The monsters populate our society, reflect it and evolve with it. If you've ever seen a Tim Burton movie, (without necessarily knowing) tasted the black magic of expressionism. But do you know the history of this aesthetic and its characters high in darkness?
Germany, zero year of expressionism
Before his appearance in cinema, expressionism was born through painting in Germany at the end of the XIXe century. This avant-garde projects the horrified and fascinated look of artists on a violent and sick society. The geometry is distorted and has sharp lines, the colors are violent and the faces are scary masks. The principle is not to represent reality, but rather to deform it into anxious visions to achieve expressive intensity. This distance from realism is also linked to the refinement of photography, which upsets the relationship between painting and reality. The main actors of expressionism are Edvard Munch with his famous series The Cree, but also Vincent Van Gogh or James Ensor. Two collectives are formed: « Die Brücke » and « Der Blaue Reiter ». Expressionists see themselves not as a movement, nor even as a school, but rather as a reaction to academicism and society. The First World War and its ravages will then traumatize painters like Otto Dix.
What about the movies in all this? He's still in a bald state when the Great War breaks out. It was in 1920, under the Weimar Republic, that German expressionism appeared: The office of Dr. Caligari Robert Wiene is often regarded as the only totally expressionist film. A Gaussian blur surrounds the so-called expressionist films. Contemporary German filmmakers from Wiene, such as Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau or Fritz Lang, are very close to his codes. These codes are themselves inspired by films like The student from Prague and The Golem by Stellan Rye, as well as authors from German romanticism, like Goethe.
Expressionism, the end of the inter-war period
Le Office of the Doctor Caligari is the nightmare vision of a distorted city, where the murders continue following the arrival of the mysterious Doctor and his somnambul Cesare. We find in this film the dark and disfigured atmosphere of pictorial expressionism. It is shot in studio, to allow total control of the environment and guarantee the creation of a supernatural and artificial world. The decoration is composed of painted backgrounds, but also of relief elements tortured by lines stretched, twisted and with a misguided perspective, drowning in the image the characters by their disproportionate size and the subtle game of cutting angles. The source of light that underscores the exacerbated irreality of these sets can rarely be located. Sometimes it's a window or a lamp, others may be the moon. The reality and its physical conventions are destroyed.
The characters who populate these sets are like them: dark and strange. Again, it is the artificiality of makeup, costume and contrasts (Cesare's white skin, her eyes and lips surrounded by black; The black hair that falls on the victim's white nightgown, the hair and white skin of Dr Caligari on his black top) that reveal this expressiveness. This strange and apocalyptic atmosphere is not unrelated to the historical context: like pictorial expressionism, cinematic expressionism is the outlet of an evil being in a society in crisis. A society caught up in the trauma of the Great War. These dark universes are populated by creatures between this strange world and ours. They are in between: semi-living, semi-human, semi-real. They belong to fiction, but act in our world and reflect the wounds of post-war society. They are both death, fear, violence, madness, sickness.
With Nosferatu, a symphony of Horror, Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau appeals to our existential and ancestral fears, giving shape to the first vampire of cinema (not counting the Mephistophelès of Georges Méliès in the The Devil's Manor). The vampire has haunted folklore since ancient times, but it is with the Gothic novels of the XVIIe century that it reveals itself to the world, with the now famous Dracula Bram Stoker. Murnau also wanted to adapt this novel, but the writer's wife refused to give him the rights. As a result, the latter changed the names of the characters, transposed the action in Germany and modified elements of the narrative. Murnau's vampire is carrying the plague, carrying this plague with him by boat and spreading it on Germany during the landing. As in The office of Dr. Caligari, a mysterious creature comes to settle in town; It destroys the established order by spreading death from within. Here we find the cry of alerting artists to a society broken by war; social and political crises are indeed a propitious ground for the gradual rise of Nazism.
