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Weimar Cinema Aesthetics and Thematics: Robert Wiene's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and Fritz Lang's "Metropolis"

The pioneering Soviet Russian film director and theorist Sergei Eisenstein, in the 1920s, once described the silent cinema of the Weimar Republic as a “barbaric carnival of the destruction of the healthy human infancy of our art.”[1] Equally harsh, in the 1983, the German expatriate Hollywood actress Marlene Dietrich dismissed the films of her native tongue and early career as “trashy” and “rubbish.”[2] These are just two disparaging and mordant remarks by two cinema-artists who, serendipitously, during the period of 1918 to 1933, had loose connections to the Weimar cinematic culture and industry. Regardless of being positive or negative, there has been much commentary, criticism and debate devoted to the cinematic milieu of this liminal historical period since its emergence in 1918. The first accounts were from those of the Frankfurt School in the 1920s, critiques by Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer and Siegfried Kracauer among others, most of them revised and refortified their theses after the Second World War.[3] The most salient and renowned accounts of this cinema have been by Siegfried Kracauer and Lotte Eisner; Kracauer presents a psycho-sociological analysis in his From Caligari to Hitler (1947), meanwhile, Eisner provides an art historical perspective in her The Haunted Screen (1952). These two distinct post-WWII theses have become the two predominate grounds through which film historians have come to think and theorise about Weimar cinema. As a liberal framework and a rough timeline, the Weimar period can be divided into two halves, the first being from 1918 through to 1927 wherein Expressionism, as an avant-garde art movement, and the desolating aftermath of the First War World predominantly affected the aesthetics and thematics of the films, and the second half from 1928 to the appointment of Hitler as Chancellor in 1933 with the rise of New Objectivity and the growing popularity of the National Socialist ideology. This cinema, due to its unique historical context and placing, invites, more than any other, a socio-historical analysis. Moreover, what is also problematic is considering Weimar cinema within a German national cinema discourse, as most scholarly works have held the belief that German cinema is best defined and understood almost exclusively through an isolated engagement of the three milieux of Weimar, Nazi and New German Cinema.[4]

This essay, as it has begun to discursively do so, will investigate the ways in which the social, political, historical and cultural contexts of the Weimar period have come to shape the aesthetics and thematic concerns of its cinema through a reading of the diverse accounts and debates from differing historical vantage points and perspectives. Such an endeavour will inevitably draw consideration to the historiographical approaches of these film theorists, to a need of evaluating the assumptions, biases and limitations of their writings. In fact, one of the first commentators on the Weimar cinema and culture, Georg Lukács, writing in the 1930s, even warned his readers of the essentially subjective nature of historical writing, and implored them to inspect and scrutinise the discourses and ideologies at play, particularly with concern for the historian’s own normative commitments; it seems as though Lukács had foreshadowed the multifarious, and sometimes conflicting, debates that the Weimar cinema would come to bring.[5] Lukács’ warning suggests that any reading of Weimar cinema is fundamentally just one interpretation, one view of (art/film) history in an ocean of histories. Accordingly, not only Kracauer and Eisner’s, but also Thomas Elsaesser and Richard McCormick’s readings, from the 1990s, of Weimar aesthetics and thematics, will be entertained and tested against an analysis of Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1919) and Fritz Lange’s Metropolis (1927).

As mentioned above, Kracauer and Eisner’s critiques have received substantial amounts of esteem and any new reading of Weimar cinema is required to acknowledge their works. Kracauer’s thesis of Weimar cinema as proto-fascist cinema and the linkage of film Expressionism to National Socialism has its origins in Lukács’ work.[6] Lukács, in 1934, argued that “Expressionism was undoubtedly one of the diverse bourgeois ideological currents that would later result in fascism,” Petro elaborates on his reasoning and explains that “[Expressionism’s] tendency towards subjectivism and romanticism linked it ideologically to the irrational mysticism of Wilhelmian philosophy, … one of the central sources of Nazi beliefs.”[7] This proposition was then extended by Kracauer in 1947 with his From Caligari to Hitler, wherein he exclaims that these films reflected “the inner dispositions of the German people.”[8] Kracauer’s argument is based upon the theoretical premise that social tendencies are best revealed in cultural phenomenon, in popular culture; this relationship, however, is not an entirely neutral one either as he contends that Weimar cinema, comprised of Expressionism and Abstractionism, was also susceptible to fascist Nazi manipulation and control, and therefore incapable of fully revealing the visible social world.[9] Yet, the aesthetics and thematics of a large number of Weimar films did reveal an aura of gloom, fatalism and disorientation, which Kracauer clearly saw as psychological manifestations of the Germans’ predisposition for authoritarianism. Kracauer attributes this aura to Expressionism and consequently blames the movement for providing a means to Hitler’s accession; that Expressionist cinema with its preoccupation with the fantastic, the Gothic and the purely formal qualities of the film medium had diverted the German audience’s attention away from immediate social realities. He writes: “the bulk of German people could not help submitting to Hitler … [because] … it all was as it had been on the screen. The dark premonitions of a final doom were fulfilled.”[10] Thus German film Expressionism with its evocation of the Gothic, though traditionally considered a high point in cinema history, becomes an example of all that cinema must avoid; for Kracauer, instead of bringing about the redemption of German life, this cinema had brought about its regression due to being both inclined towards and manipulated by Nazism.[11]

In contrast, Eisner theorises Weimar cinema from an art historical perspective and sees it as a development, and evolution, of German Romanticism, wherein the “modern technique [of cinematography] … merely lends a visible form to Romantic fancies.”[12] She asserts that this period, strongly “stimulated” by dual influences of Max Reinhardt’s theatre and Expressionism, was the greatest period of German cinema. Eisner illustrates that the German attraction to the Gothic amplified during the First World War; that “mysticism and magic, the dark forces to which Germans have always been more than willing to commit themselves, [had] flourished in the face of death on the battlefields”[13] and consequently led to a revival of German Romanticism. This revival saw German artists tend to a new kind of brooding speculative reflection called ‘Grübelei,’ which eventually culminated in Expressionism.[14] Moreover, Eisner also notes that the social and economic conditions of poverty and constantly insecurity helped to fuel German enthusiasm in this “apocalyptic doctrine.”[15]

In her analysis of Dr. Caligari, Eisner informs that both the prologue and epilogue of the film were added as an afterthought in the face of objections from its authors Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz. The aim of these modifications was to falsify the action and ultimately reduce it to the ravings of a madman, when really, the intention of the authors was to unmask the absurdity of asocial authority as represented by Dr. Caligari, the superintendent of a lunatic asylum and proprietor of a fairground sideshow.[16] This structuring of the narrative, however, fits well with the artistic direction and style of the sets, which decidedly have a “gloomy hallucinatory atmosphere” to them.[17] These sets, though often criticised for being too flat, have visual and textural dimensionality; a depth, Eisner argues, that “comes from deliberately distorted perspectives[,] from narrow, slanting streets which cut across each other at unexpected angles … [and] the inclined cubes of dilapidated houses.”[18] The sets come to adopt aesthetic attributes of Expressionist paintings and sculptures and, through that, play a crucial role in affecting both the stylisation of the acting (as other figurations within the Expressionist tableau) and, thematically, the characters of Cesare and Caligari (the former as the somnambulist who kills without motive or logic and the latter who, lacking in human scruples, acts with the criminal insensibility and defiance of conventional morality, which the Expressionists foresaw as being pervasive in society).[19] For Eisner, it is the aesthetic qualities of the Expressionist German film, and the Gothic ideology already imbued within the aesthetic, that facilitates a reflection of German society.

