Aesthetics

Question 1

Realism

Answer 1

• aims to represent life, characters, settings and events as closely as possible to real world counterparts
• emphasises authenticity
• goal is to create a sense of familiarity, relatability and emotional resonance: allows a connection with the on screen world

Question 2

Realism in Sunrise

Answer 2

• creates a busy and modern experience with the city
• the rush of people, cars and towering buildings create a sense of believability that this is a real place: congrats with emptier and less busy countryside sets

Question 3

What is verisimilitude?

Answer 3

creating a sense of believability, not actuality

Question 4

What is German expressionism?

Answer 4

an artistic movement that seeks to convey emotional and psychological states, rather than a realistic representation of the world

Question 5

German expressionism applied to Sunrise

Answer 5

• exaggerated use of angles
• dark story themed
• montage, juxtaposition and clever effects to reveal more about inner states and inform us of other parts of the story
• flashbacks such as selling farm animals and happier times

Question 6

When was the German Expressionist era?

Answer 6

1919-1929

Question 7

What is a Kammerspielfilm?

Answer 7

A film that explores a crisis in a characters life in detail: the emphasis being on slow evocative acting and telling details rather than extremes

Question 8

Murnau as an auteur

Answer 8

• deep focus photography to create depth of field
• fluid camera movement and use of tracking shots to give a feel of space and energy
• unbalanced framing suggests a space outside the frame which we could potentially see, rather than self contained filming
• extensive use of forced perspective; shot of the city with normal sized people and sets in foreground and smaller figures in the backgrounds with smaller sets

Question 9

Recurring themes in Expressionist cinema

Answer 9

• the known and unknown
• temptation
• fear of death
• extreme situations
• fascination/fear of modern urban life and technology

Question 10

Character tropes in expressionist cinema

Answer 10

• obsessive
• melancholic
• mad
• tortured
• anti-heroic
• paranoid

Question 11

What does dialectic mean?

Answer 11

Two opposing/contradicting ideas or view are juxtaposed as a way of examining and discussing them