what 425 00:23:24,270 --> 00:23:27,590 labor means in these images? 426 00:23:27,590 --> 00:23:29,060 These are the workers of the city. 427 00:23:34,420 --> 00:23:38,020 Interesting that such a politically radical film 428 00:23:38,020 --> 00:23:39,555 would be so heavily financed. 429 00:23:53,064 --> 00:23:53,980 That's enough of this. 430 00:23:53,980 --> 00:23:57,550 That's plenty of this, too much of it, in fact, I think. 431 00:23:57,550 --> 00:23:59,560 But can we speed up a little, Kristen? 432 00:23:59,560 --> 00:24:02,130 I think we can come to one more image from a different part 433 00:24:02,130 --> 00:24:02,790 of the film. 434 00:24:02,790 --> 00:24:04,940 So I won't talk about the plot of the film, which 435 00:24:04,940 --> 00:24:09,660 is rather ridiculous I think, although it's also 436 00:24:09,660 --> 00:24:13,690 a kind of science-fiction fantasy, a dystopian fantasy. 437 00:24:13,690 --> 00:24:16,420 But there is a sequence later in the film. 438 00:24:16,420 --> 00:24:17,340 Let's go further. 439 00:24:17,340 --> 00:24:20,340 So here's another image, another moment from the film. 440 00:24:20,340 --> 00:24:22,400 Visually more exciting, but it also 441 00:24:22,400 --> 00:24:28,690 shows you in some sense how literary the film is. 442 00:24:28,690 --> 00:24:30,370 And also, I want you see it also, 443 00:24:30,370 --> 00:24:33,950 because it remind you, again, of how much Chaplin 444 00:24:33,950 --> 00:24:36,560 borrowed from this movie when he made Modern Times. 445 00:24:57,155 --> 00:24:59,370 Now there are many imaginative effects here, 446 00:24:59,370 --> 00:25:01,325 but still, you see how stable the camera 447 00:25:01,325 --> 00:25:04,190 is, how stationary it is? 448 00:25:08,350 --> 00:25:11,630 The kinetic power of the camera had not yet 449 00:25:11,630 --> 00:25:14,255 been discovered, not because it was undiscoverable, 450 00:25:14,255 --> 00:25:17,350 because the Americans had discovered it a decade earlier, 451 00:25:17,350 --> 00:25:20,310 but because the power of older forms 452 00:25:20,310 --> 00:25:23,077 was inhibiting the people making the movies. 453 00:26:08,030 --> 00:26:09,994 Again, in the early days, you can 454 00:26:09,994 --> 00:26:11,410 imagine that some of these effects 455 00:26:11,410 --> 00:26:15,380 would have been very dramatic-- the falling bodies. 456 00:26:15,380 --> 00:26:18,210 Still, watch what happens here. 457 00:26:18,210 --> 00:26:23,180 We've turned symbolic-- Moloch, the devil, 458 00:26:23,180 --> 00:26:25,260 the devil's henchman. 459 00:26:25,260 --> 00:26:27,810 That's what modern industrial society is, 460 00:26:27,810 --> 00:26:29,660 a maw that will swallow us up. 461 00:26:43,610 --> 00:26:45,369 You see how weird and disturbing it is. 462 00:26:45,369 --> 00:26:46,160 Thank you, Kristen. 463 00:26:50,870 --> 00:26:53,840 A serious, an interesting film, but still in certain ways, 464 00:26:53,840 --> 00:26:56,950 I hope you could see both deeply melodramatic, 465 00:26:56,950 --> 00:26:59,170 and the acting styles are very broad. 466 00:26:59,170 --> 00:27:00,170 Where do they come from? 467 00:27:00,170 --> 00:27:00,950 Theater. 468 00:27:00,950 --> 00:27:03,170 They're theatrical acting still. 469 00:27:03,170 --> 00:27:05,550 They haven't fully adjusted despite the power 470 00:27:05,550 --> 00:27:08,350 of these films, and in intellectual and thematic ways, 471 00:27:08,350 --> 00:27:11,690 they haven't fully adjusted to the idea that they're movies. 472 00:27:11,690 --> 00:27:16,250 And the man who solved this problem or the German director 473 00:27:16,250 --> 00:27:18,510 who understood more fully than the others 474 00:27:18,510 --> 00:27:21,636 what it meant to make a movie was FW Murnau. 475 00:27:21,636 --> 00:27:22,760 His dates are on the board. 476 00:27:22,760 --> 00:27:24,950 You could see he died in his early 40s. 477 00:27:24,950 --> 00:27:25,880 It was a tragic death. 478 00:27:25,880 --> 00:27:29,520 He was just coming into his own as a great, great director. 479 00:27:29,520 --> 00:27:32,590 He had emigrated to the United States in the late '20s, 480 00:27:32,590 --> 00:27:36,190 and the film I've listed on the board, Sunrise in 1927, 481 00:27:36,190 --> 00:27:37,500 was made in the United States. 482 00:27:37,500 --> 00:27:41,230 And many people think it is the greatest silent non-comedy made 483 00:27:41,230 --> 00:27:43,430 in the United States. 484 00:27:43,430 --> 00:27:44,980 It's a bit sentimental, but there 485 00:27:44,980 --> 00:27:47,021 are brilliant, brilliant, brilliant things in it. 486 00:27:47,021 --> 00:27:50,910 It's a very, very rich artifact. 