Meanwhile, the critiques of Weimar cinema by historians writing in the 1990s seem to be less fatalistic and less inclined to narrativise the films in terms of only Nazism. This is possibly because with the advantage of time passing and the impartiality of hindsight, one is better able to see the underlying currents and trends of a society than when social-political events and tragedies are still current and prevailing. Thomas Elsaesser in his article ‘Social Mobility and the Fantastic’ (1990) perceptively argues a case for the thematic concern of economic success and social mobility, and how it gets encoded in fantastic forms, as evident in certain Weimar films. He notes that though it is not only pertinent to Germany, the possibility of improving one’s fortunes does have special prescience for the Weimar period.[20] Elsaesser links this theme back to the Germany of Bismarck, wherein small feudal courts and petty aristocratic principalities were superseded by an industrial bourgeois nation-state, yet still prevalent was an elitist feudal social mentality.[21] This social mobility seemed to be most achievable in the democratic Weimar period and so most German films utilised the Gothic Expressionist aesthetic to elucidate this. But this ideological message that the films conveyed did have a contradictory element to it, Elsaesser writes:

“On the one hand, it is the direct expression of the ambition and desire of that class who seeks refuge in cinema because their real prospects are so limited. On the other hand, being chosen by fate and chance for social success is itself a distorted version of class-struggle, insofar as a personal, individual solution is offered by the film, while the question of the whole class or group is blocked off and suppressed. [This form or representation of] Social rise is thus a version of the class struggle that denies the existence of this struggle.”[22]

Elsaesser pinpoints this in Dr. Caligari in the Gothic-fantastic figure of the sorcerer’s apprentice, whereby the personal struggle of Cesare in overcoming Caligari’s magic forces and regaining his agency comes to figuratively represent that of the working class, who are constantly overruled by the authoritarian military class and their decisions for the course of German history. Moreover, this figuration of Cesare also symbolises the fears of industrialisation, developed capitalism and modernity, of the workers’ divorcement from their product and the artist’s loss of control of his work of art.

Elsaesser recalls that after every failed revolution, in 1798, 1848, 1918, 1968, Germany experiences a revival of romantic art and fantastic Gothic literature; that Goethe’s Faust, Hoffmann’s Prague, Herzog’s Aguirre, Caligari and Metropolis’ Rotwang all have a kindred bond in that they come to help express Germany’s frustrated desire for change rather than resistance to it.[23] This concept is metaphorically expressed through Dr. Caligari’s multiple Oedipal scenarios as permitted by the film’s unique multi-perspectival framing. The sexual repression attached to the ‘Oedipalised’ father-daughter and father-son relations comes to stand as a substitution for social and political repression, for the younger generation’s inability to supersede the older generation’s authority.[24] Elsaesser recognises that it is the Gothic aesthetic and fantasy genre’s aptitude for representing current conflicts as well as disguising them that enables Weimar films to express such complex and deeply rooted social issues. This melding of the German past with the present suggests a sense of historical continuity and a way of working through contemporary class relations, sexuality and authoritarianism inoffensively.[25]

There is, however, an aspect of Elsaesser’s article that is perplexing and problematic. He criticises Kracauer’s “double reduction” methodology, Kracauer’s narrativising of German (film) history wherein all events are seen to lead up to Hitler and fascism, and instead calls for a more organic interpretation of Weimar cinema.[26] Yet, strangely, he coerces the films in his analysis to his reading of social mobility and consequently makes the two paragraphs written prior redundant.[27] Possibly, Elsaesser is suggesting that Weimar cinema can be viewed beyond the Nazi discourse.

McCormick in his essay ‘From Caligari to Dietrich’ (1993) theorises Weimar cinema in terms of Feminism, women’s social liberation and the male anxiety attached to this. He, like Elsaesser with social mobility, acknowledges that though this is a universal theme pertinent to all modern societies, it has special relevance with the cinema of the Weimar Republic.[28] This is because historically the Weimar Republic was the first democratic constitution to offer women the promise of legal equality. Both Weimar society and its films saw the emergence of a ‘new woman’ who exercised unprecedented forms of both social and sexual autonomy.[29] This proto-Feminist mentality was further perpetuated by the exponential visibility of gay and lesbian subcultures coexisting in Berlin, as well as the progressive political struggles of repealing abortion and homosexuality.[30] These changes to the German mentality and patriarchal authoritarian status quo inescapably led to mass male anxiety over castration. McCormick notes that this mass anxiety was manipulated by the Weimar cinema, and overtly enacted out and thematised.[31]

Lang’s Metropolis, the last Weimar Expressionist film, is an interesting film to test the argument that McCormick presents on Weimar cinema. In considering Metropolis’ narrative and characterisation, it almost seems as though Lang and his screenwriter, Thea von Harbou, were presciently aware of the masses’ fear of women’s liberation and the media’s (and other films’) victimisation of women and other minority groups as the source of society’s instability. In the film, the human Maria is kidnapped by the inventor-sorcerer Rotwang, as ordered by the city’s authoritarian ruler Joh Fredersen, and her image is replicated into the robot Maria. It is the robot Maria who, under the control and order of her kidnapper and Fredersen, incites and inspires a workers’ revolt, which eventually leads to a near destruction of Metropolis. After initially having the workers on her side, her destructive (sexual) potential is then realised and she becomes the scapegoat through which society redeems itself, returning back to the patriarchal status quo. Appropriately, robot Maria is burnt at the stake like the witch she is perceived as. Yet when retracing the narrative’s causal origin, it is evident that the true destructor of Metropolis is its ruler. Lang seems to be suggesting that real social and political changes still remain at the hands of men in positions of authoritative power. The machinic Maria comes to be a martyr figure; she is subjected to all the shame that a typical Pandora attracts, but is not the source for man’s downfall or castration.

