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1920's
Heavenly Bodies - 1920
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During the Renaissance, Nicolaus Copernicus proposed a heliocentric model of the solar system. His work was defended, expanded upon, and corrected by Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler. Galileo innovated by using telescopes to enhance his observations.
Kepler was the first to devise a system that described correctly the details of the motion of the planets with the Sun at the center. However, Kepler did not succeed in formulating a theory behind the laws he wrote down. It was left to Newton's invention of celestial dynamics and his law of gravitation to finally explain the motions of the planets. Newton also developed the reflecting telescope.
Further discoveries paralleled the improvements in the size and quality of the telescope. More extensive star catalogues were produced by Lacaille. The astronomer William Herschel made a detailed catalog of nebulosity and clusters, and in 1781 discovered the planet Uranus, the first new planet found. The distance to a star was first announced in 1838 when the parallax of 61 Cygni was measured by Friedrich Bessel.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari - 1920
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari) is a 1920 silent film directed by Robert Wiene from a screenplay by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. It is one of the most influential of German Expressionist films and is often considered one of the greatest horror movies of all time. This movie is cited as having introduced the twist ending in cinema.
Writers Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer met each other in Berlin soon after World War I. The two men considered the new film medium as a new type of artistic expression – visual storytelling that necessitated collaboration between writers and painters, cameramen, actors, directors. They felt that film was the ideal medium through which to both call attention to the emerging pacifism in postwar Germany and exhibit radical anti-bourgeois art. Although neither had associations with any Berlin film company, they decided to develop a plot. As both were enthusiastic about Paul Wegener's works, they chose to write a horror film.
The duo drew from past experiences. Janowitz had disturbing memories of a night during 1913, in Hamburg. After leaving a fair he had walked into a park bordering the Holstenwall and glimpsed a stranger as he disappeared into the shadows after having mysteriously emerged from the bushes. The next morning, a young woman's ravaged body was found.
Mayer was still angered about his sessions during the war with an autocratic, highly ranked, military psychiatrist. At night, Janowitz and Mayer would often go to a nearby fair. One evening, they saw a sideshow "Man and Machine", in which a man did feats of strength and forecast the future while supposedly in a hypnotic trance. Inspired by this, Janowitz and Mayer devised their story that night and wrote it in the following six weeks.
The name "Caligari" came from a book Mayer read, in which an officer named Caligari was mentioned.
Nosferatu - 1922
Originally released in 1922 as Nosferatu, Eine Symphonie Des Grauens, director F.W. Munarau's chilling and eerie adaption of Stoker's Dracula is a silent masterpiece of terror which to this day is the most striking and frightening portrayal of the legend.
Directed by F.W. Murnau Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (A Symphony of Horror) is a German Expressionist vampire horror film, directed by F. W. Murnau, starring Max Schreck as the vampire Count Orlok.
The film, shot in 1921 and released in 1922, was in essence an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with names and other details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to the novel. Filming began in July 1921, with exterior shots in Wismar. For cost reasons, cameraman Fritz Arno Wagner only had one camera available, and therefore there was only one original negative.
The director followed Henrik Galeen's screenplay carefully, following handwritten instructions on camera positioning, lighting, and related matters. Nevertheless Murnau completely rewrote 12 pages of the script, as Galeen's text was missing from the director's working script.
This concerned the last scene of the film, in which Ellen sacrifices herself and the vampire dies in the first rays of the Sun. Murnau prepared carefully; there were sketches that were to correspond exactly to each filmed scene, and he used a metronome to control the pace of the acting.
Girlie Film: Walkin' Home, Again - 1920's
Weirdo Video Exclusive A bevy of flappers prances around the beach, having such a good time they can't help but strip to their skivvies. A ragamuffin, who watches them from behind a rock, swipes their clothes as they play carelessly in the waves.
Trailer: The King of Kings - 1927
Weirdo Video Exclusive A preview of Cecil B. DeMille's upcoming film, The King of Kings ... "the picture that will live forever." DeMille hypes his 1927 spectacle, "magnificently portrayed by an inspiring cast of 5000 players," by stressing the epic proportion of these biblical episodes rather than the story itself. Both producer and director of King of Kings, DeMille also was a prolific editor, writer, and actor. With a larger than life persona, he was famous for being famous, often playing himself in other people's movies. You remember his cameo in Billy Wilder's Sunset Blvd ... "Mr. DeMille, I'm ready for my close-up."
