Abstract
After World War One, some of the most famous movies included Expressionist productions like Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). Though scholars generally agree that no Expressionist movement ever existed in cinema, I assert that the directors and screenwriters of movies now called “Expressionist” maintained among themselves a common ideographic layout based thematically on the tropical zodiac of Western astrology, and, within the mise-en-scènes, the minor arcana pips from the tarot deck by Arthur Edward Waite (originally from 1910), while basing their characters on the sipherot of the Hermetic cabala. This layout, which they implemented in all their so-called Expressionist movies, might most aptly be called an occult blueprint. I present this material in order to set forth the argument that the subtlety, the shrewdness, and the subliminality of occult ideography in Expressionist cinema has been ignored, neglected, and downright unnoticed in the whole of film and historical scholarship. But it is a field that demands to be taken more seriously by professionals and requires the attention of those familiar with the occult publications, arcane practices, and esoteric schools of and around Weimar Germany. Every scholar agrees: movies of this genre are filled with pentagrams, puffs of smoke, and strange-looking costumes. But all that content is nominal occultism. What about the seminal – that is, the truly hermeneutical – presence of the occult in Expressionist cinema? That crucial question is addressed in my study.
Presenters
Colton OchsnerPhD Candidate, History, University of Missouri-Columbia, Missouri, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
2022 Special Focus—Here Comes the Metaverse: Designing the Virtual and the Real
KEYWORDS
Contemporary, Historical, Performance-based/Practice-based
