The Color of Expressionism

While sitting in a class on the American animation industry, I made the comparison between the look of the Warner Bros. cartoon What’s Opera, Doc? and the famous German Expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari¹ (German title: Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari).  Chuck Jones was clearly aiming for a similar style to Caligari’s, but my comment led to a dispute about the use of color in these works.  I argued that the yellow splash of light in the Warner cartoon was almost identical to the yellow shapes on the floor in certain scenes in Caligari, but another student pointed out to me that black and white copies of the film are common, so the use of extreme colors isn’t really essential to Expressionism, and the professor proposed that extreme colors may belong more so to impressionism than to Expressionism.  This realization led me, in the sense of Rene Descartes, to cast all things I thought I knew into doubt, at least on the subject of German Expressionism, and to reevaluate them.

To find out the place of color in Expressionist film, I intend to create a general map of cinematic Expressionism, and by looking over the whole landscape, I hope to find where color (along with other aesthetic qualities) belongs.  To do this, I will first establish four points of comparison to use as corners for the spectrum of the Expressionist aesthetic, and then explore a variety of aesthetic properties and styles to see where they fit on this spectrum.

Fig. 1: Left: two shots from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920; Right: What’s Opera Doc?, 1957

                                                                                                        

Part One: Four Exemplary Focal Points

            The first point of comparison when determining what is and is not Expressionist must be the original art movement itself, which became popular in painting and theater in Europe (primarily Germany) well before it made its way into cinema.  While the film movement is now known for presenting certain kinds of visuals, the movement in painting was based more on principles than on matching a particular style.  Like other movements from the turn of the twentieth century, Expressionism was a response to realism, positing that art should reflect the internal reality of emotional experience rather than attempting to capture how things objectively appear.  The result was a group of paintings with a fairly flat look, often avoiding detailed, realistic shading in favor of solid colors enclosed in big, black outlines.  The portrayal of humans in this particular style can’t carry over to cinema very easily, but the artists in this movement were also fond of wild, jagged distortions, which do carry over into the cinematic movement (Bordwell 104).  In terms of color, the Expressionist painters may not have been striving for realism – consider “In A Village Near Paris” by Lyonel Feininger with a sky of solid pink – but even so, their color schemes were less intense than that of the climax of What’s Opera, Doc?.

            The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is said to be the first film in the cinematic Expressionism movement, so naturally it set the standard for the movement and thus serves as another good tentpole for this analysis.  While other German horror films from the same time period using more realistic sets, such as Nosferatu, tend to get grouped with the same movement, Caligari is the film with the most distinct style, and consequently, a film is most recognizably borrowing from German Expressionism when it borrows from Caligari.  The scenery in this film stands out for being wildly jagged, reflecting the mad psychology of the main character, and its sharp edges and distorted shapes are considered typical of the Expressionist style.  Right angles, it seems, are forbidden.  The lighting makes use of chiaroscuro, which involved sharply contrasting light and shadow for dramatic effect (Brockmann 50).  The lighting, too, seldom makes the shapes one would expect it to, and is often entirely impossible.

The performance style in Caligari might be called “theatrical” today, but it should be noted that the Expressionist theater movement also stood out for the performance styles of its actors.  The theater movement reacted against realistic performances in theater, so its aim was to be unrealistic and overly emotional (Bordwell 103-104).  For this reason, it may seem like theatricality is the wrong term to use to describe the acting in Caligari, but I argue that the acting in Expressionist films naturally had a different context simply because acting in film is different from acting in theater, which I think justifies the use of the term.  Even when striving for realism, actors on a stage must ensure that all of the audience can see and hear what emotions or actions they are portraying, which takes away their ability to behave entirely naturally.  In film, on the other hand, a style of acting had been developed that went further than theater could with its realism and its subtlety, taking advantage of the fact that small details of a performance can be made clearly visible with a close-up.  Caligari, then, stands out just by ignoring this fact and suggesting that actions had to be big and exaggerated in order to be visible, but even by the standards of theater, the awkwardly dance-like and even jerky movements of the film’s characters do seem peculiar (Bordwell 103-104).