Moreover, even though the film is set in the future, it evokes plenty of Gothic themes and aesthetics. Metropolis seems to be fascinated by death with the most blatant case being the personification of the seven deadly sins and the Grim Reaper. Death is aligned with the machines, first the Moloch machine that feeds off the workers’ flesh and second the robot Maria. With its second connection to Maria, there seems to resurface a notion that anything that renders men redundant or castrated is deathly.

In conclusion, this essay has attempted to explicate the various interpretations of Weimar cinema and, in particular, account for the ways in which they see Weimar cinema aesthetics and thematics to be affected by the historical context of the period. The theories of Kracauer, Eisner, Elsaesser and McCormick were considered against a textual reading of Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Lang’s Metropolis, revealing that any interpretation of a text is still just one interpretation, likewise, any reading of the Weimar cinema is ultimately still just one reading of film history, with the historiographical approach being half the story. Kracauer argues a case for Weimar cinema as proto-fascist cinema, meanwhile, Eisner sees it as an extension of German Romanticism. Both post-war authors seem to suggest that the Expressionist aesthetic, with its implicit Gothic ideology, has the capacity to reflect the German psychology felt during the Weimar period. In contrast, the two 1990s theorists, Elsaesser and McCormick view the Gothic motif as a means of connecting present events to the past and critiquing contemporary German society via its past; both Elsaesser and McCormick, in formulating their theses, attempt to shift discussion on Weimar cinema away from Nazism, and lead it towards other sociological phenomena of social mobility and women’s liberation.

Bibliography

Bergfelder, Tim. ‘Part One: Popular Cinema’. In Tim Bergfelder. Erica Carter. Deniz Gokturk. Eds. The German Cinema Book. London: British Film Institute. 2002.

Eisenstein, Sergei. ‘Griffith, Dickens, and the Film Today’. Reprinted in Thomas Elsaesser. Ed. Space, Frame, Narrative: An Early Cinema Reader. Norwich: University of East Anglia. 1986.

Eisner, Lotte. The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt. Trans. Roger Greaves. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1969.

Elsaesser, Thomas. ‘Social Mobility and the Fantastic: German Silent Cinema’. In Mike Budd. Ed.. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Texts, Contexts, Histories. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press. 1990.

Kracauer, Siegfried. From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1947.

McCormick, Richard W. ‘From Caligari to Dietrich: Sexual, Social, and Cinematic Discourses in Weimar Film’. In Signs. Vol. 18. No. 3. Spring 1993. 640-668.

Petro, Patrice. ‘From Lukács to Kracauer and beyond: Social Film Histories and the German Cinema’. In Cinema Journal. Vol. 22. No. 3. Spring 1983. 47-70.

Petro, Patrice. ‘The Woman, the Monster and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’. In Mike Budd. Ed. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Texts, Contexts, Histories. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press. 1990.

Filmography

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1919)

Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

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[1] Sergei Eisenstein, ‘Griffith, Dickens, and the Film Today’, reprinted in Thomas Elsaesser, ed., Space, Frame, Narrative: An Early Cinema Reader, Norwich: University of East Anglia, 1986, p. 260.

[2] Patrice Petro, ‘The Woman, the Monster and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’, in Mike Budd, ed., The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Texts, Contexts, Histories, New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1990, p. 164.

[3] Tim Bergfelder, ‘Part One: Popular Cinema’, in Tim Bergfelder, Erica Carter, Deniz Gokturk, eds., The German Cinema Book, London: British Film Institute, 2002, p. 3.

[4] Tim Bergfelder, p. 1.

[5] Patrice Petro, ‘From Lukács to Kracauer and beyond: Social Film Histories and the German Cinema’, in Cinema Journal, Vol. 22, No. 3, Spring 1983, p. 47.

[6] Patrice Petro, op. cit.

[7] Patrice Petro, p. 48-49.

[8] Patrice Petro, p. 51.

[9] Patrice Petro, p. 52.

[10] Siegfried Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1947, p. 272.

[11] Patrice Petro, p. 52.

[12] Lotte Eisner, The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt, trans. Roger Greaves, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969, p. 113.

[13] Lotte Eisner, p. 9.

[14] Lotte Eisner, op. cit.

[15] Lotte Eisner, op. cit.

[16] Lotte Eisner, p. 18.

[17] Lotte Eisner, op. cit.

[18] Lotte Eisner, p. 21.

[19] Lotte Eisner, p. 25-27.

[20] Thomas Elsaesser, ‘Social Mobility and the Fantastic: German Silent Cinema’, in Mike Budd, ed., The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: Texts, Contexts, Histories, New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1990, p. 174.

[21] Thomas Elsaesser, p. 172.

[22] Thomas Elsaesser, p. 174.

[23] Thomas Elsaesser, p. 172-3.

[24] Thomas Elsaesser, p. 186.

[25] Thomas Elsaesser, p. 172.

[26] Thomas Elsaesser, p. 173.

[27] Thomas Elsaesser, p. 174.

[28] Richard W. McCormick, ‘From Caligari to Dietrich: Sexual, Social, and Cinematic Discourses in Weimar Film’, in Signs, Vol. 18, No. 3, Spring 1993, p. 641.

[29] Richard W. McCormick, op. cit.

[30] Richard W. McCormick, p. 642.

[31] Richard W. McCormick, op. cit.

Charlie Chaplin: A Figure of Performative Mimesis in Modernity

It has been noted by cultural theorists, including Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno and others of the Frankfurt School, that the cinematic figure of Charlie Chaplin can be considered as a reflection, embodiment and expression of modernity in its most volatile and hyper-stimulated state.[1] Chaplin is the 20th century everyday man who experiences modernity in twofold; on the one hand, the physical and perceptual shocks to the sensory-motor schema as owing to the sudden appearance of new technologies (i.e. the streetcar, telephone, film apparatus) in the urban milieu, and on the other hand, the laborious and repetitive industrial work that mechanises and capitalises time (of which, one must be subjected to so as to earn a living). These two disparate aspects of modernity have a contradictory and imbalanced effect on the human sensorium. The former, similar to that of shell shock, overloads the sensory-motor and excites the impulses, meanwhile, the latter numbs these senses to the point of oblivion. Yet, in another way, Chaplin is also the exception. He is able to endure and transcend these experiences via the mimetic faculty alive in his performance mode. Chaplin is not traumatised by the hyper-stimuli and responds to it in a (comical slapstick) manner that is guided by his mimetic sensibility; likewise, he is also able to uncover stimuli in the mechanical ‘dead’ time of the Taylor factory. In effect, Chaplin’s body and performance become a kind of therapeutic vortex through which the shocks and traumas of modernity are absorbed and, later, absolved. This essay, as it has already begun to do so, will first explore the esoteric concept of mimesis and its existence in human performative acts, such as acting. These concepts will then form the framework through which an analysis of Chaplin’s 1916 short Behind the Screen (The Bewildered Stage Hand) will be conducted. Such an analysis aims to reveal how a kind of mimetic acting, like the one that Chaplin adopts, is the most effective form of acting. Here's access to the film via YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJp1JD8O1aA