487 00:27:50,910 --> 00:27:54,090 And then with the famous documentary director, 488 00:27:54,090 --> 00:27:57,230 Robert Flaherty, his last film Tabu, 489 00:27:57,230 --> 00:28:00,200 which he co-directed with Robert Flaherty, 490 00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:02,380 became a tremendous success. 491 00:28:02,380 --> 00:28:05,710 But he died in 1931 just before the film was released, 492 00:28:05,710 --> 00:28:08,410 just on the verge of a kind of a claim 493 00:28:08,410 --> 00:28:11,390 that perhaps no other director in the world at that time had. 494 00:28:11,390 --> 00:28:14,950 It's tragic, a tragic story. 495 00:28:14,950 --> 00:28:21,320 The film in which we can see Murnau freeing the camera 496 00:28:21,320 --> 00:28:24,550 is the film called Nosferatu made in 1922. 497 00:28:24,550 --> 00:28:27,210 And some of you will perhaps recognize it 498 00:28:27,210 --> 00:28:33,090 as the origin film for a tremendous number of horror 499 00:28:33,090 --> 00:28:33,610 movies. 500 00:28:33,610 --> 00:28:36,020 Many people would call it the first horror movie. 501 00:28:36,020 --> 00:28:38,070 That may be an exaggeration or inaccurate, 502 00:28:38,070 --> 00:28:39,750 but it is among-- it is certainly 503 00:28:39,750 --> 00:28:43,280 the most influential and significant early horror film. 504 00:28:43,280 --> 00:28:50,680 It's based on the Dracula story, and like Dracula itself, 505 00:28:50,680 --> 00:28:52,960 it tells a very strange sort of story 506 00:28:52,960 --> 00:28:59,580 about vampires who survived for centuries 507 00:28:59,580 --> 00:29:03,330 and then come into the world, and by their little sort 508 00:29:03,330 --> 00:29:06,660 of suggestive sexual bite in the neck of a woman, 509 00:29:06,660 --> 00:29:10,130 transform the women into vampires as well. 510 00:29:10,130 --> 00:29:13,800 And it's now a kind of commonplace established idea 511 00:29:13,800 --> 00:29:20,590 that this energy, that the kind of Gothic fantasy 512 00:29:20,590 --> 00:29:23,160 that is embodied in the story of Dracula 513 00:29:23,160 --> 00:29:27,330 and in so many similar ones, has its origins in various forms 514 00:29:27,330 --> 00:29:29,140 of sexual fantasy. 515 00:29:29,140 --> 00:29:32,570 And the Dracula figure, when he kisses the woman's neck, 516 00:29:32,570 --> 00:29:35,250 is symbolically engaged in a sexual act. 517 00:29:35,250 --> 00:29:38,040 And the woman's resistance but then her transformation 518 00:29:38,040 --> 00:29:42,220 into a vampire is presumably the woman's transformation 519 00:29:42,220 --> 00:29:44,130 to sexual activeness in some way. 520 00:29:44,130 --> 00:29:48,340 At least these are the kinds of symbolic or underlying 521 00:29:48,340 --> 00:29:51,310 associations that many scholars bring 522 00:29:51,310 --> 00:29:55,690 to bear when they talk about why such stories were 523 00:29:55,690 --> 00:29:59,510 so fascinating and so popular at the end of the 19th century. 524 00:29:59,510 --> 00:30:02,340 So one thing to remember about Nosferatu 525 00:30:02,340 --> 00:30:05,430 is it is an adaptation of a novel 526 00:30:05,430 --> 00:30:08,380 already very widely known. 527 00:30:08,380 --> 00:30:12,240 And in fact, there were copyright questions 528 00:30:12,240 --> 00:30:14,662 about Nosferatu. 529 00:30:14,662 --> 00:30:19,290 The copyright owners from the book sued the filmmakers, 530 00:30:19,290 --> 00:30:21,570 and I'm not sure what the outcome was. 531 00:30:21,570 --> 00:30:24,310 But the film did survive in any case. 532 00:30:24,310 --> 00:30:26,490 So here are a couple of scenes. 533 00:30:26,490 --> 00:30:28,800 Here is the beginning of Nosferatu. 534 00:30:28,800 --> 00:30:34,300 And the subject matter seems to me not that interesting, 535 00:30:34,300 --> 00:30:39,170 but again, my view is not necessarily the only view. 536 00:30:39,170 --> 00:30:41,270 There are people who love these films. 537 00:30:41,270 --> 00:30:45,450 I don't know why they do, but I don't want to simply impose 538 00:30:45,450 --> 00:30:46,840 my view on you. 539 00:30:46,840 --> 00:30:49,300 If you're interested in this, or if you 540 00:30:49,300 --> 00:30:51,750 share a love of horror film-- one of my problems 541 00:30:51,750 --> 00:30:53,220 is I don't like horror films today, 542 00:30:53,220 --> 00:30:55,544 even though they've reached a very sophisticated level. 543 00:30:55,544 --> 00:30:56,460 I think they're silly. 544 00:30:56,460 --> 00:30:57,970 I don't get them. 545 00:30:57,970 --> 00:31:01,739 So I'm not a good judge of them, and my negative judgments, 546 00:31:01,739 --> 00:31:03,030 take them with a grain of salt. 547 00:31:03,030 --> 00:31:08,010 They're partly colored by my own preoccupations. 