German Expressionism is also known for having a large influence on film noir, but through film noir and its predecessors, Hollywood was developing an “American Expressionism,” which serves as another important point for comparison.  German Expressionism had its impact on Hollywood as early as 1931 in the horror films of Universal Studios, including Dracula (1931), Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), The Old Dark House (1932), The Black Cat (1934), and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935)².  While these films took great care in their design, decor, and camera angles, the lighting in particular is what carried over into film noir.  In combination with the influence of Val Lewton, a Russian-born producer at RKO who produced ‘B’ horror films and thrillers, these films laid the groundwork for the technique of using lighting to turn ordinary people and urban settings into a nightmarish scene, which would become commonplace for films noir in the 1940s (Spicer 16-17).  Some shots in film noir and other dramas from the same time period take chiaroscuro to its extreme, harshly lighting only parts of an actor’s face and leaving much of the shot pitch black.  Orson Welles also shaped film noir, and his Citizen Kane is sometimes cited as the primary example of American Expressionism, playing with odd angles, harsh lighting, mirrors, superimpositions, and distorting camera lenses, seemingly single-handedly establishing the tone of film noir (Spicer 18-19).

Fig. 2: The Black Cat, 1934.                    

Fig. 3: Film noir Raw Deal, 1948        

Fig. 4: Citizen Kane, 1940

The fourth noteworthy point of comparison, I argue, is the early work of Tim Burton.  Not every scene in every film he made in his early years is exemplary of Expressionism, but many scenes in Ed Wood and the majority of Beetlejuice are clearly playing with the jaggedness and the chiaroscuro that have come to be associated with Expressionism today.  So, why should Burton’s work be its own point of comparison instead of just another example of the American or German Expressionist style?  The simple answer is that Burton is famous for this style, and he employed it at a time when it was not part of any movement or cycle, so to many of today’s moviegoers, anything that resembles The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari would be thought to resemble the work of Tim Burton, because he is the primary contemporary figure to employ this style.  It is worth noting that the 1970s had their own highly theatrical and intensely lit horror films, and the mainstream Hollywood films of the 1980s also tended to employ theatrical lighting on a level that had been uncommon before the 1980s, so for Burton’s work to stand out during this time⁵, it must have been seen as a stylistic extreme, thus making it a good point of comparison.

Fig. 5: Tim Burton’s Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, 1985

Part Two: Mapping out the Landscape Between the Four Foci

            With these points of comparison in mind, let us now identify and clarify what properties exactly are required to call something “Expressionistic,” starting with the acting.  Now that it has been established that The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari featured an over-the-top, theatrical style of acting, should this be considered a part of the essence of Expressionism?  It probably shouldn’t be, simply because over-acting is something that appears too often outside of Expressionism and that does not occur often enough within Expressionism.  Over-acting is seen as fairly awkward, and consequently, it is often comedic, which is why it has become associated with film comedy.  Theatrical over-acting is obviously an important part of vaudeville, and it is common knowledge that vaudeville comedians laid much of the groundwork for film comedy, so it should be no surprise that it has become part of the film genre.  The behavior of Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times is anything but realistic, aiming for the awkward, exaggerated, and theatrical, setting a standard for film comedy that has never quite left.  Over-acting is an important part of Madeline Kahn’s performances in the films of directors like Mel Brooks, and it has a place in the works of contemporary filmmakers like Seth Rogen, so it is difficult to say that the exaggerated performance style is still primarily associated with Expressionism.