The human performance of mimesis, as Laleen Jayamanne explicates, involves a certain difference; a difference located in a constitutive agon between an emerging sense of “self” and the other, posited as nature.[2] What do these broad terms of ‘self’ and ‘other’/‘nature’ really denote in this context? Is it ‘nature’ as in the human nature of one’s intrinsic bodily impulses? And ‘self’ as in the conscious and reflective ‘ego’ or identity, akin to sociability, that one presents to oneself and the world? If so, then this mimetic mode of performance imbues within itself the ongoing conflict of unabashedly succumbing to one’s instinctual impulses (i.e. libido, eros, thanatos) and society’s prescribed remedy for them. This performance mode permits the actor to delve into his character and consider which behaviours and (impulse-)responses are universal and which are individualistic. This exercise will come to expose, on a larger scale, the societal forces that dominate the milieu in which the character resides, illuminating the kinds of impulses and responses that are socially pious, and those that are deemed as deviant.

Benjamin writes that the mimetic faculty has its genesis in the compulsion to “become and behave like something else.”[3] This description is key to pinpointing the appearance of a mimetic performance. Gunter Gebauer and Christoph Wulf explain that “mimesis originally denoted a physical action … with attention turning repeatedly to the gestural;”[4] emphasis is placed upon the exteriority of the other, of the other’s bodily attributes and behaviours as being the entry point into its interior life. This is pertinent to Chaplin’s Tramp persona, who possesses the iconic lateral duck-miming walk, thick moustache, and peculiar costuming of baggy pants, oversized shoes, tight blazer, cane and derby hat. Chaplin himself even acknowledged, in his autobiography, the mimetic metamorphosis that costuming and other exterior physical transfigurations can bring:
“[In] my get-up … I wanted everything to be a contradiction … I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed, the clothes and the makeup made me feel the person he was. I began to know him, and by the time I walked on stage he was fully born.”[5]

By all means, the exterior set-up affects the actor’s-character’s movements, gestures and overall presence on screen. His response to internal impulses and stimuli can only be expressed through the physicality of his character’s prescribed body. Jennie Lightweis-Goff notes the continual relevance and applicability of this exteriority-towards-interiority mimesis in contemporary film as she remarks how “Nicole Kidman wears elaborate prosthetics to look as much like Virginia Woolf as possible in The Hours (Stephen Daldry, 2002) and Phillip Seymour Hoffman is filmed in an elaborate trench system to make him look as short as Truman Capote in Capote (Bennett Miller, 2005).”[6] This ties in with the notion of copy and contact, whereby the two are “different moments of the one process of sensing.”[7] This process endows Chaplin to “live as neither subject nor object of history but as both, at one and the same time.”[8] The mimetic faculty sees Chaplin lose his own form and being, and acquire attributes of the (human or non-human) object in which he was initially imitating on a superficial level. This subject-object configuration along with Chaplin’s affinity with the child-clown figure empowers him to respond to stimuli and his internal impulses in unusual ways that give birth to comedy and slapstick.

In the scene of Behind the Screen where the other stage hands come to invite Chaplin (as David, the ‘assistant’) and his superior, Goliath (the virtual stage hand), to join in their workers strike, a medium shot captures Goliath napping on his stool in the centre of the frame and Chaplin hammering rampantly away in the far left. The workers seamlessly walk into the frame from their last scene, and Chaplin (with hammer still in hand) and Goliath shift their attention to the mob. An intertitle of “Are you with us?” is flashed across the screen, and the pair respond to it by spastically striking a defiant pose. The mob then exit the frame, walking towards the right hand side of the camera. What follows is a mimetically charged spasm/protest-dance by Chaplin that concludes with a side view pose reminiscent of the communists’ hammer and sickle symbol. Next, Chaplin dances/stamps from the left of the screen to the right, making wild gestures with his hammer before hitting the cap off Goliath’s head and abruptly falling onto the impeccably placed stool behind him. The scene is then briefly paused as the film cuts to a scene of a girl, in the lunchroom, crawling out of her hiding place among the unused props. It returns to Chaplin and Goliath in the exact same positions as the film had left them. The producer walks on to thank the pair for staying but Goliath pushes Chaplin away before he can accept his congratulatory handshake. The scene is then disturbed again by another cut to the girl, this time dressing up as a boy. Coming back to Chaplin, he is ordered by Goliath to continue setting up.

This scene is continuously affected by the inflows and outflows of bodies, which change the spatial dimension and sparseness of the shot. And apart from the parallel montage edits, it plays out in one long take with the camera being immobile in its shot scale, angle and movement. Chaplin’s pivotal evocation of the communist hammer and sickle seems to be predominantly stimulated by the other workers’ decision to strike, and ironically, after turning them down, his movements begin to mimetically assume a protesting style and spirit. Chaplin dances in a manner that’s akin to marching, stamping the ground with the full weight of his small body and gesturing wildly for an anonymous political movement. Moreover, the background music with its diegesis sound effects adds to the faintly comedic yet forceful tone of his movements. These movements are, of course, only the first step in Chaplin’s mimesis; what culminates is the pie throwing fight and chase between Chaplin and Goliath. The pie sequence begins as a harmless rehearsal of a new comedy sketch with the pair as stand-in actors, but through the simulated violent slapstick that Chaplin is ordered to engage in (as well as the earlier mimetically charged evocation of the communist struggle), he starts to fight back. Chaplin abandons all reservation and expresses both the oppression that he’s suffered from Goliath as well as the repression of his impulses (necessary for the completion of his work). Chaplin lets all of his child-like clown tendencies upsurge, creating havoc throughout the studio. A hilarious slapstick gag arises when Goliath’s pies constantly miss Chaplin’s face and instead hit the unexpected faces of actors performing a regal drama in the next soundstage. Chaplin’s revenge is further supplemented by the narrative twist of the strikers planting a bomb underneath the tramp door, of which Goliath falls into when he pushes Chaplin into its lever.

