Joaquim da Silva Fontes, Significação e Estabilidade do Género no ...

1.4 German Expressionist Influences
Not one important symptom of the post-war years is
missing. Stock exchanges maneuvers, occultist
charlatanism, prostitution, and over-eating,
smuggling, hypnosis and counterfeiting,
expressionism, violence and murder! There is no
purpose, no logic in this demonic behavior of a
dehumanized mankind – everything is a game.
(Scheunemann 2003:10)
It is not accidental that much debate goes around the issue of which films or groups
of films are part of the “Expressionist art movement”. So there again – though perhaps not
posed so insistently as the question which films can be considered noir – one of the leading
questions that is often asked is whether one should refer to, for example, F.W. Murnau as
an Expressionist or a “realist” director. No doubt, when discussing Expressionist cinema
one has to think of a definite period, and one that is identified as a fundamental part of the
commotion of that period, as part of the frenetic extremism of the time.
The quote above is in point of fact addressed to the film by Fritz Lang called Dr.
Mabuse, der Spieler (Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler, 1922), seen by many as the one which
established Lang’s reputation as a director. In fact, the movie is more than a melodramatic
story about a strange professional gambler; it turned out to be a metaphor for a Germany
that was just as strange and disastrously drawn towards fascism. Many contemporary
critics, like James Naremore and Marc Silberman, also endorse the realism of the portrait
of high society the film shows, serving as an authentic document of that time, in a world
given over to immorality and corruption. The film was much acclaimed in the press:
The world which opens up before our eyes in this film is the world in which we all
live. Only it is condensed, exaggerated in detail, concentrated into essentials, all its
ingredients throbbing with the feverish breath of those years, hovering between
crisis and convalescence, leading somnambulistically just over the brink, in the
search for a bridge that will lead over the abyss. This gambler, Dr. Mabuse, was not
yet possible in 1910; he will, perhaps - one is tempted to say hopefully - no longer
be possible in 1930. But for the years around 1920 he represents a larger than lifesize
portrait, is almost a symbol, at least a symptom. Mankind, decimated and
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