            Perhaps part of the reason why the extreme acting style of Caligari seems less essential to Expressionism than other aesthetic qualities of the film is that the other three foci are generally studied for their crafting and design, which isn’t a part of a character’s performance – but it is a part of a character’s design.  From the wild hair of Dr. Caligari to the long, pointed ears of Count Orlok, the early German Expressionist films are remembered in part for the costumes, masks, and make-up that morph their actors to match the madness of the characters they play.  This theme is continued clearly in Burton’s work, particularly with the characters of Beetlejuice and Edward Scissorhands.  It also has a place in the early horror films of Universal that shaped American Expressionism, but this raises a problem: nearly all American monster movies and most American horror movies since the 1930s have had characters with extreme masks and make-up, so it is very difficult to see this as a distinctly Expressionist trait (even if it is granted that German Expressionism may have been a significant influence on these films).  It follows that both of these aspects (theatrical performance and theatrical character design) may be described as aesthetic “bonus features” – properties that may not be essential to the aesthetic, but add to it and help make it more recognizable when they are present (like a private eye in a film noir).

            What is much harder to deny is the essential importance of the theatrical look of the environment in Expressionism, even if the environment would look normal and/or realistic without the use of theatrical lighting.  When the lighting is the source of the sense of theatricality, this sense comes from the fact that the lighting projects the intense emotion of the scene onto the environment, typically by using heavy shadows.  The light is not spread evenly throughout the shot, as would be the case with three-point lighting, but is instead focused on specific spaces, often impossibly so.  The shadows tend to make hard lines and angles that cover the walls and the actors’ faces, sometimes with the implication that the light is shining through a window, such as the technique in Citizen Kane of adding a visual sense of violence by cutting up the screen with hard lines.

            Theatrical sets make the Expressionist version of theatricality harder to identify.  If Expressionist sets can be called “theatrical,” it is not because of their shapes and angles, as theater is not known for employing such contorted, “cartoony” shapes in its sets.  It must be because of the sense of “fakeness” – the sense that the space is a crafted world, designed only to be seen from a few different angles at most, and made with artistic materials like wood and paint.  The backdrop of the little town on a hill used frequently in Caligari is not meant to look like anything but a painted backdrop, and this is convenient for horror filmmakers with low budgets who can’t afford to build full sets on big soundstages for their films.  Of course, another visual approach that would have also saved money and also resembled theater productions (of a different sort) is setting the scene in a black, empty space, like the scenes in which Mork speaks to Orson on Mork & Mindy⁶.  Expressionism generally strays away from this, instead relying on sets that serve as their own spectacle, bringing the viewer to a fantastic space.

Fig. 6: Mork & Mindy, 1978

            This raises a question: should the Munchkinland of 1939’s The Wizard of Oz or the moon of 1943’s Münchhausen⁷ be considered Expressionist simply because they create theatrical, fake-looking, fantastic spaces?  I think there are two reasons to answer negatively to both of these questions, and to find them, one must only look at very similar scenes from other films that come much closer to the look of Caligari or Beetlejuice by comparison (due to small, but noteworthy differences in style).  Note how similar Disney’s Babes in Toyland adaptation (1961) creates a very similar aesthetic to that of Oz’s Munchkinland, but the scenes in the villain’s house look distinctly different from those in the town.  Barnaby’s house is entirely crooked and angular, using the technique from Caligari of making a space reflect the psychology of the character occupying it⁸.  It is true that Munchkinland also matches the mood of its inhabitants, but the set of Barnaby’s house relies more on cartoony, simple lines and shapes, and there is also something inherently Expressionist (based on my four primary focal points) about darker, shadowy, places rather than lighter, happier places.  If there is any good example of a brightly lit environment that still feels, at the very least, related to Expressionism, it is probably the city on the moon in Terry Gilliam’s remake of Münchhausen, which makes all of the buildings in the city entirely flat, as though they were made to be flats in a theater production.  This sense of simplified, cartoon-like, flat images creating a warped, unsettling, and/or intimidating space that matches the mood of the scene seems to pinpoint the precise way in which Expressionism is fundamentally theatrical⁹.

