Expressionism in the Cinema

Olaf Brill is a German-based freelance writer and editor for film institutes, museums and festivals, including the German Film Institute – DIF, Frankfurt, the Filmmuseum Berlin, and CineGraph, Hamburg. Gary D. Rhodes is Professor of Media, Oklahoma Baptist University. He is the author of Emerald Illusions: The Irish in Early American Cinema (2012), The Perils of Moviegoing in America (2012), and The Birth of the American Horror Film (2018). He is a founding editor of Horror Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal. Rhodes is also the writer-director of the documentary films Lugosi: Hollywood's Dracula (1997) and Banned in Oklahoma (2004).

• Acknowledgements; Editors’ Introduction; Section I: Expressionism in German Cinema; Expressionist Cinema: Style and Design in Film History, Thomas Elsaesser; Of Nerves and Men: Postwar Delusion and Robert Reinert’s Nerven, Steve Choe; Franjo Ledić: A Forgotten Pioneer of German Expressionism, Daniel Rafaelić; Expressionist Film and Gender: Genuine, A Tale of a Vampire (1920), Mirjam Kappes; ‘The Secrets of Nature and Its Unifying Principles’: Nosferatu (1922) and Jakob von Uexküll on Umwelt, Steve Choe; Raskolnikow (1923): Russian Literature as Impetus for German Expressionism, John T. Soister; Section II: Expressionism in Global Cinema; The Austrian Connection: The Frame Story and Insanity in Paul Czinner’s Inferno (1919) and Fritz Freisler’s The Mandarin (1918), Olaf Brill; ‘The rewakening of French cinema’: expression and innovation in Abel Gance’s J’accuse! (1919), Paul Cuff; Here Among the Dead: The Phantom Carriage (1921) and the Cinema of the Occulted Taboo, Robert Guffey; Drakula halála (1921): The Cinema’s First Dracula, Gary D. Rhodes; Le Brasier ardent (1923): Ivan Mosjoukine’s clind’œil to German Expressionism, Bernard McCarron; Nietzsche’s Fingerprints on The Hands of Orlac (1924), Phillip Sipiora; ‘True, Nervous’: American Expressionist Cinema and the Destabilized Male, Robert Singer; Dos monjes (1934) and the Tortured Search for Truth, David J. Hogan; Maya Deren in Person in Expressionism, Graeme Harper; Author Biographies; Index

The essays in Brill and Rhodes’ Expressionism in the Cinema not only extend the scholarship on Expressionist films, though that, in itself, would be ample contribution. They also capture the essence—the imagery, the irony, the worldview—that animates these films, and create thoughtful connections to wider social and cultural processes.