AHC: German Expressionism becomes a key genre in film

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
I have a fondness for German Expressionist films from the 20s and 30s. I've sporadically wondered how to make a timeline where it is a continuous staple genre with a typical subject matter rather than something which is primarily an aesthetic. I've usually thought about this in terms of ensuring it stays alive in German cinema and then ensuring German cinema isn't completely outclassed by American cinema. A CP victory might create a Germany with more cultural influence and soft power, but may preclude German Expressionism if it strengthens German cultural conservatives. A surviving Weimar might be a possibility, but its international cultural influence is not assured.

I'm looking for a continuous presence and a German one, not a revival a la Tim Burton.

Any ideas on how this could be done?
 
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BlondieBC

Banned
Who are the cultural conservatives you are trying to avoid in a CP win? The Junkers? A particular political party?
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
Who are the cultural conservatives you are trying to avoid in a CP win? The Junkers? A particular political party?

I'm mainly thinking of the Junkers. But if Germany went red, they could end up just as hostile as the Soviets became to Constructivism, calling it bourgeois art and making a socialist realism equivalent the institutionalised art form. Basically there needs to be political social progressiveness and a laissez faire attitude to art and culture by the government. I also wonder if the gloomy tone of German Expressionism would exist without Germany's OTL WWI experiences, though if it was a late victory it's possible.
 
You don't get much more long-lived than Metropolis and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. IMO, German Expressionism is already a staple of 20th century film.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I'm mainly thinking of the Junkers. But if Germany went red, they could end up just as hostile as the Soviets became to Constructivism, calling it bourgeois art and making a socialist realism equivalent the institutionalised art form. Basically there needs to be political social progressiveness and a laissez faire attitude to art and culture by the government. I also wonder if the gloomy tone of German Expressionism would exist without Germany's OTL WWI experiences, though if it was a late victory it's possible.

For Germany, what you want is easy. You want a CP win that is not very fast. A long war will discredit the Junkers, say anything that ends in 1917 or later. It is very, very hard to write a quick CP win without a big Entente blunder.

If you want no communism, that is also doable. Lenin was a long shot IOTL. Lots of paths. Negotiate peace in winter of 1916/17 by Tsar. Or keep USA out of war, so Whites make peace before Reds have shot at power. Or have Germany be doing enough better to prevent reds from taking over.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
The question then is, can German cinema be as big as American cinema in the long run. And how could German expressionism be an enduring and continuous staple genre like film noir, and not be a fad confined to a particular period?
 

BlondieBC

Banned
The question then is, can German cinema be as big as American cinema in the long run. And how could German expressionism be an enduring and continuous staple genre like film noir, and not be a fad confined to a particular period?


Not sure it will be able to. Germany winning creates a German dominated language zone in Europe with 150 million people of so in 1920. This is much larger than the USA population at the time, but less than English speakers world wide. It gives you a split market. Germany dominates Europe, USA dominates USA and Commonwealth.
 

BlondieBC

Banned
I thought about what your were asking for. I can't give you specifics on various types of film, but I can meet your requirements if you look at my TL.

1) Communism - Russia stays white, maybe even with Monarch. Lenin never leaves Switzerland.

2) Germany's Monarchist weakened. Due to various reason, the Kaiser and supporting powers will have less power.

3) World fragmented into German, French, and English language zones. No zone is clearly dominant.

A) Germany and A-H give you 120 million people, of who about 85 million speakers with 35 million with familiarity to German.

B) Add in about 30 million Poles, Baltics and Slavs with German exposure.

C) Add in Ottomans - 25 million. Other Balkans - 20 million.

D) I have also created MittelAfrika and Afrikaneer speaking Greater South Africa. Today would be easily 300 million people familiar with Germany.

So for the day, I have 85 million German-first speakers plus 110 million with some familiarity excluding Africa. Roll it forward until today, it is probably closer to 250 million people in Europe who speak fluent German and another 100-300 million who speak it as a language of trade and another 200-300 million in Africa.

I can even tell you where the main studio (Hollywood) is located at. Coastal Angola, which has a Hollywood like climate and Geography. Now I can't say what kind of films they make, but there will be a lot of them and a long tradition of film making.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
Avoiding the Nazis might fulfill the challenge to a small extent, preventing the exodus from the German film industry to Hollywood. Hollywood horror and film noir might look quite different without the contribution of German expressionist directors.

If Germany did win WWI, its economy would still need to be lousy post-war to prolong the use of cheap, painted, expressionist sets over the sets films with bigger budgets would use. There should still be inflation (money which will soon be worthless is more likely to be spent today) and maybe a continuation of the foreign film ban to create the market for the films.
 
THe thing is, as stated above, German Expressionism IS a very key genre in film history. Hell, in the study of Silent Film is treated as it's own seperate entity because of how influential it is. Expressionism lead directly to Film Noir, Science Fiction, Many modern horror films, Detective stories, every single movie that uses Chiaroscuro lighting, it can also be said to be directly responsible for most of modern so called "Art" cinema.

The thing is, German Expressionism was big in Berlin in the twenties as a way of portraying the shattered post World War I society and it's crushing psychological effect on the generation that went through it. It later spread because of the fact that the film medium was silent, and thus, had a global market.

It IS a very key genre, and nothing will make it have a larger part in film history.

