Technology towards transcendence : subliminal occultism in German Expressionist cinema
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Over the past century, the groundbreaking legacy of Expressionist cinema has inspired filmmakers and scholars alike with its special effects, visceral characters, and fantastic plotlines. In the Weimar Republic, the strangely stylized sets of what became known as Expressionist film captivated audiences worldwide with movies such as Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920), F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu: eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927). Though scholars generally agree that no Expressionist movement ever existed in cinema, I assert that the directors, screenwriters, and set designers 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 standard tarot deck by Arthur Edward Waite (originally from 1910), while basing their characters on the sephiroth 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 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 strangelooking 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 paper, which combines history, film studies, and the German language to find some complex and nuanced answers.
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Ph. D.