In terms of images, Murnau has a mainly romantic aesthetic. However, NosferatuIt develops visual codes specific to expressionism. It takes over the basics of makeup and costumes of the Office of Doctor Caligari : eyes surrounded by black, hirsute eyebrows, black clothes that only reveal white faces and hands... It accentuates the character of these only visible elements of his monster's body: the Count Orlock has long scratched fingers, sharp teeth and pointed ears. You may not have seen Nosferatu, but you probably have in mind its appearance, especially when it arrives by boat, where claws and claws are exacerbated. This appearance characterizes the character and allows him to model a unique shadow. For Murnau's expressionism rests on the shadow of his creature. It stretches and becomes threatening on the walls. The shadow precedes the action. It stimulates the spectator's imagination, in order to strengthen its monstrous extent and symbolically suggest violence. The shadow of the vampire projects direct power over the real world. It is through her that he strangles the protagonist. The creature can kill without appearing in the field. The shadow thus becomes an even more inhuman and frightening threat to the characters, but especially to the spectator on alert.
We can also talk about Fritz Lang who, although refusing to be labelled as an expressionist, uses the codes of the genre. In dystopia Metropolis, a humanoid robot, perfect replica of the female main character, sows chaos in a vertical city where the rich live at the peaks and the poor work in the depths. The same applies to M the CurseBlack film about a child killer. Same for Dr. Mabuse where a criminal wants to take control of a city using hypnosis... Doesn't that remind you of another figure of German expressionism? The same goes for his sequel, The Testament of Doctor Mabuse, which criticizes the Nazi regime (and which will therefore be banned in Germany).
Irrealism in which expressionism envelops its productions is like a fog that gives the appearance of bad dreams, but this fog actually allows to deal with very concrete subjects. Indirectly, the fantastic allows filmmakers to outsource the trauma of war. It gives substance to this feeling that the Weimar Republic, threatened by the Nazi regime, will be ephemeral. As the essayist Jean-Michel Palmier writes in Expressionism as a revolt, it's not a current, but « a vision of the world with its hopes, its dreams, its hatreds – a sensitivity ». Expressionists stage evil creatures that aim to take control of the city, and therefore of human society. Whether it is the first mad scientist, vampire or robot of cinema, each of his figures alerts about a real danger despite these deceptive appearances. The monster that will trigger the Second World War is not hypnotizing, it has no crouched fingers, nor pointed ears: it is an ordinary human whose power rests on the cult of personality.
After World War II: towards post-expressionism?
With the rise of Nazism, German filmmakers such as Billy Wilder or Fritz Lang fled Germany to France and the United States, where they began a new career. The monsters made their arrival in Hollywood with series B productions, especially those of Universal. In 1931, Dracula is entitled to his first official adaptation by Tod Browning, and the same applies to Frankenstein by James Whale (which had already been adapted to short film by James Searle Dawley in 1910). The vampire, the creature of Frankenstein and the mad scientist will become the major fantastic figures of decades to come. But these monsters are no longer expressionist: they are marked by a gothic aesthetic in the image of the novels from which they originated, while at the same time bowing to the classic codes of Hollywood cinema.
Following World War II, monsters take time to return to the forefront. Because the human is responsible for the horrors of war, it is he, without any other fantastic fireworks, who threatens human society. In the 1950s and 1960s, Italian filmmakers also took vampires and formed Italian Gothic. The Mask of the Devil Mario Bava, famous director of giallo, genre where monsters will also get a place under the human traits they possess. It is in the UK that monsters earn their titles of nobility, thanks to the Hammer Film Productions, which breathes a new breath to these old creatures. Under the direction of Terence Fisher is the resurrection of Count Dracula, those of Frankenstein's creature, werewolves, mummies and other monsters using special effects and new colors. But expressionism is not dead. Some filmmakers re-use its codes to support their characters, especially when the action of the film involves a period of crisis.