548 00:31:08,010 --> 00:31:10,140 There are ways I could defend my position, 549 00:31:10,140 --> 00:31:12,960 but I don't feel I should impose my views on you. 550 00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:17,420 I do think it's a silly story, and it seems to me 551 00:31:17,420 --> 00:31:19,490 that reality is complex enough without sort 552 00:31:19,490 --> 00:31:22,710 of inventing horrors that hide underground 553 00:31:22,710 --> 00:31:25,740 for thousands of years and emerge with magical powers. 554 00:31:25,740 --> 00:31:28,570 The actual horrors of reality seem to me 555 00:31:28,570 --> 00:31:31,520 sufficient and not adequately studied. 556 00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:35,070 So that's one of my objections to these forms of fantasy. 557 00:31:35,070 --> 00:31:36,950 But in any case, that's personal. 558 00:31:36,950 --> 00:31:39,770 But in any case, what you can see in Nosferatu, even 559 00:31:39,770 --> 00:31:42,310 people who are not as interested in the subject matter, 560 00:31:42,310 --> 00:31:45,770 they can see what a technically innovative film it is. 561 00:31:45,770 --> 00:31:46,850 Watch this. 562 00:31:46,850 --> 00:31:48,016 Here's the beginning. 563 00:31:48,016 --> 00:31:51,410 [MUSIC PLAYING] 564 00:31:51,910 --> 00:31:54,120 In, fact freeze it already. 565 00:31:54,120 --> 00:31:56,440 Does this seem more realistic to you? 566 00:31:56,440 --> 00:31:59,300 Do you see already-- no fake sets? 567 00:31:59,300 --> 00:32:03,850 We don't feel we're watching a theatrical piece, that a camera 568 00:32:03,850 --> 00:32:05,930 is filming a theater piece? 569 00:32:05,930 --> 00:32:07,840 What's one of the reasons for that? 570 00:32:07,840 --> 00:32:09,480 The natural sunlight. 571 00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:12,160 That's natural sunlight. 572 00:32:12,160 --> 00:32:14,820 Go ahead. 573 00:32:14,820 --> 00:32:18,230 The texture of his bedding also is a factor. 574 00:32:30,800 --> 00:32:33,740 And of course, the sunlight is a crucial motif in the film, 575 00:32:33,740 --> 00:32:36,130 because Dracula lives by darkness. 576 00:32:36,130 --> 00:32:38,620 And the film depends, quite brilliantly, 577 00:32:38,620 --> 00:32:41,810 on a series of juxtapositions of light and dark, 578 00:32:41,810 --> 00:32:44,660 of shadow and brightness. 579 00:32:44,660 --> 00:32:46,140 Now look at this. 580 00:32:46,140 --> 00:32:47,762 Freeze it, Kristen. 581 00:32:47,762 --> 00:32:48,720 Freeze it for a second. 582 00:32:48,720 --> 00:32:49,400 Look at this. 583 00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:51,520 We're really outside in a real world. 584 00:32:51,520 --> 00:32:52,830 Look at these animals. 585 00:32:52,830 --> 00:32:57,470 And you can feel the film-- at first, we're disoriented. 586 00:32:57,470 --> 00:33:00,100 We don't even know why are we looking here? 587 00:33:00,100 --> 00:33:04,190 But the film's joy-- we can feel almost the film's excitement 588 00:33:04,190 --> 00:33:06,830 at showing us what the real world looks like. 589 00:33:06,830 --> 00:33:10,580 I actually find this visually and intellectually 590 00:33:10,580 --> 00:33:14,190 much more exciting than a ridiculous set in which 591 00:33:14,190 --> 00:33:21,180 a symbolically dressed monster staggers around in a way 592 00:33:21,180 --> 00:33:23,530 that no one who ever walked the earth moved. 593 00:33:23,530 --> 00:33:24,980 I find this much more compelling. 594 00:33:24,980 --> 00:33:26,820 But what was important at the time 595 00:33:26,820 --> 00:33:29,690 was how liberating it was, because what Murnau was showing 596 00:33:29,690 --> 00:33:32,300 is look what the camera can actually do. 597 00:33:32,300 --> 00:33:34,890 He's freeing the camera. 598 00:33:34,890 --> 00:33:35,410 Go ahead. 599 00:33:50,360 --> 00:33:50,860 OK. 600 00:33:50,860 --> 00:33:52,920 That's enough of this. 601 00:33:52,920 --> 00:33:54,950 Maybe I'll give you one more quick scene. 602 00:33:54,950 --> 00:33:56,670 Do we have a separate clip? 603 00:33:56,670 --> 00:33:59,554 Let's go to the other clip. 604 00:33:59,554 --> 00:34:01,470 Now here's something from the end of the film. 605 00:34:01,470 --> 00:34:03,100 Can you freeze it a second? 606 00:34:03,100 --> 00:34:04,830 I'll sort of briefly set the [INAUDIBLE]. 607 00:34:04,830 --> 00:34:08,570 This guy is Dracula's weird assistant, 608 00:34:08,570 --> 00:34:11,610 and he's escaped from jail. 609 00:34:11,610 --> 00:34:16,730 I find the story idiotic, ridiculous, totally unserious. 610 00:34:16,730 --> 00:34:20,150 But look at the realism visually here. 611 00:34:20,150 --> 00:34:23,170 This is maybe the first time that these narrow alleyways 612 00:34:23,170 --> 00:34:25,550 were captured with such precision. 