Dark City

German Expressionism

What makes us to have the interest to watch a movie normally? Before we watch a movie, we will go through some of the details parts of the movie. For instance, we will go through the genre, synopsis and others details parts on itself that make us to watch it. There are diverse kind of movies and they targeted different kind of target audience based on what their needs and what their expectation on the movie itself. Besides that, we also look at some terms on it for example the German expressionism. To further understand the influence of German Expressionism on contemporary media, we will look in the movie named as "Dark City". Now we will look at the thematic and stylistic elements adapted from the film movement in modern sci-fi film Dark City (1998) by Alex Proyas.

German Expressionism was an artistic movement that started before World War I in Germany with Expressionist cinema. It was an influential genre that shown us that cinema can be an art form, and it is not just for entertainment purposes. Expressionism tends to be characterized by showing the subconscious feelings of the characters and making them the surface of the work. The audience will be shown not what is strictly, naturally real but an abstract view of what the characters feel is real. Such art is generally portrayed as fairly dark.

Expressionism was actually part of the director's attempts to emphasize the subjective perspective and try and portray psychological complexity within the limits of the silent film medium. As camera techniques improved and actors developed a way of acting for silent films, directors gradually pushed to greater realism in the 1920s. Modern art and modern film is heavily influenced by German Expressionism. For example: films like Dark City.(Edward Scissorhands)

Dark City are about films are about false worlds created to fabricate ideal societies, and in both the machinery of the rulers is destroyed by the hearts of the ruled. Dark City is set in a surrealistic also is typical of a German Expressionist setting. There is a world underneath the world where the Strangers established machinery for their experiments unknown to the humans. The city comes with no daytime and changes its landscape. In fact, no other places exist outside of the city and the city itself is connected to the outer space.Distortion of reality can be observed in the shape-shifting of the buildings and interiors when the tuning commences. he make the world in Dark City in a mysterious way and enhance the feelings of unpredictability and insecurity in the film.

The distortion and wicked psychological state are further suggested by the gothic and dark appearance of the Strangers. The Strangers are pale, bald, wear only black colour clothing and have stiff, rigid and constricted movements. They have little movements in putting humans to sleep. As what the strangers are wearing, it reinforces the fact that they are some kind of weird natural beings compared to human with their dark appearances to identify that they are evil and bad.

German expressionism film is more focusing on mise-en scene. The lighting that are being use in ‘Dark City’ is low key lighting. From the beginning of the scene, John awake from the bath tub, the lamps is swinging in the air and we can see that they are shadow there to bring out the mystery and horror feel on it. Besides that, there’s also low-key lighting. With the addition of John’s reaction in panic, creates scary feels to the audience. In the movie "Dark City"most probably is shoot in low-key lighting and they all are in night scene.

In the conclusion, Dark City is a best movies that included what had mentioned above.