The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) and Metropolis (1927)

I could see the artistic measures in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) from its musical score and the camera effects employed. The music was very dark and always building up to something in the beginning of the film before the first murder took place. It got quieter when the murder was actually about to happen, impacting viewers in an emotional way. At first, viewers would always sense a tragedy was about to take place, but then when the music died down and viewers relaxed, a murder would then occur, catching them off guard. This increased the thrill of the film.

The first murder was displayed by the shadow on the wall behind the bed while the somnambulist was choking the man. It was an artistic measure to not show the two characters but focus on the wall behind them. Another part was the framing of the actors. The camera would fade from a scene into a circle framing one character; it really emphasized the constriction of the film and how everything was packed in.

Something the two films [The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Metropolis (1927)] had in common were the clean lines. For instance, when Cesare had taken the girl out of her bedroom and crawled up the side onto the roof of another building, there was a “Z” of lines drawing the viewers eyes up to Cesare with the woman on his back. The same “Z” was utilized in Metropolis with the architecture of the set. Showing the buildings, viewers would catch angles that drew their eyes to other buildings and so forth, constantly making the viewer look at the entire frame.

Metropolis was also very symmetrical, evident in the opening and ending sequences. In the beginning, all of the workers where shuffling in at exactly the same speed in uniform rows. There was an equilateral triangle of people walking up to the four-paneled doors in an exact, uniform manner.