613 00:34:25,550 --> 00:34:28,000 It's almost as if, at least for me, 614 00:34:28,000 --> 00:34:29,590 the subject matter is irrelevant, 615 00:34:29,590 --> 00:34:33,550 and what the film is showing about how it can render reality 616 00:34:33,550 --> 00:34:36,736 is so exciting that it's as if a new universe has opened up. 617 00:34:36,736 --> 00:34:38,360 And I must admit that even though there 618 00:34:38,360 --> 00:34:41,780 were American directors who were working with a freed camera 619 00:34:41,780 --> 00:34:44,380 long before this, no one ever used 620 00:34:44,380 --> 00:34:47,171 the camera outdoors more effectively up to this time 621 00:34:47,171 --> 00:34:47,670 than Murnau. 622 00:34:47,670 --> 00:34:49,359 And I'll show you a little more of this, 623 00:34:49,359 --> 00:34:51,150 even though the plot is stupid, because you 624 00:34:51,150 --> 00:34:55,050 can see how realistic and persuasive, compelling 625 00:34:55,050 --> 00:34:56,568 the visual experience is. 626 00:35:05,960 --> 00:35:08,700 See the freedom of the camera to shoot down, 627 00:35:08,700 --> 00:35:10,412 how that changes around you? 628 00:35:10,412 --> 00:35:11,620 The quickness of the editing. 629 00:35:14,150 --> 00:35:15,630 There he is up on top of his roof. 630 00:35:28,612 --> 00:35:30,070 If you didn't know the context, you 631 00:35:30,070 --> 00:35:32,720 would see this as a form of oppression and mistreatment. 632 00:35:32,720 --> 00:35:34,770 Why are they going after this poor guy? 633 00:35:34,770 --> 00:35:36,620 And I think that is an implication of this, 634 00:35:36,620 --> 00:35:40,774 even though he's the source of evil. 635 00:35:40,774 --> 00:35:42,470 But look at the realism of this. 636 00:35:42,470 --> 00:35:45,060 Look at the texture of the bricks, the sense 637 00:35:45,060 --> 00:35:47,610 you have that this is a real place, that he really 638 00:35:47,610 --> 00:35:50,636 climbed down a roof. 639 00:35:50,636 --> 00:35:51,135 The movies. 640 00:35:53,770 --> 00:35:55,410 If the movies don't do this, they 641 00:35:55,410 --> 00:35:59,530 have to give us a sense of that gross reality, which the movies 642 00:35:59,530 --> 00:36:00,712 have the power to do. 643 00:36:00,712 --> 00:36:02,170 They have to have very good reasons 644 00:36:02,170 --> 00:36:04,649 for giving up that power. 645 00:36:04,649 --> 00:36:06,690 It's a very rare film that can really give it up. 646 00:36:06,690 --> 00:36:09,160 Some animations can do it. 647 00:36:09,160 --> 00:36:12,410 But even surreal films, even films that exaggerate 648 00:36:12,410 --> 00:36:14,520 or that create alternative worlds that are not 649 00:36:14,520 --> 00:36:21,010 like our real worlds today have the kind of kinetic camera 650 00:36:21,010 --> 00:36:24,990 and sense of the textured quality of the external world 651 00:36:24,990 --> 00:36:27,540 that we get in those images. 652 00:36:27,540 --> 00:36:32,360 So Murnau was critical to us and crucial to us for this reason, 653 00:36:32,360 --> 00:36:35,970 and his great masterpiece is one of the two films 654 00:36:35,970 --> 00:36:38,490 that I've asked you to watch tonight. 655 00:36:38,490 --> 00:36:42,540 We're showing both Nosferatu and The Last Laugh. 656 00:36:42,540 --> 00:36:45,320 Let's do it in the order of The Last Laugh first. 657 00:36:45,320 --> 00:36:47,850 I think Nosferatu's a less interesting film, but still 658 00:36:47,850 --> 00:36:49,587 from a technical standpoint, fascinating. 659 00:36:49,587 --> 00:36:51,670 And those of you who are interested in the history 660 00:36:51,670 --> 00:36:54,070 of horror films, you should pay attention, 661 00:36:54,070 --> 00:36:58,330 because there's hardly a frame in Nosferatu that 662 00:36:58,330 --> 00:37:02,210 has not been alluded to or echoed in later horror films. 663 00:37:02,210 --> 00:37:04,510 And it is the origins of what is now 664 00:37:04,510 --> 00:37:09,660 a dominant movie genre, both a literary and a cinematic genre. 665 00:37:09,660 --> 00:37:11,640 So it's a very, very important film. 666 00:37:11,640 --> 00:37:13,550 But The Last Laugh is a true masterpiece, 667 00:37:13,550 --> 00:37:16,770 and one of the reasons I think it's such a remarkable film 668 00:37:16,770 --> 00:37:19,950 is that it's freed in some degree 669 00:37:19,950 --> 00:37:25,730 from the pretentiousness, the surreal pretentiousness 670 00:37:25,730 --> 00:37:26,980 of expressionism. 671 00:37:26,980 --> 00:37:29,490 There are expressionist elements in the film as you'll see. 672 00:37:29,490 --> 00:37:30,880 Very cleverly done. 673 00:37:30,880 --> 00:37:34,310 There's one immensely grotesque and powerful moment 674 00:37:34,310 --> 00:37:37,660 in which, for example, there are a series-- 675 00:37:37,660 --> 00:37:40,560 we are given an image of some gossiping women, who 676 00:37:40,560 --> 00:37:43,470 are trading gossip about the primary character. 