One other noteworthy example of the mimetic prowess in Chaplin’s performance is in the scene where he notices the charming boy. Chaplin becomes all flustered at the sight of him and imitates the affectations of a nervous little girl. It is as though Chaplin, due to his mimetic sensibility, already knew her anatomical gender despite her masculine outer appearance. The two gently peck each other like rabbits, but then Goliath catches them and, thinking the girl is a boy, mocks them by prancing around and insinuating Chaplin’s non-hetero-normative, homoerotic allegiances. This passing gesture by Goliath has relevance to the controversy surrounding the historical reception of Chaplin’s body and (mimetic) performance. Rather than perform as a desexualised comic clown, Chaplin aggressively performed his comic play with sexuality and anality, to the point where the National Board of Censorship (USA) in 1915 was forced to denounce his “suggestive wriggling.”[9] Such openness to the possibilities of the body’s sexual impulses is just another symptom of human mimesis.

Chaplin’s mimetic mode of performance and the freedom that it renders is at the heart of his appeal to modernist audiences. He is empowered enough to endure and respond to the hyper-stimuli of modernity in a way that engages and enthrals his neural synaptic networks, drawing on all the senses that the stimulus arouses. And even without external stimuli, Chaplin is adept at exploring his pre-existing internal impulses and seeing them reach their mimetically enhanced conclusions. This performance mode comes to reveal the societal forces that dominate the milieu in which the character resides, illuminating the kinds of responses-impulses that are accepted and privileged, and those that aren’t. Therefore, it is the most effective form of acting with regards to an examination of society. Again considering the aforementioned examples of contemporary mimetic acting, Kidman along with her co-stars Julianne Moore and Meryl Streep use their acting to highlight society’s perceptions of mental instability, likewise, Hoffman’s metamorphosis comes to reveal the homophobia rampant in Capote’s society. Mimesis, however, in Chaplin’s peculiar case just happens to create comedy and slapstick. His behaviour is in contrast to that of the other characters who are unable to negotiate between the hyper-stimuli of modernity and their bodily impulses.

This essay has argued that a performance mode, which engages with the process of mimesis, is the most effective form of acting when it comes to an examination of the constraining forces of a particular milieu. It has adopted Chaplin’s performance in Behind the Screen as a sample through which divergent concepts of mimesis and modernity are explicated. Chaplin’s mimesis sanctions his body to become a kind of therapeutic vortex through which the shocks and traumas of modernity are absorbed and, later, absolved. This, in effect, was a part of his appeal to modernist audiences, allowing them to vicariously experience the perils of the period from a safe distance afar.

Bibliography

Behind the Screen. Dir. Charles Chaplin. 1916.

Benjamin, Walter. ‘On the Mimetic Faculty.’ in Reflections, Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings. New York: Schocken Books. 1986.

Chaplin, Charles. My Autobiography. New York: Penguin. 1964.

Demers, Michael. ‘Mimesis.’ http://www.michaeldemers.com/mimesis.htm. Last accessed: 07/09/09.

Jayamanne, Laleen. ‘A Slapstick Time: Mimetic Convulsion. Convulsive Knowing.’ in Towards Cinema and Its Double: Cross-Cultural Mimesis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 2001.

Lightweis-Goff, Jennie. ‘Sins of Commitment: Adorno, Chaplin and Mimesis.’ http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/06/40/adorno-chaplin-mimesis.html. Last accessed: 07/09/09.

Taussig, Michael. ‘The Eye as Organ of Tactility: The Optical Unconscious.’ in Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses. New York: Routledge. 1993.

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[1] Laleen Jayamanne, ‘A Slapstick Time: Mimetic Convulsion, Convulsive Knowing,’ in Towards Cinema and Its Double: Cross-Cultural Mimesis, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001, p. 182.

[2] Laleen Jayamanne, op. cit.

[3] Walter Benjamin, ‘On the Mimetic Faculty,’ in Reflections, Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings, New York: Schocken Books, 1986, p. 333.

[4] Laleen Jayamanne, p. 182.

[5] Charles Chaplin, My Autobiography, New York: Penguin, 1964, p. 154.

[6] Jennie Lightweis-Goff, ‘Sins of Commitment: Adorno, Chaplin and Mimesis,’ http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/06/40/adorno-chaplin-mimesis.html, last accessed: 07/09/09.

[7] Michael Taussig, ‘The Eye as Organ of Tactility: The Optical Unconscious,’ in Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History of the Senses, New York: Routledge, 1993, p. 21.

[8] Michael Demers, ‘Mimesis,’ http://www.michaeldemers.com/mimesis.htm, last accessed: 07/09/09.

[9] Jennie Lightweis-Goff, op. cit.

Dancer in the Dark vis-à-vis Hollywood

Dancer in the Dark[1] is the final instalment of Lars von Trier’s Golden-Hearted Trilogy. The other two films of this trilogy are Breaking the Waves[2] and The Idiots[3]. The Golden-Hearted Trilogy was inspired by a children’s story about a girl who gives away her possessions to needy passers-by until she has nothing left; still, she believes, everything will be all right.[4] The three films also centre on the theme of filmmaking under the restrictions of Dogma95. Von Trier was one of the instigators of the Dogma95 school of filmmaking with its ambitions of facilitating, legitimising and empowering the cinemas of small European nations to compete with and counteract Hollywood and its global market dominance.[5] According to its Manifesto, Dogma95 achieved this anti-Hollywood goal through its promotion of technology and the ‘Vow of Chastity,’ both of which, when adopted successfully, were to emphasise the democratic possibilities of filmmaking.[6] Dogma films aimed to stand in stark contrast to the industry driven nature of Hollywood. Dancer in the Dark, however, is a post-Dogma design and represents von Trier’s partial and experimental movement away from the anarchic and organic rules of Dogma. The film illustrates how this Danish director is not completely willing to subject his work to the Vow of Chastity “at the cost of any good taste and aesthetic considerations.”[7] Subsequently, Dancer in the Dark has become a bridge between two disparate forms of filmmaking; a hybrid that combines the organic verisimilitude of European Dogma95 with Hollywood’s conventions and hyper-realism. It is on these terms that Dancer in the Dark can be considered as a contemporary European film that meets Hollywood ‘face-to-face’. Furthermore, this meeting has also permitted von Trier to proficiently address two filmic-political issues; the first is Hollywood’s global hegemonic deliberation of cultural-political values, and the second pertains to the meaning of stereotypes in transnational cinemas. Accordingly, this essay will first delve into the rules of Dogma95 and examine the extent to which Dancer in the Dark still conforms to this contemporary European method of filmmaking. This will then be followed by an analysis of the film’s Hollywood conventions. The essay will conclude with a discussion of the two aforementioned filmic-political issues.

