German German Expressionist Filmstudio Babelsberg insanity betrayal intellectual The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Nosferatu M film shadows
The German cinema, marked by those times, saw the era of the German Expressionist film movement. Berlin was its center with the Filmstudio Babelsberg, which is the oldest large-scale film studio in the world. The first Expressionist films made up for a lack of lavish budgets by using set designs with wildly non-realistic, geometrically absurd angles, along with designs painted on walls and floors to represent lights, shadows, and objects. The plots and stories of the Expressionist films often dealt with madness, insanity, betrayal and other "intellectual" topics triggered by the experiences of World War I. Films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Nosferatu (1922) and M (1931), similar to the movement they were part of, had a historic impact on film itself.