677 00:37:43,470 --> 00:37:51,076 And we'll see how interestingly Murnau handles that sequence. 678 00:37:51,076 --> 00:37:53,200 And there's an element of distortion or grotesquery 679 00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:53,977 in that. 680 00:37:53,977 --> 00:37:55,810 There are also elements in the film, moments 681 00:37:55,810 --> 00:37:57,810 in the film, brilliant moments in the film where 682 00:37:57,810 --> 00:38:01,420 what is shown externally is not what's happening externally, 683 00:38:01,420 --> 00:38:04,530 but what is going on in the mind of the primary character. 684 00:38:04,530 --> 00:38:06,300 In other words, it carries the principle 685 00:38:06,300 --> 00:38:11,000 of finding ways to create a subjective camera even 686 00:38:11,000 --> 00:38:14,080 further than any previous film had done. 687 00:38:14,080 --> 00:38:17,360 There's one remarkable moment in this film-- watch for it. 688 00:38:17,360 --> 00:38:21,230 It's very astonishing-- in which the director of photography, 689 00:38:21,230 --> 00:38:26,090 Karl Freund, was asked to sort of figure this out. 690 00:38:26,090 --> 00:38:28,140 There's a moment when the protagonist gets drunk. 691 00:38:28,140 --> 00:38:30,556 He's very disappointed about something, and he gets drunk, 692 00:38:30,556 --> 00:38:31,830 and he staggers around. 693 00:38:31,830 --> 00:38:35,550 And they were trying to figure out a way of dramatizing this. 694 00:38:35,550 --> 00:38:37,040 They played around with the camera, 695 00:38:37,040 --> 00:38:40,050 and they strapped the camera to the actor's waist, 696 00:38:40,050 --> 00:38:42,560 and when he staggered around, the world you saw 697 00:38:42,560 --> 00:38:44,580 was staggering too. 698 00:38:44,580 --> 00:38:47,610 And it created an immensely powerful sort 699 00:38:47,610 --> 00:38:51,100 of subjective experience for the viewer. 700 00:38:51,100 --> 00:38:53,500 And there are a number of other places in the film where 701 00:38:53,500 --> 00:38:55,510 you can see that what's being dramatized 702 00:38:55,510 --> 00:38:57,730 is the inner life of the characters. 703 00:38:57,730 --> 00:39:03,000 So there are expressionist elements in the film, 704 00:39:03,000 --> 00:39:04,640 but it transcends expressionism. 705 00:39:04,640 --> 00:39:08,430 It becomes a film truly about reality without distortion, 706 00:39:08,430 --> 00:39:10,020 and of course, its basic subject is 707 00:39:10,020 --> 00:39:11,670 what happens to our old people when 708 00:39:11,670 --> 00:39:15,130 they get too old to function. 709 00:39:15,130 --> 00:39:16,960 This is a theme I'm beginning to find more 710 00:39:16,960 --> 00:39:20,680 and more sympathetic as I age. 711 00:39:20,680 --> 00:39:22,570 But it's one of the most powerful treatments 712 00:39:22,570 --> 00:39:24,370 of this subject. 713 00:39:24,370 --> 00:39:25,860 And basically, the story is about-- 714 00:39:25,860 --> 00:39:29,850 as you'll see-- it's about a porter in a hotel whose job is 715 00:39:29,850 --> 00:39:31,790 to help carry baggage in. 716 00:39:31,790 --> 00:39:33,240 But he's an immense big man played 717 00:39:33,240 --> 00:39:36,510 by one of the most famous theater actors of the day, Emil 718 00:39:36,510 --> 00:39:37,850 Jannings. 719 00:39:37,850 --> 00:39:40,170 And at a certain point in the film, as you'll see, 720 00:39:40,170 --> 00:39:41,530 he's demoted. 721 00:39:41,530 --> 00:39:43,410 He loses his job. 722 00:39:43,410 --> 00:39:44,750 They take his uniform away. 723 00:39:44,750 --> 00:39:47,050 His uniform is very important to him. 724 00:39:47,050 --> 00:39:47,885 And they demote him. 725 00:39:47,885 --> 00:39:49,510 He has to go and work in the men's room 726 00:39:49,510 --> 00:39:51,000 as a men's room attendant. 727 00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:56,640 So the film in a certain way does several things. 728 00:39:56,640 --> 00:39:59,410 First, it shows us what Murnau himself 729 00:39:59,410 --> 00:40:03,840 came to call the unchanged camera, the free camera. 730 00:40:03,840 --> 00:40:05,770 And over and over again, you can see 731 00:40:05,770 --> 00:40:09,180 how immensely innovative the camera work in this film is. 732 00:40:09,180 --> 00:40:11,250 The very opening scene of the film 733 00:40:11,250 --> 00:40:13,120 is a tour de force you might miss 734 00:40:13,120 --> 00:40:14,550 because it happened so quickly. 