Fig. 7: Munchausen, 1943                                               

Fig. 8: Babes in Toyland, 1961

Fig. 9: The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, 1988

            With all this established, I can now return to the question of color.  It is true that the original paintings in the Expressionist movement did not rely on particularly vivid or bright colors, and it is true that both German Expressionist film and American Expressionist film developed in black and white, but I still believe vivid, extreme color is part of Expressionism.  My reason is that bright colors are part of the artificial, exaggerated look of theater, as colorful sets tend to look more cartoony and make it more obvious that the sets are drawn or painted.  Musicals in particular are known for intense colors in their lighting –  when a character sings a song expressing anger, the lights with red gels are turned on, either creating a solid red spotlight or a red wash across the stage.  This makes for an entirely unrealistic, but completely understandable, visual representation of the character’s internal feelings.  Theatrical productions also use very simple, basic colors for much of their lighting, so green environments look very green, and the night looks very blue.  If the high-contrast lighting of American Expressionism can be said to be theatrical, then it must also be considered theatrical, and, on some level, Expressionist, when high-contrast lighting happens to use vivid gels.

            This, I think, is the way Tim Burton movies of the 1980s use color, but it also suggests that a little bit of Expressionism can be easily incorporated into the styles of movies set in more realistic worlds.  Horror movies of the 1970s such as Dario Argento’s Suspiria (1977) create a sense of being in a horrific, fantastic space even when the setting is the real world because, in many situations, intensely colored lighting is plausible¹⁰.  If the setting of the scene is a theater, then it is easy for films to use this kind of lighting without entirely losing a sense of realism, so the film can resume its objectivity once the story moves to another location (consider the climax of Brian de Palma’s 1974 Carrie film¹¹).  (This is not unlike the way that Leontine Sagan’s Mädchen in Uniform [1931] – a film in the new objectivity movement, which is considered reactionary against Expressionism – features scenes with Expressionist lighting, because it seems like it could plausibly be coming from a real window.)  Based on all of this, I think directors in the 1980s relied on extreme, theatrical colored lighting frequently for their films, creating a sort of “80’s Expressionism.”¹²

Fig. 10: Suspiria, 1977                                                        

Fig. 11: Carrie, 1976

Fig. 12A: Back to the Future: Part 2, 1989                       

Fig. 12B: Gremlins, 1984

Fig. 12C: Heathers, 1989

            All of this put together makes for, I hope, a fairly comprehensive map of the Expressionist aesthetic.  Between Expressionist painting, German Expressionist film, American Expressionism, and the early works of Tim Burton, there is a reasonably clear picture of what Expressionism is.  Theatrical and over-the-top acting and character design may be optional, but a theatrical look is key.  This may be accomplished by having flat, artificial looking sets, impossibly vivid colors, and/or intense, high-contrast lighting, but either way, there must be a sense of intense, troubled emotion.  The style focuses on the jagged, the crooked, the twisted, and the awry, to reflect this feeling in the character’s psyche and/or convey this mood to the audience.  Ironically, I haven’t addressed the question of where cartoons fit into Expressionism, but animation’s relationship to both visual arts (such as painting) and the development of cinema is so complex that this would require another essay entirely.  For now, it is clear that the colorful and cartoony does, in some way, belong in Expressionism, and as long as I can go win an argument with that one animation professor, I’m satisfied.

What’s Opera Doc?, 1957

Sources

Brockmann, Stephen, A Critical History of German Film, Camden House, 2010.

Spicer, Andrew, Film Noir, Pearson, 2002.

Bordwell, David, and Kristin Thompson Film History: An Introduction, 2^nd Ed., McGraw-Hill, 2003.

Submitted by J. D. Hansel.

If I’m You, and You’re Me... Who’s Germany?

Certain words exist that are so definitive in their national tongue that they do not require a translation when being integrated into the American lexicon. It may be that the action, emotion, symbol, object, or whatever is being defined, is so distinctly characteristic of its originator’s home culture that it simply cannot be successfully translated into an English counterpart. Foreign words and phrases like “sangfroid” or “schadenfreude” are not easy to directly convert into English, so instead they are borrowed in their original form. One such example of this unique vocabulary phenomenon is the German word, “doppelgänger,” which ironically enough does not have a direct English language companion, even though the word itself describes a doubling, mirror image or similar counterpart. The doppelgänger is a motif that is so expressly German that it has no need for a proper translation, as no literal translation could capture the essence of what this word truly seeks to construe.  While the mythology behind the doppelgänger has since extended to other nations and cultures, it has remained a staple of the portrayal of German existence on screen throughout history.