What it could give us at that point in time it did give, and really, it's not as if Expressionism was obscure or anything.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
THe thing is, as stated above, German Expressionism IS a very key genre in film history. Hell, in the study of Silent Film is treated as it's own seperate entity because of how influential it is. Expressionism lead directly to Film Noir, Science Fiction, Many modern horror films, Detective stories, every single movie that uses Chiaroscuro lighting, it can also be said to be directly responsible for most of modern so called "Art" cinema.

The thing is, German Expressionism was big in Berlin in the twenties as a way of portraying the shattered post World War I society and it's crushing psychological effect on the generation that went through it. It later spread because of the fact that the film medium was silent, and thus, had a global market.

It IS a very key genre, and nothing will make it have a larger part in film history.

What it could give us at that point in time it did give, and really, it's not as if Expressionism was obscure or anything.

For film history, yes.

How many people in the street would know what you were talking about if you mentioned film noir to them? And how many would know what you were talking about if you mentioned German Expressionism to them (except maybe continental Europe, I don't know what its general recognition level is like there)? Film noir is not an easy thing to pin down in words, but people generally recognise it when they're watching it. By the same token, people could infer the style of German Expressionism if you pointed to retro or post-modern imitations like Tim Burton's films or Dark City and told them they are imitations of it, but most wouldn't already think of it as being or having ever been a distinct genre.

But you also seem to be suggesting it couldn't remain a staple film genre beyond the circumstances which created it.
 
No it became what it became BECAUSE of the status of 1919 and 1920's Germany.

"Culture isn't created in a vacuum" and all that.

German Expressionism is a distinct, influential genre of film and art that had more influence and lasted longer than MOST modern art movements and had a strong distinct influence on the history of film and art in general.

The thing is, it really can't be bigger or survive longer. "The Jazz Singer" still will introduce sound and forever split the market into English language and foreign language films, and Surrealism will still come to dominate the art galleries in the 30's.

German Expressionism is as influential as it ever could become. Really it would be LESS influential if you butterflies away Hitler, since F.W. Murnau, G.W. Pabst and Fritz Land would have no incentive to leave Germany, thus removing the films they made in the United States that helped to tremendously secure the influence of this genre.

And Expressionism is a cinematic style above all, it's where had most impact and you can't make it more important, it can't sustain itself any logner than it did.
 
A CP victory should butterfly away German expressionism as we know it. As with all things regarding movies, to keep Hollywood down and German movies up, the POD has to involve getting rid of the Nazis in the early '30s at the most. That way, the German movie industry isn't swallowed by nazism and no WWII results in a less dominant Hollywood.

That said, expressionism will change and mutate in ATL. It's not even a genre, but rather a aesthetic, which different genres can take advantage of. Eventually, I guess it will turn into a historic issue anyway, as the different genres use it or not.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
There's no need for it to be German Expressionism 'as we know it'. The style vs genre issue would be sorted out if the style more closely correlated with a particular subject matter, rather than buck shot spattered across horror, science fiction, fantasy and crime. There have been film noir forays into a number of genres, but in the popular imagination, it's a subgenre of crime fiction. If German Expressionist films* could be primarily psychological horror/thrillers which include settings and elements from Central European folklore and Gothic romanticism, there's no reason it couldn't be a genre based on subject matter as well as style.
 
German Expressionism is an aestethic, not a literary genre. So subject matter is inconsequential to it. And if you don't want it to be what we know it to be, then it won't Expressionism. And it didn't even start in Germany, it just took on a very distinct form there, so there is little to nothing that can make it last longer than it did, it can't start earlier, if the political environment of the day is changed it won't have the same effect and as said, since it isn't a genre but an aesthetic style, it spreads over a platitude of genres.

And you can't make it any more or less important, it's perhaps the singular most important aestethic in film history, it's up there with Griffith's editing breakthroughs in terms of the development of modern cinema. There is no need to make it more important because it is already up there as one of the most influential art movements in the 20th century.

It can only be less important really.
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
The Student of Prague is from 1913, and Carl Mayer, as far as I know, didn't serve in WWI, so there's a good chance German Expressionism in film would ripen in some form or another regardless of the POD. A closed film market in continental Europe shouldn't make it less viable and could allow it to survive the transition to sound, since the international market would never be a concern.

Cut off from international film, a slew of imitators focusing on similar subject matter could appear to make money off a captive audience by retreading similar ground and combining subject matter and aesthetic into a new subgenre. And yes, it's not a pretty thought and it wouldn't be considered our German Expressionist film and it might even take on a name other than German Expressionist film, but it could conceivably endure as a staple film genre, which comes close enough to what I'm looking forward.

If that lessens its influence on 20th century film, that's okay too. Teasing out alternate developments is what makes PODs interesting and is what we're here for afterall.

EDIT: I've edited the first post to be more specific and along these lines. I've requested the title of the thread have 'key' changed to 'staple'.
 
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If you want staple, you're probably going to give birth to the dreadful Heimatfilm genre a generation earlier, unfortunately! Nein, Danke.....
 

Rush Tarquin

Gone Fishin'
If you want staple, you're probably going to give birth to the dreadful Heimatfilm genre a generation earlier, unfortunately! Nein, Danke.....

I don't see sentimental fluff meshing with Expressionism too well.

Do you mean in terms of it being deemed pulp-ish?
 
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