735 00:40:14,550 --> 00:40:20,170 The camera follows a person down an elevator, a glass elevator, 736 00:40:20,170 --> 00:40:23,250 and then follows it across the room. 737 00:40:23,250 --> 00:40:25,139 The camera was actually mounted on a bicycle 738 00:40:25,139 --> 00:40:26,430 so they could move it that way. 739 00:40:26,430 --> 00:40:28,096 It happens so quickly you might not even 740 00:40:28,096 --> 00:40:31,030 notice it, although filmmakers were overwhelmed by it, 741 00:40:31,030 --> 00:40:32,990 because he was doing things with the camera 742 00:40:32,990 --> 00:40:34,700 that no one else had done before. 743 00:40:34,700 --> 00:40:36,380 And you'll see other moments in the film 744 00:40:36,380 --> 00:40:45,019 where his use of the camera is complex and innovative. 745 00:40:45,019 --> 00:40:47,310 I've already talked a bit about the themes in the film, 746 00:40:47,310 --> 00:40:48,351 but let me continue this. 747 00:40:48,351 --> 00:40:51,730 So I've said in a way it's a working class tragedy. 748 00:40:51,730 --> 00:40:55,120 And the very fact that it's about an ordinary man, 749 00:40:55,120 --> 00:40:58,240 but it tries to treat him with the kind of dignity 750 00:40:58,240 --> 00:41:02,840 that in the classical times kings and high born characters 751 00:41:02,840 --> 00:41:05,200 would receive is very significant 752 00:41:05,200 --> 00:41:10,050 and is a powerful aspect of the subject matter. 753 00:41:10,050 --> 00:41:12,600 What also develops is a deep sense 754 00:41:12,600 --> 00:41:16,400 of the character of the protagonist. 755 00:41:16,400 --> 00:41:20,160 The way in which his identity is connected to his job 756 00:41:20,160 --> 00:41:22,990 and how when his job, and especially his uniform, 757 00:41:22,990 --> 00:41:25,060 which is the symbol of his authority, 758 00:41:25,060 --> 00:41:30,390 is taken away, how he's unmanned, unhousled, undone, 759 00:41:30,390 --> 00:41:32,520 incapable of functioning. 760 00:41:32,520 --> 00:41:38,365 So it's a very powerful, socially aware movie. 761 00:41:38,365 --> 00:41:41,040 It dramatizes character with a kind of subtlety that's 762 00:41:41,040 --> 00:41:42,810 very rare in silent film. 763 00:41:42,810 --> 00:41:44,900 You really have a sense of this man's character. 764 00:41:44,900 --> 00:41:46,358 It's quite a brilliant performance, 765 00:41:46,358 --> 00:41:48,860 even though Jannings was its theater actor, 766 00:41:48,860 --> 00:41:51,360 and there is something somewhat broad about his performance, 767 00:41:51,360 --> 00:41:54,470 you can see him beginning to adapt to the camera 768 00:41:54,470 --> 00:41:57,930 and to the more nuanced things that the camera can do. 769 00:41:57,930 --> 00:42:00,170 But even the parts of his role that 770 00:42:00,170 --> 00:42:02,840 are a little sort of exaggerated make sense 771 00:42:02,840 --> 00:42:04,920 because there's something pretentious and pompous 772 00:42:04,920 --> 00:42:06,070 about his character. 773 00:42:06,070 --> 00:42:08,650 One of the subtlest things about the film, in fact, 774 00:42:08,650 --> 00:42:11,030 is the way the character has this complexity. 775 00:42:11,030 --> 00:42:15,870 A character for whom the audience's sympathy 776 00:42:15,870 --> 00:42:19,960 is constantly solicited is also imperfect, 777 00:42:19,960 --> 00:42:23,050 in some ways, an annoying old man, not a nice person, 778 00:42:23,050 --> 00:42:27,250 selfish, proud of his superiority to the other people 779 00:42:27,250 --> 00:42:28,337 with whom he lives. 780 00:42:28,337 --> 00:42:30,170 One of the ways you could see this operating 781 00:42:30,170 --> 00:42:32,780 is the film really operates in two different spaces-- 782 00:42:32,780 --> 00:42:34,870 the space of the great hotel and the space 783 00:42:34,870 --> 00:42:38,460 where the character played by Jannings lives. 784 00:42:38,460 --> 00:42:40,790 He lives in a working class ghetto, a working class 785 00:42:40,790 --> 00:42:41,770 part of the city. 786 00:42:41,770 --> 00:42:44,610 And the two environments, the hotel and the working class 787 00:42:44,610 --> 00:42:46,760 part of the city, are juxtaposed, 788 00:42:46,760 --> 00:42:49,549 and we learn about each of them by their juxtaposition. 789 00:42:49,549 --> 00:42:50,965 The working class part of the city 790 00:42:50,965 --> 00:42:53,820 is interesting for a number of reasons, but one of the best 791 00:42:53,820 --> 00:42:56,470 is the pride he takes in his uniform. 792 00:42:56,470 --> 00:42:59,290 He may be only a hotel porter, But in his neighborhood, 793 00:42:59,290 --> 00:42:59,980 he's a big man. 794 00:42:59,980 --> 00:43:02,524 He's a big shot, and he's very proud of himself. 