            The doppelgänger existed long before film became the dominant mode of mass storytelling. In Der Doppelgänger: Double Visions in German Literature,Andrew J. Webber attempts to uncover just exactly what purposes the doppelgänger served in German literature, especially Romantic literature. His first characteristic used to define the doppelgänger also serves to help justify the naming of his text: “If I choose the subtitle ‘Double Visions’, then it is because my first premiss is that the Doppelgänger is above all a figure of visual compulsion-” (Webber, 1996, p. 3). Although he continues to add parameters to his definition of what constitutes a doppelgänger, this first rule is helpful in understanding just how this motif will have even more of a lasting effect on screen rather than paper. The phenomena of the doppelgänger is a visual experience that confounds the audience and makes them question their own sense of sight. The peculiarities of this fantastical motif were practically designed to astound audiences that were new to film. To understand the world around us, we must utilize different senses in different combinations in order to draw a reasonable conclusion about our environment. While literature uses vivid descriptions to paint pictures in the reader’s mind, film can cut out the middleman and display the same scenario in a way that is predominantly visual. Basically, without the “distractions” of the other senses, we allow our sense of sight to become stronger and more crucial to our comprehension of what is happening in front of us. Then, when our sense is fooled by the trickery of seeing double, we begin to doubt ourselves more than we’re comfortable to admit. In this way, Webber is right to conform his criteria to the basis of “visual compulsion” as this effect is indeed dependent on deploying a hesitation between the eyes and the brain, but I believe this also means that the doppelgänger motif is better suited for film, whose images can immediately force this hesitation to the viewer’s psyche.

Heide Schlüpmann makes the case that since films are a collective effort, worked on by many different people, they better reflect a collective mentality than a novel written by an individual does. The novel, it is argued, pushes a single set of morals from the solo author, while films contain the communal beliefs of everyone who had a hand in their creation.   Siegfried Kracauer and Friedrich Freska both shared ideas that would influence this train of thought, including their concepts of collective psyche and universal cultural force, respectively (Brockmann, 2010, p. 37).  These discussions pertain to the early silent film, The Student of Prague (1913), a film known to some as the first true art film. Paul Wegener, the star of the film, stated, “...I turned for the first time to film, because I thought I had an idea which could not be realized in any other medium...and I said to myself that it must also be possible to film E. T. A. Hoffmann’s fantasies of a Doppelgänger or mirror image, as if they were reality, and thus achieve effects which were not possible in any other art form-” (Schlüpmann, 1986, p. 13). In the film, Balduin, played by Wegener, makes a deal with a devil-like, supernatural being –Scappinelli –  but, is then unexpectedly blamed for crimes that his devil-summoned doppelgänger commits. There have been many different interpretations as to what this split in personalities could signify. It has been speculated that the split into two separate entities is a reflection of Germany’s pre-World War I condition that featured a, “physically unstable and divided Germany...worried about its status and willing to enter into morally questionable pacts to defend and enhance that status-” (Brockmann, 2010, p.37).

