Conrad Veidt in The Hands of Orlac (1924, dir. Robert Wiene) (via)
Cinema
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
1900-1979
Nostalgia is a seductive liar - George Wildman Ball
Conrad Veidt in The Hands of Orlac (1924, dir. Robert Wiene) (via)
Julie Andrews & assorted Von Trapps in The Sound of Music (1965, dir. Robert Wise) (via)
Son of Frankenstein (1939, dir. Rowland V. Lee) Expressionistic set design by art director Jack Otterson.
(via)
Katharine Hepburn as Clara Schumann in Song of Love (1947, dir. Clarence Brown) (via)
1930s imagining of 1980s New York in the sci-fi musical Just Imagine (1930, dir. David Butler) (via)
Designed by art director Stephen Goosson, the city set was an elaborate miniature model that covered a ground area of 75 x 225 feet and whose tallest tower measured 40 feet.
Just Imagine’s New York was primarily inspired by architect Harvey Corbett’s prediction that 1970’s New York would resemble a “very modernized Venice” and by the futuristic urban designs presented in Hugh Ferriss’s 1929 book, The Metropolis of Tomorrow.
Ferriss’s drawings of the ”business center of the future” (pictures #3-5) provided the most direct inspiration for Goosson’s sets. Broad superhighways establish a geometric ground plan that extends upward through overlapping levels of bridges, streets, and terraced walkways. The grid of streets and bridges is pierced by huge freestanding skyscrapers surrounded by lower setback buildings, a design Ferriss created as an analogy to the natural world of “towering mountain peaks… surrounded by foothills”
The opening scenes of the (otherwise mediocre) film, which feature this cityscape, can be seen here.
More on the building of the Just Imagine set. Collection of Hugh Ferriss’s futuristic city sketches here.
Above, poster art for The Golem (1920, dir. Carl Boese & Paul Wegener); below, still from The Golem (via)
Poster art and set design by Hans Poelzig.
Metropolis (1927, dir. Fritz Lang)
The Holy Mountain’s “Cathedral of Ice” (1926, dir. Arnold Fanck) (via)
The 50 ft. tall cathedral was constructed from ice painstakingly shaped for months on an armature of metal pipes.
The Holy Mountain (1926, dir. Arnold Fanck) (via)
The Andromeda Strain (1971, dir. Robert Wise) (via)
Skyscraper Symphony (1929, dir. Robert Florey) (via)
The Moorish/Art Deco-inspired palace sets of The Thief of Bagdad (1924, dir. Raoul Walsh)
Art direction by William Cameron Menzies (via)
Aelita (1924, dir. Yakov Protazanov, set/costume designer Aleksandra Ekster)
Pictured above is the Martian royal palace set from Aelita, one of the earliest science fiction films and among the first films to come out of revolutionary Russia.
Intended as an ideologically correct counterweight to Hollywood films, Aelita tells the story of Earthling visitors to Mars who stir up a proletarian rebellion among Martian slaves, overthrow the monarchy, and establish the “Martian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics”
(photo via)
![Conrad Veidt & Lil Dagover in The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1920, dir. Robert Wiene) (via)
“I realized that the sets had to deviate completely in form and design from the usual naturalistic style. The images had to be like visionary nightmares - averted from reality, they had to acquire fantastic graphic form. No real structural elements could be recognizable…[Co-art director Walter] Reimann, who applied the Expressionist painting technique in his designs, succeeded with his idea that this subject had to have Expressionist sets, costumes, actors, and direction…
Furthermore, I would like to say that sets should remain as background in front of which the action takes place, reflecting it and supporting the actor, who is after all supposed to have the major supporting role. In Caligari, this relationship is reversed. In this single special case I will concede that the sets became the major means of expression.”
-Caligari art director, Hermann Warm (Caligari & Caligarismus)](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_luouceVo7G1qzdvhio1_r1_500.jpg)
Conrad Veidt & Lil Dagover in The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1920, dir. Robert Wiene) (via)
“I realized that the sets had to deviate completely in form and design from the usual naturalistic style. The images had to be like visionary nightmares - averted from reality, they had to acquire fantastic graphic form. No real structural elements could be recognizable…[Co-art director Walter] Reimann, who applied the Expressionist painting technique in his designs, succeeded with his idea that this subject had to have Expressionist sets, costumes, actors, and direction…
Furthermore, I would like to say that sets should remain as background in front of which the action takes place, reflecting it and supporting the actor, who is after all supposed to have the major supporting role. In Caligari, this relationship is reversed. In this single special case I will concede that the sets became the major means of expression.”
-Caligari art director, Hermann Warm (Caligari & Caligarismus)