795 00:43:02,524 --> 00:43:04,190 You can even see him boring the children 796 00:43:04,190 --> 00:43:05,970 and giving them instructions and things. 797 00:43:05,970 --> 00:43:07,761 The most important point I'm trying to make 798 00:43:07,761 --> 00:43:09,970 is that he's a complex character that we learn 799 00:43:09,970 --> 00:43:14,920 this without dialogue through the genius of silent film, 800 00:43:14,920 --> 00:43:17,450 because he's both flawed and also 801 00:43:17,450 --> 00:43:21,260 an object of sympathy and affection. 802 00:43:21,260 --> 00:43:23,290 The film doesn't simplify his character. 803 00:43:23,290 --> 00:43:25,870 He's a spiky, unpleasant man in some ways, 804 00:43:25,870 --> 00:43:29,340 but we also still feel for him and recognize 805 00:43:29,340 --> 00:43:32,900 how terrible his tragedy is. 806 00:43:32,900 --> 00:43:35,160 One of the most important characteristics of the film 807 00:43:35,160 --> 00:43:37,870 and the mark of what a cinematic achievement it is 808 00:43:37,870 --> 00:43:41,400 is that up until very close to the very end of the film, 809 00:43:41,400 --> 00:43:46,710 there is not a single title card, not 810 00:43:46,710 --> 00:43:48,660 a single use of words. 811 00:43:48,660 --> 00:43:51,890 In other words, the film depends upon its visual power. 812 00:43:51,890 --> 00:43:54,890 And you understand even complex things like the fact 813 00:43:54,890 --> 00:43:57,210 that the character is drunk, whether he's not 814 00:43:57,210 --> 00:43:59,770 thinking straight, or that what he's seeing is not reality, 815 00:43:59,770 --> 00:44:01,520 but some distorted version of reality. 816 00:44:01,520 --> 00:44:03,275 No title cords explain this to you. 817 00:44:03,275 --> 00:44:07,290 The film has a fluency, a visual eloquence 818 00:44:07,290 --> 00:44:11,370 that's very remark-- that's the mark of a movie maker. 819 00:44:11,370 --> 00:44:13,370 But there's an interesting tip-off here. 820 00:44:13,370 --> 00:44:15,200 An interesting problem here is presented, 821 00:44:15,200 --> 00:44:16,480 and I'll end with this point. 822 00:44:16,480 --> 00:44:18,360 It has to do with the ending of the film, 823 00:44:18,360 --> 00:44:21,100 and I want you to think about this as you reflect on the film 824 00:44:21,100 --> 00:44:22,370 after you've watched it. 825 00:44:26,340 --> 00:44:28,220 I've described the basic plot of the film, 826 00:44:28,220 --> 00:44:31,710 and as you'll discover, this catastrophe 827 00:44:31,710 --> 00:44:34,660 that descends upon the protagonist of the film 828 00:44:34,660 --> 00:44:36,760 is reversed at the end of the movie. 829 00:44:36,760 --> 00:44:39,470 And see, he wins a lottery, and great good fortune 830 00:44:39,470 --> 00:44:40,687 descends upon him. 831 00:44:40,687 --> 00:44:42,520 Don't be angry that I've given you the plot. 832 00:44:42,520 --> 00:44:44,728 You can't talk about film seriously without doing it, 833 00:44:44,728 --> 00:44:45,820 so don't be disappointed. 834 00:44:45,820 --> 00:44:48,990 I won't spoil movies by doing real spoilers. 835 00:44:48,990 --> 00:44:50,650 If I think you shouldn't know this 836 00:44:50,650 --> 00:44:53,294 for the experience of the film, I won't mention it. 837 00:44:53,294 --> 00:44:54,710 But don't be annoyed if I do this, 838 00:44:54,710 --> 00:44:56,580 because I need to explain this stuff to you. 839 00:44:56,580 --> 00:45:00,510 So there's this reversal at the end, but it's a fake reversal. 840 00:45:00,510 --> 00:45:01,744 You don't really believe it. 841 00:45:01,744 --> 00:45:02,660 It seems inconsistent. 842 00:45:02,660 --> 00:45:04,400 Why do you think it's there? 843 00:45:04,400 --> 00:45:06,110 The film was such a downer. 844 00:45:06,110 --> 00:45:07,660 The original cut was such a downer 845 00:45:07,660 --> 00:45:10,080 that the people, the producers paying for the film 846 00:45:10,080 --> 00:45:11,940 said, no, no, no, you've got to put 847 00:45:11,940 --> 00:45:14,860 a happy ending on the movie. 848 00:45:14,860 --> 00:45:16,580 So Murnau and his colleagues-- it 849 00:45:16,580 --> 00:45:20,360 was a collaborative process-- the screenwriter, Carl Mayer, 850 00:45:20,360 --> 00:45:24,040 and the director of photography Carl [? Freund, ?] 851 00:45:24,040 --> 00:45:26,350 as well as the actors were all collaborating 852 00:45:26,350 --> 00:45:27,720 in the making of the film. 853 00:45:27,720 --> 00:45:29,520 They said, OK, well, what should we do? 854 00:45:29,520 --> 00:45:31,940 So they tacked on this happy ending. 