For example, The Night of the Hunter Charles Laughton. Filmed in the mid-1950s, the action was at the time of the Great Depression. Harry Powell is a serial killer who seduces widows before murdering them. He's arrested for car theft; His prison neighbor is a robber who confides to him that only his children know where he hid the stolen money. When he got out of prison, Powell made himself look like a churchman and went, determined, looking for the spoil. The aesthetics of the film are based on expressionist codes. Harry Powell is a modern monster that seduces the day and haunts the night. Filmed like a creature, this monster is a simple man. This character embodies the double figure that is omnipresent in expressionism: a religious man by day, a serial killer at night. This duality is directly marked on his hands with tattoos « LOVE » on the right and « HATE » To the left. As in NosferatuHis hands and face are the only visible elements of his body dressed in black. They are therefore visual markers of his identity: he is wearing a hat, which characterizes his silhouette and the threat he represents; On these hands, you notice tattoos rich in meaning.
The light is also used in an expressionist way: there are many clear obscurs to highlight the physical characteristics of the character by means of shadows similar to that of Nosferatu. But it's no longer a vampire that slips into a young woman's room, this time it's a man who threatens the children's room since the garden fence. In addition, this film reuses the codes used by Fritz Lang in M the Curse. The shadow of a man wearing a hat threatens children, while he starts a melody as soon as he starts hunting... However, the crisis expressed in the film is no longer the fragility of the Weimar Republic, but rather the poverty of the Great Depression. Man no longer hunts out of schizophrenic frustration, but out of greed. As Shakespeare says: « Hell is empty. All demons are here ». They don't have crouched fingers or sharp canines, they wear hats, they sing Learning on the everlasting arms, and are all the more monstrous.
Another similar genre of expressionism that persists in cinema, science fiction passes through films like Blade Runner Ridley Scott. The filmmaker takes up themes and visuals from Metropolis by Fritz Lang. The action takes place in a vertical city, a reflection of a society that is undergoing the social crisis. In Metropolis, the separation between the rich at the top and the ground workers is found in Blade Runner. Overpopulation has forced humans to colonize space, and androids threaten to sow chaos by reversing the established order of this city-state. If in Metropolis Maria's replica embodied the apocalyptic chaos (the many biblical references in the film are similar to the figure of the Prostitute of Babylon), the replicators of Blade Runner ask about the blurred and philosophical boundaries between man and machine. The science fiction becomes the new den of monsters and the outlet of the worries of the time, as the expressionist creatures were. These include: Godzilla of Ishirō Honda, where the kaijū embodies the trauma of the atomic era. It is also the advent of a new monster from the literature: the alien.
monstrosity as a new normality
Adapted from the humorous drawings of Charles Addams, the series The Addams Family began on television in 1964, before moving to film format in 1991 under the direction of Barry Sonenfeld. This family with aesthetics and gothic lifestyle appears again on the small screen in 2022, with the series Netflix Wednesday. The Addams family is out of line with society. The manor's microcosm protects them from a world that does not fit them. What is new is the chosen point of view: instead of adopting the human gaze on monsters, it is the opposite here. We are shown the critical look of these extraordinary characters on our society. The viewer adopts the point of view of characters systematically in lag, marginals in direct opposition to the look said « mainstream ».
The difference is shown as a standard, and normality as a defect. This contrast also reveals the vices of our society: the Addams family is rich and their fortune is coveted by the outsiders, reflections of a capitalist society and therefore greedy. Even though Uncle Fétide is described as a horrible criminal, the people who appear to us as terrifying are those who manipulate him to try to recover the fortune of the Addams. The physical appearance of the members of the Addams family is purely Gothic, except for Fétide, which takes over the expressionist codes. With makeup, the rings highlight Christopher Lloyd's eyes and game. In terms of visual aesthetics, the various adaptations of The Addams Family are mainly Gothic and fantastic, but they still contain some references to expressionism.