It was right after this period that German cinema reached what might be considered its golden age. Post-World War I, the Weimar Republic was founded, and it is during this time that many of Germany’s most influential films were released, many of which featured the doppelgänger motif.  The doppelgänger has become somewhat of a universal term to describe any kind of lookalike, double, clone, alter ego, or twin, evil or not, but it almost always came as the result of a supernatural, magical, or fantastical situation. This can be traced back to the original Faustian legend, which featured a now familiar deal-with-the-devil transaction that lead to the splitting of one’s self. Faust was a man who was more concerned with knowledge and medicine than he was with faith and religion, so maybe Germany’s infatuation with the doppelgänger is not only a way of dealing with an identity crisis, but also a way of coping with existential concerns and the religious stress tied to them. At this point in history, psychology was becoming more fashionable in the world of medicine; Otto Rank even released an extensive psychoanalytic summary of The Student of Prague known as The Double that has been referenced almost endlessly since its publication. In his review, Rank contemplates the “original problem of the self...which modern adaptors support, or which has been obtrusively pushed to the fore by new techniques of representation.” (Schlüpmann, 1986, p. 13) So again, while film pushes the boundaries of what we can physically interpret, the changing of mediums did not so much recreate the motif, as add another dimension to it. If “seeing is believing,” then films may have changed how people chose to believe. It’s easier to believe in a God when miracles are few and far between, but when humans can suddenly create their own “ghostly apparitions” it becomes more natural to question your surroundings, as if your senses have been lying to you all along.

Some people travel the world looking to find themselves while others trust they will experience an “Aha!” moment of self-discovery that reveals to themselves who they really are. The doppelgänger motif disregards this search for the most part, and when a person is divided into two different selves they always seem to know that they are themselves while the other is some form of imposter. This proves to be fatal in The Student of Prague, as Balduin shoots who the man he assumes to be a double, when in fact it was him all along, turning the would-be murder into a bizarre suicide. When it comes to deciphering who is who, you would think no one but the original doppel would know who’s authentic, but even that’s not always the case.

During this golden age of German cinema, some of the most influential films to be released had their share of ominous lookalikes and malevolent clones. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) and Metropolis (1927), two of the most influential and groundbreaking films of their respective genres, both utilize the doppelgänger motif to varying levels. The use of the doppelgänger in Caligari continues the trend of psychologically inspired doubles, featuring a somnambulist named Cesare following Dr. Caligari’s evil orders when hypnotized, and also a twist ending, which uncovers the apparent truth behind Dr. Caligari’s mysterious identities.  Instead of being a madman using hypnosis as a weapon, it is revealed that Dr. Caligari is actually an asylum director while his alter ego was a character in a delusional story being told by one of the patients. In Metropolis, Dr. Rotwang creates a robot-clone of  Maria that is sent to sabotage the workers in their mission for equality and fairer living conditions. These examples help to show the growth of the doppelgänger motif as an identifying source for German society. Before, the doppelgänger was born out of a supernatural event, but now even medical and scientific scenarios, such as mental illness or a scientist’s experimentation, could lead to such a divide. Science is an even more terrifying topic than religion because it’s harder to grasp and the answers to certain questions aren’t as reassuring as the religious ones. Science being shown to simultaneously have unknown limits and God-like powers makes the audience uncomfortable because it also displays a complete indifference to human life, as opposed to the reassurance our egos would prefer.

(Pictured: L- “Evil” Dr. Caligari with Cesare; R- “Good” Dr. Caligari in the asylum (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari))

The costumes that are deployed in these films also served to help as a visual aid when breaking down who was on the “good” or  “bad” side. Scapinelli, Dr. Caligari, Cesare, Dr. Rotwang, and Maria’s clone, the perpetrators of the doppelgänger motif in their films, all have distinctive clothing that clearly separates them from the “good” sides of themselves or the cast. Costume, especially in German Expressionist cinema, “was to always be a dramatic factor” (Eisner, p. 112) and the costuming of these characters helps to organize the two sides into more accessible and obvious categories for the audience. Cesare is a shadow of a person, dressed in all dark clothing and wearing dark face makeup, while Scapinelli resembles a “cross between a demon and a scarecrow,” according to Eisner. Using these dark colors to show the contrast between the groups is a way for the filmmakers to nudge the viewer in the right direction. With this example, we can see the German doppelgänger motif is no stranger to making a foreigner the “other” in this situation.

