Expressionism in Viennese Opera and Weimar Cinema
Date
2012-05
Authors
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Publisher
University of Delaware
Abstract
In this thesis, I attempt to identify the characteristics that define Expressionism
in the disciplines of opera and cinema by comparing Alban Berg’s Lulu and Fritz
Lang’s Metropolis. By comparing the two works, I draw attention to the similarities
between two mediums’ and two locations’ forms of Expressionism and formulate
conclusions about the relationship between the two works. In my first chapter, I
explore how Expressionist artists’ feelings of inner necessity to express pure emotion
coincided with a growing interest in psychology. By looking at Freud’s Das
Unheimliche, I explore how the uncanny is represented similarly in Lulu and
Metropolis. Berg and Lang both create a sense of the uncanny by applying Freud’s
concept of the doppelganger, multiple inanimate or animate objects that must be
regarded as identical because they look identical, and by creating an unsettling
repetition of events. In the following chapter, I support the idea that because
Expressionism focused on the portrayal of pure emotion, there was little effort by
artists to make their means of expression as comprehensible to the audience as the
emotion itself. By examining scenes in which Berg and Lang convey chaos to the
audience, I identify techniques that communicate the pure emotion without exposing
the artist’s method. By studying the relationship between Viennese Expressionist
opera and Expressionist Weimar cinema, the elements that connect the two are
clarified, giving us insight into the way the artists understood and interacted with their
own works.
Description
Keywords
Expressionism, Weimar cinema, Viennese opera