Germans after The Great War were a disillusioned lot: supporting and fighting for what they were told was a great ideal, most found out the country's end goals weren't what the military had promised. Its artists, particularly in expressionistic cinema, found that appearances to the naked eye were really something different when examining their deep, underlying truths.
In Arthur Robison's written and directed work, October 1923's "Warning Shadows," or its German title aptly named 'Shadows-a Nocturnal Hallucination,' the film is one of the most German Expressionistic film a viewer can find. The movement reached its heights in 1920 with 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,' but the art was still popular in 1923 when cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner, who worked alongside director F. W. Murnau and his 1922 'Nosferatu,' designed a heavy layer of dark shadows and a strong dose of chiaroscuro lighting to create a dreamy, if bizarre world of the subconscious dominating the action of a dinner party's hosts and guests in a social setting. The unnatural world of expressionism, with its jarring acting style and exhibiting the darker impulses in ordinary people, was predominant in 1920s German cinema, but none so much as "Warning Shadows." A flirtatious wife, a jealous husband, four bold guests, young admirers of the wife, two servants and an entertainer who loves to shake up people's minds, all combine for a highly charged evening. The mischievous entertainer, using shadows to express submergible meanings, pulls the entire party at the table into a nether world of each one's thoughts and desires. The group as well as the servants enact a wish-fulfillment on the wife, who suddenly realizes all her cloying seductiveness does have its consequences.
What's remarkable of "Warning Shadows" is the entire movie, save for the characters' introduction, is told without one inter-title. Wagner felt these title cards were boring and destroyed the continuity of a film. Filmmakers at this period in cinema were aware of the problem and tried to minimize, and even attempted to eliminate these descriptive and dialogue titles.
In Arthur Robison's written and directed work, October 1923's "Warning Shadows," or its German title aptly named 'Shadows-a Nocturnal Hallucination,' the film is one of the most German Expressionistic film a viewer can find. The movement reached its heights in 1920 with 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,' but the art was still popular in 1923 when cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner, who worked alongside director F. W. Murnau and his 1922 'Nosferatu,' designed a heavy layer of dark shadows and a strong dose of chiaroscuro lighting to create a dreamy, if bizarre world of the subconscious dominating the action of a dinner party's hosts and guests in a social setting. The unnatural world of expressionism, with its jarring acting style and exhibiting the darker impulses in ordinary people, was predominant in 1920s German cinema, but none so much as "Warning Shadows." A flirtatious wife, a jealous husband, four bold guests, young admirers of the wife, two servants and an entertainer who loves to shake up people's minds, all combine for a highly charged evening. The mischievous entertainer, using shadows to express submergible meanings, pulls the entire party at the table into a nether world of each one's thoughts and desires. The group as well as the servants enact a wish-fulfillment on the wife, who suddenly realizes all her cloying seductiveness does have its consequences.
What's remarkable of "Warning Shadows" is the entire movie, save for the characters' introduction, is told without one inter-title. Wagner felt these title cards were boring and destroyed the continuity of a film. Filmmakers at this period in cinema were aware of the problem and tried to minimize, and even attempted to eliminate these descriptive and dialogue titles.