In the 1970s, a certain filmmaker named Tim Burton made his first short films and managed to weave a unique style. His universe is haunted by shadows. His world is populated by long and marked characters, where humanity and monstrosity blend without distinction. Tim Burton is the fantastic director who gives a new breath to this genre, monsters and expressionism, and this is affirmed in his second feature film: Beetlejuice (1988). The filmmaker associates the expressionist heritage with his own visual codes; he reappropriates this aesthetic and makes its signature. One can for example see the Penguin of Batman: The Challenge as a transposition of the Doctor Mabuse by Fritz Lang. This similarity is both visual (through makeup) and thematic. This is what the media's search for control of the city reveals, as if it were a modern hypnosis. Tim Burton gives back a place of honour to creatures and marginals by building a universe centered on them, like the Addams family (we can also highlight his participation in the series Wednesday).
His most iconic character is the hero ofEdward in the hands of silver, third feature film by Tim Burton, which marked the year 1990. Edward has the physics of a monster: like Frankenstein's creature, he was created by a scientist who could not finish and who, instead of his hands, gave him scissor blades. He lives in a gothic mansion until a woman collects him and takes him to a pavilion suburb. Edward's physics contrasts in this new universe with strict and normative aesthetic codes. He embodies a physical and moral shift with this society: he is frightening but he is pure, while the inhabitants of the suburbs whom he discovers have a smooth appearance and a sneaky heart. In them, vice manifests itself. Edward does not manage to find his place in this artificial society where the difference is poorly seen: the inhabitants seem to accept and take advantage of his difference (he becomes hedge tailor and hairdresser/toiler) before manipulating him by taking advantage of his childish naivety. Those same people will eventually hunt him down.
The residential suburb and its inhabitants are presented in an oppressive and nightmare-like manner, which contrasts with the hero of the film, who is an innocent monster, destined to live reclusively in his Gothic mansion, far from this evil society that rejects him. Tim Burton doesn't hide being inspired by his own childhood. The director grew up in an American suburb he hated. He sought to ensure that the neighborhood that we see in the film resembles that of his childhood while supporting his fad and oppressive character with houses all identical. Only the pastel colour changes (pink, blue, green or yellow), and the windows are reduced. So we can see Edward in the hands of silver as the externalization of a personal crisis: that of the artist himself in lag with the normative universe in which he grew up, and who developed his own dark universe populated by monsters. We feel this shift with his short animated film Vincent, where a little boy escapes in his imagination. The little one will also become an actor in horror films, and Vincent Price, who was already lending his voice to Edward's story, is found.
It is important to note that Tim Burton lays the foundations of his visual universe by going first through animation cinema. This technique allows him to give direct life to his esthetic expressionist characters and forms; animation maintains a relationship more detached from the real than cinema in real shooting. The filmmaker can layer his imagination directly on his work. But his first films are live films. Tim Burton transposes his creatures into a realistic universe, while refusing to conform them to this world. Tim Burton's cinema is one of a company's flight into the fantastic. Almost all his films follow a character, often a child or young teenager who flees from the normativity, hardness or boredom of society by pushing the door of the fantastic. So it's not a surprise that he adapts works like Charlie and Chocolate or Alice in Wonderland.
But what about today, in 2026?
International news is marked by social struggles and wars. Will this context create a new generation of monsters, the outlet of a violent society? Will expressionism still make a place and succeed in externalizing these crises? We were indeed entitled to a transcript of Nosferatu by Robert Eggers in 2024, but beyond the title and some narrative elements, the film claims no direct link to Murnau's. More recently, we can mention: Sinners Ryan Coogler, who revisits the vampire myth according to the prism of segregation and white supremacism in the 1930s (and who won the Oscars with the highest number of nominations: sixteen, including four won). We can also note the reappearance on our screens of Frankenstein's creature: on one side, the adaptation of Mary Shelley's novel by Guillermo del Toro; on the other, the release last month of The Bride Maggie Gyllenhaal, who explores Frankenstein's fiancée in a contemporary context by detaching her from her role as « wife of... ».
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