Dark City

A film movement, German Expressionism happened in 1919-1926, after the World War I.
The filmmakers start to apply the human emotion and sexuality in the movement to express their modern art. The films' themes in German Expressionism are the revolt, self-analysis, madness and primitive, sexual savagery. The concept of the films is to present the true essence of people and things into visible form to make the film be more realistic and familiar to the audiences.

German Expressionism is far different from Surrealism. Surrealism present the content which let the audiences find the hidden message from unconsciousness but the German Expression is not. German Expression aligned with the terms of narrative, set and mise-en-scene. This film movement has different critics in the different era since the interpretations vary. Some viewed German explore the mental issue on the brink of madness, obsessed with death and fatality and ready to encompass fascism.( Hayward, 2013) (Kracauer, 1992 & to some extend Eisner, 1969), and others viewed the films as an attempt to escape even into horror from a dreadful effect of the economic crisis and inflation (Manuell and Fraenkel, 1971).

The German expressionist film has unique style such as diagonal camera angle, distorted body image and the setting with incongruous but Gothic at the same time. The lighting will have a very high contrast between light and dark (also known as chiaroscuro) to create the dramatic shadows. In the elements of the mise-en-scene, actors' performance has a very important role as the actors' body is as much a producer of meaning on that particular scene. In German expressionism, the filmmakers start to concern about the cinematic equipment with technology hence one of the technique in editing which is called 'montage' has been created and impacted on German films in the mid-1920s.

Dark city is an America neo-noir science fiction film in 1988 and directed by Alex Proyas. The story starts with a naked man lying in a bathtub and he noticed that he is in a hotel room with a female half-naked dead body. He is suffering from lost memories and suddenly receives a phone call from Dr. Schereber who asks him to escape from a chasing by a group of unknown men (known as strangers). The man realized his name was John Murdoch from his lost wallet. In the journey of finding his memories and escaping from the unknown men and police force, he actually found out he got a mind power which is called 'tuning' and the Strangers also possess. In every 12am, people will fall asleep and the strangers will rebuild the whole city while Dr. Schereber will change people's memory by injected new memory for them. Murdoch finally able to investigated the whole city actually is a space habitat and controlled by the force field which operated by the Strangers. The purpose of the Strangers to build this city is to investigate how to get the human 'soul' for them. At the end of the story, Murdoch uses his tuning and new memory to defeat all the Strangers and control the whole city. Murdoch meets his wife Emma on a pier but she already injected a new memory and new identity as Anna. They plan to walk to the Shell Beach and start their new relationship.

The main element of German expressionism can be found in Dark City is self-analysis. John Murdoch suffering from memory loss in the hotel and desperate to know who is him. He realizes his name was J. Murdoch from the hotel registration book and he is non-stop questioning himself what is his full name. When he met Dr. Schereber. he asking his true identity and leads his anger approached until shows his tuning power. Next, the lighting of the whole film is dark and with high contrast visual. This lighting effect will provide a sense of mystery to the audience and able to enhances the investigation nature of the film. The Strangers try to kill Murdoch as they are worry Murdoch tuning power is too powerful and might lead a threat for them. The weapon they use to kill Murdoch is a knife and this is a primitive sexual savagery behavior. The mise-en-scene of the film is surrounded with gothic and stylized buildings. Distorted bodies occur on the Strangers as they actually are aliens but they appears in a human form.

In conclusion, the film movements in the different generation have built today's film industry. We still can see today's film with the concept of German Expressionism. The technique and knowledge are very important to every filmmaker as a guideline to produce a great film with originality principal but aligns with the creativity by a new concept.