855 00:45:31,940 --> 00:45:36,880 One of the things that marks the happy ending is a title card, 856 00:45:36,880 --> 00:45:38,920 and the appearance of the title card 857 00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:41,790 is a confession or a secret signal 858 00:45:41,790 --> 00:45:44,570 to the real members of the audience-- this film is over. 859 00:45:44,570 --> 00:45:46,320 Forget this crap that's coming at the end. 860 00:45:46,320 --> 00:45:47,800 At least that's how I want to read it. 861 00:45:47,800 --> 00:45:50,380 But what you should ask yourself as you're watching the film 862 00:45:50,380 --> 00:45:51,300 are two things. 863 00:45:51,300 --> 00:45:53,800 First-- not ask but meditate on-- first 864 00:45:53,800 --> 00:45:57,320 of all, this poor ending or this ending that seems to reverse. 865 00:45:57,320 --> 00:46:00,010 The reason the ending is bad is that the whole momentum 866 00:46:00,010 --> 00:46:02,350 of the film leads toward this catastrophe at the end, 867 00:46:02,350 --> 00:46:04,660 and to reverse it by an act of fortune 868 00:46:04,660 --> 00:46:07,480 like that is to deny the social and political implications 869 00:46:07,480 --> 00:46:10,460 and psychological implications of the story. 870 00:46:10,460 --> 00:46:12,490 It's a very unartistic thing to do. 871 00:46:12,490 --> 00:46:15,990 It violates the momentum of the text, 872 00:46:15,990 --> 00:46:18,867 of the trajectory of the character. 873 00:46:18,867 --> 00:46:19,700 So it's a bad thing. 874 00:46:19,700 --> 00:46:24,450 But it is also an embodiment of an enduring issue 875 00:46:24,450 --> 00:46:28,020 in movie making, which is the conflict between art 876 00:46:28,020 --> 00:46:29,400 and commerce. 877 00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:31,250 Movies are commercial objects. 878 00:46:31,250 --> 00:46:33,910 This is hardly the only film in the history of movies 879 00:46:33,910 --> 00:46:35,640 to be distorted in this way. 880 00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:38,290 And in fact, that tension is not always negative. 881 00:46:38,290 --> 00:46:41,560 Sometimes forcing directors to sort of communicate 882 00:46:41,560 --> 00:46:43,820 with their audiences is helpful. 883 00:46:43,820 --> 00:46:46,790 It isn't always the case that these commercial imperatives 884 00:46:46,790 --> 00:46:48,449 are negative, although they often are. 885 00:46:48,449 --> 00:46:50,740 But this is one of those classic instances that can you 886 00:46:50,740 --> 00:46:52,970 think of other famous examples? 887 00:46:52,970 --> 00:46:54,800 Orson Welles, the American director, 888 00:46:54,800 --> 00:46:57,470 was often-- suffered tremendously 889 00:46:57,470 --> 00:47:00,970 from this kind of pressure, because his films were thought 890 00:47:00,970 --> 00:47:03,680 to be unwatchable, and one of his films 891 00:47:03,680 --> 00:47:07,220 was cut against his will, and he lost control of his films. 892 00:47:07,220 --> 00:47:09,704 And he made very many fewer films 893 00:47:09,704 --> 00:47:11,120 than he might have made had he not 894 00:47:11,120 --> 00:47:14,880 been thought of as a commercial disaster by the Hollywood money 895 00:47:14,880 --> 00:47:15,470 people. 896 00:47:15,470 --> 00:47:17,170 And there are many, many other examples 897 00:47:17,170 --> 00:47:18,900 of this in the history of movies. 898 00:47:18,900 --> 00:47:21,650 One could say that this is one of the originating moments 899 00:47:21,650 --> 00:47:24,430 in which the conflict between art and commerce in the movies 900 00:47:24,430 --> 00:47:25,776 is dramatized for us. 901 00:47:25,776 --> 00:47:27,150 But there's something else I want 902 00:47:27,150 --> 00:47:28,310 you to think about as well as you're 903 00:47:28,310 --> 00:47:29,393 thinking about the ending. 904 00:47:29,393 --> 00:47:31,640 What is the moment at the end of the film that 905 00:47:31,640 --> 00:47:33,320 really would end the film? 906 00:47:33,320 --> 00:47:34,640 Because I think there is one. 907 00:47:34,640 --> 00:47:38,480 It's a visually very powerful moment, but it's so bleak. 908 00:47:38,480 --> 00:47:41,900 It's so sad that you can understand why the money 909 00:47:41,900 --> 00:47:43,030 men wouldn't have liked it. 910 00:47:43,030 --> 00:47:45,460 So as you're watching the film, think about all 911 00:47:45,460 --> 00:47:47,910 of these matters, but especially think 912 00:47:47,910 --> 00:47:51,540 about the way in which Murnau discovered 913 00:47:51,540 --> 00:47:54,700 more fully than any director up to his time 914 00:47:54,700 --> 00:47:58,520 what we might call the kinetic powers of the camera. 915 00:47:58,520 --> 00:47:59,830 He unchained the camera. 916 00:47:59,830 --> 00:48:02,940 He [? fliberated ?] the camera, and German film 917 00:48:02,940 --> 00:48:06,440 was-- world cinema, but German film especially, 918 00:48:06,440 --> 00:48:09,280 was never the same after that.