Historical text analysis and resear

FILM ART - AN INTRODUCTION

''The first horror films are surreal, disturbing pieces, owing their visual appearance in part to expressionist painters and in part to spirit photography of the 1860s.''

' In later decades, other low b udget filmkaers were drawn to the genre. Horror became a staple of the 1960's U.S. independent production, with many films targeted at the teenage market'

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'George Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968) was budgeted at only $114,000, but it success of college campuses helped revive the genre'

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- Nineteenth century audiences enjoyed seeing ghosts captured in still photography and magic lantern shows


technique: 

used photographic trickery to explore darker stories with psychological and supernatural themes, recognizable as the first horror films.



texts: 

The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari (1919)

 Director: Robert Wiene 

Writers: Carl Mayer, Hans Janowitz

take on reality is a disturbing experience - heightened by the jagged asymmetry of the mise en scene.

• diegetic world is wholly artificial, 
• surreal landscape

The Golem (1915/1920)

Director: Carl Boese, Paul Wegener

Writers: Henrik Galeen, Paul Wegener

FIRST monster movie

 about a clay man created by a magically-inclined rabbi

Nosferatu (1922)

FIRST vampire movie

baldly plagiarising the Dracula story to present Count Orlok

He changed the names of the central characters, but did not alter the story

THE DEBATE:

The horror films of the early 1980s show a new energy and delight in the genre

Special effects creators created sequences that had never been attempted on film before.