The Dogma95 school of filmmaking was initiated in 1995 by Danish directors Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg. The Dogma rules, also known as the ‘Vow of Chastity,’ stipulated location-shooting, direct sound, hand-held camera, colour film stock, available lighting and Academy 35mm format; the rules were also against the director being credited, optical work and filters, superficial action, genre movies, and temporal and geographical alienation.[8] The Dogma rules in theory aimed to pioneer, empower and legitimise the relatively minor cinemas of small, particularly European, nations. It celebrated the anarchic, organic and minimalist method of film production and evokes similar liberal ideals to that of the 1970s Punk ‘Do-It-Yourself’ movement, 1950s Auteur Theory and 1910s Dadaists.[9]

Dogma’s restricted means of filmmaking meant that its stylistics centred on “an instability and obscurity of the image,”[10] this assertion is often interpreted as an honouring of realist aesthetics. As follows, Dogma films are expected to generate an impression of authenticity and present their audiences with the ‘truth’ through a stylised form that appears to be an ‘untampered’ record of events.[11] Moreover, the early Dogma works also had a distinctively masculinist bent to its provocations which was highlighted through the films’ stark treatment of gender and sexuality; this is pertinent within von Trier’s repertoire as he explores female martyrdom in Dancer in the Dark, debasement in Breaking the Waves, servitude in Dogville and maternal guilt/grief in Antichrist.[12] [13]

The critical response to Dogma 95 has been bipolar – it has been dismissed as a mere publicity stunt and a ‘gimmick,’ seeing that both von Trier and Vinterberg have not consistently followed their own rules.[14] In contrast to this marketing interpretation, Dogma has also been recognised for its artistry as it alludes to the notion that limitations enhance creativity, especially those that the artist self-imposes. Mette Hjort seeks a more cohesive answer, and critiques Dogma as a small European nation’s response to ‘the inequities of globalising processes.’[15] By the same token, Shohini Chaudhuri considers the Dogma rules to be carefully framed in opposition to Hollywood’s for the purpose of challenging the ever-narrowing conception of what constitutes viable or legitimate filmmaking; whereby, just as the manifesto states, “for the first time, anyone can make movies.”[16] [17]

Dancer in the Dark is a post-Dogma design and can be essentially interpreted as von Trier flirting with the enemy, however though, the film still largely adheres to and draws on Dogma’s ‘Vow of Chastity’ – for the possible and expected purpose of ‘forcing the truth out of its characters and setting;’[18] constructing ‘realism’ from contrived verisimilitude. Thus, in this sense of utilising the Dogma rules and also being the product of a Danish director, Dancer in the Dark is a contemporary European film. Dancer was predominately filmed with a Sony VX-1000 Digital Handycam and through this doing von Trier persistently blurs the boundaries of documentation and fiction-creation.[19]

The film’s opening illustrates this point as the audience abruptly enters into the action without a typical Hollywood establishing long-shot to buffer their expectations (that is, if they disregard the abstract paintings of the overture). The documentary-feel of The Sound of Music rehearsal presents the characters in a very ordinary light and induces the impression that they are just as; real people existing in their own worlds who happen to be captured on film. Of course as the story progresses, this initial ‘real’ impression collapses against the film’s generic, narrative and other textual constructed elements (principally the musical genre). Nevertheless, von Trier’s Dogma-abiding decision to use hand-held cameras sustains an initial impression of verisimilitudinous realism.

Another directorial stylistic that is also the result of the Dogma rule of hand-held cameras is what I consider to be as von Trier’s signature aesthetic. This ‘fragmented reality’ aesthetic effect is created from the astute manipulation and combination of cinematographic direction (the camera lens’ focus, depth of field, framing, lighting and movement) and editing. This stylistic first presents a scene in the hand-held format, and then continuously cuts back and forth among its focal subjects; with each cut, the camera instantaneously switches between that of a close-up, medium and long shot, as well as modifying the shot’s perspective – a kind of organic montage, but one which doesn’t leave the scene. This stylistic often disjoins the flow of action but not so immensely that it disorientates the viewer’s sense of cause and effect. The stylistic provides new perspectives on the action as often the immediate transition into a new camera shot and angle forces the viewer to re-evaluate what they see on screen. In addition, this stylistic is also used to move the action into the future – sometimes by a few seconds, others by minutes or hours – and allows von Trier to heighten the crucial moments of a scene. Likewise, he frequently places awkward silences into these sequences as they often speak volumes about character relations.

The film’s opening scene capably demonstrates the effect of this ‘fragmented reality’ stylistic. The montage sequence begins with Björk’s Selma and Catherine Deneuve’s Cathy rehearsing ‘My Favourite Things,’ this is then followed by the producer whispering to the choreographer that “she sings funny and her dancing is not all that great either,” next the choreographer teaches Selma how to move her head, then a sudden cut to the second singing of ‘My Favourite Things,’ followed by Cathy commanding Selma to not call her ‘Cvalda,’ and finally with the director’s congratulatory de-briefing. This scene, which plays out in less than 3 minutes, opens up, in an unceremonious manner, the film’s dynamic characterisation and overarching thematic concerns; the audience senses Selma and Cathy’s comradeship, their immigrant status and the inherent racial discrimination that they face – in essence, the space that they hold in the society that the film depicts.

Von Trier employs this stylistic technique again to document the private endearing relationship between Selma and her son Gene. This is portrayed through the evening dinner ritual where Selma disciplines Gene and compels him to help with her play. The two discursively converse on banal subjects that often lead to dead ends – such is demonstrated by Selma’s question “Are you tired?” and Gene, in response, pointing out the awkwardness of their bantering “Why should you always ask me so stupid questions?” There are moments of the scene which typically present Selma in a low shot to connote her status as mother and Gene with a high shot to denote his childishness, but often the mobile nature of the hand-held camera and the cut-editing distorts these conventional cinematic signifiers. This distortion is appropriately used when considering the generalisation that for most immigrants their children hold more cultural capital than the parents, as the children have been properly socialised to the culture and customs of their adopted country; this is directly illustrated through Selma’s smirking but helpless facial response to Gene’s “It’s your damn musical” comment. In effect, this stylised manipulation of the hand-held efficiently presents the film’s melodrama in a documentary-like ‘realistic’ light.