(Pictured: L- Balduin and Scappinelli (Student of Prague); R- Rotwang and the Maria clone (Metropolis))

Germany, like almost all countries, puts itself and its citizens’ needs first and foremost. It is no surprise, then, that foreigners such as Italians or Turks are sometimes seen as the outsiders who are attempting to break Germany’s self image. In order for Germany to overcome these obstacles, they figure the only ones they can trust are themselves, even if they aren’t sure who they really are. After so many governmental shifts in such a small period of time, it’s no wonder German citizens can feel like they lack a true national identity, if one even exists at all.

 As German cinema continued to evolve, so too did the motif. After the Weimar Republic, the most notable and recurring dualities came from time-relevant issues including: Nazis having to hide their regrettable pasts, the multiple lives of people living under a Communist regime, Turks who must try to assimilate into a German society, women who are oppressed or attempting to live as both a mother and a lover, gay men who dress and talk differently to fit in, and so on. The doppelgänger may have started out as a mystical or paranormal occurrence, but as Germany has grown, so too has its collective understanding of what it means to be whole.

So is a doppelgänger one or two people? Is it just one person that has been split into two, or is it two people that have stemmed from the same being, like a fresh set of twins? “...Only by means of the other of itself does it have -- itself,” claims Wolfgang Iser, who is describing the kind of doppelgänger that exists even in real life. It is not a supernatural being who caused this separation of selves, but rather yet, the society in which they exist not allowing both selves to coexist. This is the doppelgänger that has seemingly come to represent Germany as film has moved from spectacle to realism and back to a balance between the two. This reading shows that the doppelgänger does not only arise due to a paranormal interaction, but that it just needs two opposing forces that cannot cohabitate to push “someone” out. It is here that the importance of socialization comes into play, as the doppelgänger shows how communication and social standing is necessary to be a part of society. Doppelgängers like Balduin’s apparition, Cesare, and Maria’s clone show the dangers of miscommunication and assumptions about a group of people. All the townspeople were convinced it was the real Balduin committing those crimes, and all the workers really believed it was their savior, Maria, who was causing the destruction of the city. The doppelgängers not only displayed objectionable behavior, but showed how quickly people’s trust can evaporate when put in a struggle or compromising position. Iser’s reading also makes the case that one’s public and private lives are meant to be balanced, hopefully as evenly as possible, but that neither is “to be seen as ‘by nature’ the better-” (Iser, p. 80). Simply put, the doppelgänger is always there, it’s just that it takes specific conditions to coax it out into the realm of a person’s reality.

All earthlings are tasked with the impossible feat of figuring out who they really are, and how one goes about solving that mystery is an adventure all on its own. Germany has had the unique experience of growing and changing as a nation almost as wildly and unpredictably as its film industry grew and deviated. The doppelgänger has remained a key motif throughout the history of German cinema, and has since become a trope that is noticeable in cinemas all around the world. How we are supposed to make sense of this world is anyone’s guess, but who better to consult than yourself? Schlüpmann goes on to say that the doppelganger- “represents an expression of an individual’s inability to free himself from the narcissistic phase,” so in the end, while the doppelgänger may appear to be a person’s wild side beginning to let loose, it is really the person showing that they are at the mercy of themselves unless they seek help from those around them. A national identity is not declared, but is built from a society whose population, geography, and culture is able to identify itself as unique or distinct among its counterparts. Germany’s reoccurring use of the doppelgänger motif reflects a society that is struggling to pin down a singular identity, although this never-ending identity crisis is one thing that has ironically become a distinctly German attribute.

Works Cited

Eisner, Lotte H. The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt. University of California Press, n.d. Print.

Iser, Wolgang. The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology. Google Books.     JHU Press, 1 Mar. 1993. Web. 27 April 2017.

Brockman, Stephen. A Critical History of German Film. Camden House, 2010. Print.

Schlüpmann, Heide. "The First German Art Film; Rye's The Student of Prague." German Film and Literature: Adaptations and Transformations. Ed. Eric Rentschler. New York: Methuen, 1986.  Web. 18 April 2017.

Webber, Andrew J. The Doppelgänger: Double Visions in German Literature. Google Books.

Clarendon Press, 7 June 1996. Web. 22 April 2017.