To answer this question we can speak both of stylistic movements in the arts in general that were influential upon the cinema, but also trends that began in film and, as your question says, changed the course of film history. The latter in some cases may have influenced the artistic world outside of movies, and created or reinforced general cultural trends.
In the German silent cinema of the 1920s, Expressionism, a movement that began in modernist painting, was a major factor. Films like The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, Nosferatu, and The Golem all had a dreamlike, surreal atmosphere about them and created the vogue for horror and science fiction films that is still with us today nearly a hundred years later. When talking films began, the techniques used by German directors such as F.W. Murnau, Paul Wegener, and Fritz Lang were incorporated into the English-language cinema and used by directors such as James Whale (Frankenstein) and Tod Browning (Dracula). Lang's silent Metropolis (1927) was a sci-fi tour de force and a seminal futuristic drama which may have had at least an indirect effect on fiction writing, as in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and later, George Orwell's 1984. Lang's early talkie M (1931) was in many ways a source of the cinematic techniques used ten years later by Orson Welles in what is often regarded the greatest of all American films, Citizen Kane (1941). Welles's use of lighting, "broken" editing, and camera movement were basically an extension of methods used by Lang and the other Expressionist directors. Unfortunately Citizen Kane, in my opinion at least, was something of a one-hit wonder (though it was not a hit upon first release), and Welles never again equaled his efforts in it.
Stylistically the most innovative developments of the rest of the 1940s were dominated by the film noir techniques begun by John Huston in The Maltese Falcon and Billy Wilder in Double Indemnity (1944). The elements of film noir, like those of the Expressionist cinema, have continued to have long-range influence into our own time. Typically a film noir will have a plot involving murder or other crimes, a central character who is an anti-hero or hero-villain, a female character who is a catalyst (often a negative one) for the main plot development, and a story line that expresses hard-boiled, cynical attitudes. As the label suggests, in these films much (or most) of the action takes place at night. The dialogue tends to be stylized. (Also, the characters tend all to smoke cigarettes incessantly. This was before people knew the dangers of smoking, but it appears that this tendency is still present in many films today.)
The legacy of films like Metropolis, The Golem, and Frankenstein can be seen in modern films such as the Star Wars franchise and the Marvel films, among many, many others. The film noir influence is shown in movies as diverse as The Godfather series, the films of the Coen brothers, and many further crime and "caper" films—the caper genre is a spinoff from film noir—such as, for instance, the soon-to-be-released Ocean's Eight, which is itself, of course, a re-think of Ocean's Eleven (in both the Frank Sinatra and George Clooney versions). The stylistic trends discussed here are only part of the answer to your question, but they are a continuing factor in film-making and in the general culture.
Saturday, November 7, 2015
What stylistic movements made cinematic innovations that, as a result, changed the course of film history (1900s)?
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