Apart from the fervent use of the hand-held, Dancer also conforms to the Dogma 95 rules of using colour film stock and available lighting. Von Trier’s use of naturalistic available lighting has resulted in the film’s drab washed-out tones; so much that the film’s stock seems to have been filtered. Filters and optical work are forbidden under the Dogma means of production, but here von Trier adopts it tastefully for the purpose of establishing two distinctive spaces that Björk occupies within the film. The first space belongs to Selma and is of the melodrama genre; the second is that of the musical where Björk’s extra-textual persona seeps through seamlessly. Dancer in the Dark, however, is primarily a drama and the musical aspect, although crucial to its meaning, is secondary. On the film’s website, von Trier even personally explains the necessity of creating “little tricks” so that the musical numbers were able to fit textually into the film; the musical aspects exist in Dancer on the premise that Selma has musical fantasies and the ability to hear music in everyday sounds.[20] Von Trier didn’t want “the music to suddenly pour down from the sky” because he thought that would take some of the pain and danger away from the overarching melodramatic aspect of the film.[21] This split between the two genres seems to be in part inspired by Bob Fosse’s Cabaret.[22] In Cabaret, Fosse distinctively places the musical numbers on the Kit Kat Club stage and away from the narrative’s drama. The musical numbers were created with one hundred static cameras and similar to the hand-held provide some interesting shots and angles (“gifts” as von Trier calls them).[23] This camera technique with its inclusive editing induces the impression of a ‘live’ Broadway performance, while the film stock, drenched in bright colour, generates the musical sequences’ ethereal, almost Hollywood hyper-real atmospherics. The most surreal example of this is the song that occurs after Selma shoots Bill.

Another one of von Trier’s subversions of the Dogma conventions is the inclusion of his full name at the film’s beginning. Dogma 95 discourages this self-crediting as it claims to be anti-auteur (“The auteur concept was bourgeois romanticism from the very start and thereby …false![24]), however this rule is ironic as ideologically Dogma very much follows the auteur theory of promoting the director’s vision beyond the point of Hollywood. Moreover, Dancer was also not shot on location in the sense that the narrative is set in Washington, USA but filmed and produced in Denmark (von Trier has a phobia of flying); this aspect contributes to film’s simulated Gothic America. Likewise, Breaking the Waves although set in Scotland was filmed in one of the largest studios in Copenhagen.[25] This involuntary subversion against location-shooting is transparently made voluntary in Dogville whereby von Trier abandons the entire notion of naturalistic location, be it simulated or authentic, for a black studio stage with white chalk lines drawn to indicate relevant brinks and boundaries. These two subversions, although undermining the Dogma ‘Vow of Chastity,’ do not yield the work towards the aesthetics and ideology of Hollywood films either.

Dancer in the Dark’s inclusion of the musical genre, irrevocably, represents its ‘face-to-face’ meeting with Hollywood on an aesthetic and generic level. Together with the film’s other Hollywood attachments of character simplification and celebrity appearances, they help to complement and sustain the emotional poignancy of the maternal melodrama. In her essay Mum’s the Word, Brenda Austin-Smith explains that the musical and the melodrama are staples of classical Hollywood production, and how their unorthodox mixture in Dancer in the Dark interrogates the meaning and intent of each genre.[26] She sees this to climax in the Trial scene and refers to the notion of an actor’s celebrity status in shaping the audience’s perception of his character to elucidate this argument. Austin-Smith recognises how Selma’s idiosyncrasies are transparently linked to Björk’s inelastic extra-textual identity as alternative-pop diva and Joel Grey’s representative role as an ambassador of the musical genre is formed through his inter-textual identity as the master of ceremonies in Cabaret. [27] She realises a symbolic significance to this connection: Grey, who portrays Oldrich Novy, is Selma’s supposed father and his public genealogical rejection of her in court allegorically signifies Dancer as a rejected child of the musical film tradition; whereby Selma’s death sentence comes to represent not only her court-perceived wrongdoings but also the film’s violation of the ‘law of genre’.[28] Von Trier seems to be punishing his protagonist for his own flaw of kowtowing to not only one but two Hollywood genres and transgressing against the Dogma vow of no genre movies. Additionally, this punishment is made all the more tragically frustrating by the character simplification of Selma as the heroic, yet naïve, maternal martyr and Bill as the self-absorbed traitor. Thus, even with these three face-to-face meetings with Hollywood conventions – the musical genre, the celebrity appearances and the character simplification – Dancer in the Dark still does not convey the impression of being ‘Hollywood’. Rather, these conventions are subverted, and contribute to a European sense of the maternal melodrama – one where the tragedy is heightened. This ‘European’ sense of the maternal melodrama is affected through the film’s anti-Hollywood ending where the main character is hanged; this ending fulfils the expectation of ‘realistic’ realism typically present within Dogma films and, in effect, takes away from the impact, tone and ideology of the film’s Hollywood conventions.

Nevertheless, von Trier’s sheer adoption of Hollywood conventions and his ambition of working, in part, within that framework better allows his work to address certain filmic-political issues regarding transnational cinemas. Dancer in the Dark illustrates von Trier’s willingness to experiment with, and artistically validate, the aesthetics of Hollywood filmmaking, and subsequently through this process transforms it into a Hollywood production – one that happens to have Dogma95 elements. If we take the logic behind the Essentialist approach to National Cinema whereby it is assumed that films produced in a particular country ‘reflect’ something essential about the country as a ‘nation’;[29] then, one can borrow this logical and equally surmise that a film created with particular conventions can ‘reflect’ something essential about the school where these conventions come from. In this case, it is von Trier using Dancer to examine Hollywood’s global hegemonic deliberation of cultural-political values and the concept of stereotyping in transnational cinemas.

Thomas Elsaesser, in his book European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood, remarks how Hollywood films propagate and advertise very specific tastes and attitudes in their deliberation of national values such as democracy, freedom, and open exchange of people, goods and services.[30] These essentially national and American values are, however, construed as ‘universal’ because of Hollywood’s hegemony and dominance over the global film industry. These values and goals have served America well insofar as have, until the end of the last century, been widely endorsed by peoples who neither share territorial proximity with the United States nor language, faith, customs or a common history.[31] In contrast, the European values of solidarity, pacifism, the welfare state and the preservation of the past commonly conveyed in European cinemas have been less inspirational and have certainly not translated into the same kind of global recognition as in the case of Hollywood.[32] Von Trier is clearly aware of this form of manipulation, and uses Dancer’s Americanism, to undermine these values. Selma comes to represent the typically naïve immigrant with communist tendencies who idealises America for the movies that it produces: “In Czechoslovakia I saw a film and they were eating candy from a tin just like this. I thought to myself how wonderful it must be in the United States.” Meanwhile, Bill, the lawyers and the jury come to depict America’s inherent xenophobia and hypocrisy regarding the aforementioned American values. Conceptually, von Trier seeks to make the viewer aware and conscious of Elsaesser’s thesis – seeing that Hollywood’s values are essentially a construction, be it national or cultural, and thereby should not be construed as being applicable to all.

Furthermore, Elsaesser also observes how set ideas about the national character or cultural stereotyping (of the ‘other’ and the ‘self’) are most likely to thrive within popular culture and the media; he diagnoses these stereotypes as “accurate, if regrettable ‘reflections’ of widely held views.” In Dancer, this works twofold as the film comes to concurrently support and challenge the preconceived notions of both American and European audiences; for example, the film confirms the American stereotype of the seemingly unappreciative communist Eastern-European migrant, while for a European audience, the stereotype of the ‘McCarthy’ anti-foreign prosecutor and judicial system. Moreover, when considering the Essentialist approach to National Cinema it can also be said that Dancer in the Dark reveals how the Danish perceive America; this is made even more blatant as von Trier critiques the film’s theme of capital punishment on its website: “I think that most people in Denmark find the death penalty very foreign. I’m not saying that Danish people are more humane than others; just that it’s a tradition foreign to Scandinavians … The death penalty doesn’t seem like a punishment, however, it’s more like revenge and it’s dangerous to allow the state to have anything to do with revenge. I’m deeply against the death penalty.”[33] With this personal remark, it seems that von Trier chose to employ Hollywood conventions in Dancer for the prime purpose of being able to socially critique America; in other words, using the master’s tools to dismantle the master’s house.

In this essay, I have argued that Dancer in the Dark can be considered a contemporary European film because of its alliance to certain Dogma95 rules such as the use of hand-held cameras, colour film stock and available lighting. The film also exhibits subversions of the Dogma rules like its crediting of the director, use of filters and non-compliance to filming on location. The Dogma features of the film contribute to Dancer’s verisimilitude, which aims to present the overarching melodrama in a realistic light. Dancer in the Dark also meets Hollywood ‘face-to-face’ through its adoption of certain Hollywood conventions such as the musical genre, the celebrity appearances and the character simplification; these contribute to the film’s partial hyper-real musical sections, but also, as a form of contrast, help to heighten the tragic melodramatic aspect of the film. Moreover, von Trier’s usage of Hollywood conventions facilitates and legitimises him to address the filmic-political issues of Hollywood’s global hegemonic deliberation of cultural-political values and stereotypes in transnational cinemas. In practice, von Trier has demonstrated that a filmmaker can adopt Hollywood conventions without having to succumb to its implicated ideologies.

Bibliography

Breaking the Waves. Dir. Lars von Trier. October Films (USA). 1996.

Cabaret. Dir: Bob Fosse. ABC Pictures. 1972.

Dancer in the Dark. Dir. Lars von Trier. Fine Line Features (USA). 2000.

Dogville. Dir: Lars von Trier. Columbia Tristar. 2003.

The Idiots. Dir: Lars von Trier. Umbrella Entertainment Pty. Ltd. (Australia). 1998.

Tranceformer: A Portrait of Lars von Trier. Dir: Stig Björkman. Umbrella

Entertainment Pty. Ltd. (Australia). 1997.

Austin-Smith, Brenda. ‘“Mum’s the Word”: The Trial of Genre in Dancer in the Dark’.

Post Script. 26/1. Fall 2006.

Chaudhuri, Shohini. ‘Dogma Brothers: Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg’. New

Punk Cinema. Ed: Rhombes, Nicholas. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

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Elsaesser, Thomas. ‘ImpersoNations: National Cinema, Historical Imaginaries’.

European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood. Amsterdam: Amsterdam

University Press. 2005.

von Trier, Lars. ‘Lars von Trier on Making Dancer in the Dark’. Dancer in the Dark

website. http://www.dancerinthedarkmovie.com/lars_int.html Last accessed:

11/06/08.

von Trier, Lars and Vinterberg, Thomas. Dogme 95 Manifesto.

http://www.dogme95.dk/menu/menuset.htm. Last accessed: 11/06/08.

von Trier, Lars and Vinterberg, Thomas. Dogme 95 Vow of Chastity,

http://www.dogme95.dk/the_vow/vow.html. Last accessed: 11/06/08.

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[1] Dancer in the Dark, dir. Lars von Trier, Fine Line Features (USA), 2000.

[2] Breaking the Waves, dir. Lars von Trier, October Films (USA), 1996.

[3] The Idiots, dir: Lars von Trier, Umbrella Entertainment Pty. Ltd. (Australia), 1998.

[4] Shohini Chaudhuri, ‘Dogma Brothers: Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg’, New Punk Cinema, Ed: Rhombes, Nicholas, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2006, p. 164.

[5] Op. cit., p. 155.

[6] Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, Dogme 95 Manifesto, http://www.dogme95.dk/menu/menuset.htm, last accessed: 11/06/08.

[7] Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg, Dogme 95 Vow of Chastity, http://www.dogme95.dk/the_vow/vow.html, last accessed: 11/06/08.

[8] Chaudhuri, Op. cit., p. 153.

[9] Chaudhuri, Op. cit., p. 155.

[10] Chaudhuri, Op. cit., p. 157.

[11] Chaudhuri, Ibid.

[12] Dogville, dir: Lars von Trier, Columbia Tristar, 2003.

[13] Chaudhuri, Op. Cit., p. 158.

[14] Chaudhuri, Op. Cit., p. 154.

[15] Chaudhuri, Ibid.

[16] Chaudhuri, Ibid.

[17] von Trier and Vinterberg, Dogme 95 Manifesto, http://www.dogme95.dk/menu/menuset.htm, last accessed: 11/06/08.

[18] von Trier and Vinterberg, Ibid.

[19] Chaudhuri, Op. Cit., p. 163.

[20] Lars von Trier, ‘Lars von Trier on Making Dancer in the Dark’, Dancer in the Dark website, http://www.dancerinthedarkmovie.com/lars_int.html, last accessed: 11/06/08.

[21] Ibid.

[22] Cabaret, dir: Bob Fosse, ABC Pictures, 1972.

[23] von Trier, Ibid.

[24] von Trier and Vinterberg, Dogme 95 Manifesto, http://www.dogme95.dk/menu/menuset.htm, last accessed: 11/06/08.

[25] Tranceformer: A Portrait of Lars von Trier, dir: Stig Björkman, Umbrella Entertainment Pty. Ltd. (Australia), 1997.

[26] Brenda Austin-Smith, ‘“Mum’s the Word”: The Trial of Genre in Dancer in the Dark’, Post Script, 26/1 (Fall 2006).

[27] Austin-Smith, Ibid.

[28] Austin-Smith, Ibid.

[29] Thomas Elsaesser, ‘ImpersoNations: National Cinema, Historical Imaginaries’, European Cinema: Face to Face with Hollywood, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2005, p 64.

[30] Elsaesser, Ibid., p. 60.

[31] Elsaesser, Op. cit.

[32] Elsaesser, Op. cit.

[33] Lars von Trier, ‘Lars von Trier on Making Dancer in the Dark’, Dancer in the Dark website, http://www.dancerinthedarkmovie.com/lars_int.html, last accessed: 11/06/08.