"The cabnet of Dr Caligari" (1920) & Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927)

The Cabnet of Dr Caligari i liken to Sweeny Todd, as both these movies have a dark and eariy atmosphere. The thing i most liked about this movie was that it used all crazy lines and shapes as well as large backdrops to create an interesting peice of design work. The first lighting techinque that i like in this movie is the shadows created by the branches in the forest or park that the two characters sit in. Here you get an interesting effect of moving shadows on the actors faces. My next would have to be the lamps that are scatterd throughout the movie, these curved and almost wire like lamps are really an interesting design feature as they both add light to the scene and help with the aesthetic "elegence" of the film. The next notable effect that i liked was not a lighting effect as you would imagine but more of a filmatic effect or processing effect, for dark scenes in the forest and alike they used a process to make the film have a blue tinge quality where as in the town that Dr Caligari resides in it is all sepia tone. lastly on a set note, the use of perspective is really amazing in this film as both the office and the mental asylum use it, in the case of the office the room narrows to a single point while the mental asylums steps disapear into the blackness beyond.

Metropolis like The Cabnet of Dr Caligari also uses perspective, seen in the workers shift change area where there are large arches done in perspective to make them appear to be reall and 3D. To me this is a movie that introduces Neon into the film as a source of "modern" lighting to help light their sets, coupled with this are large halogen lamps that flood the lower reaches of metropolis in a flat white wash of light. Compared to this are the scenes in the offices, here characters are usualy back lit to help create halo effects as well as being surrounded by small sources of light. On the topic of interesting lighting effects my fav would have to be the wheel of lights that the opperator moves the two hands too every time they change. This clock was an interesting peice of design beacuse all the lights had to be able to come on independantly of each other while still being in pairs but being able to come on anywhere on the wheel. This wheel also had another effect where the backing of the face becomes lit to represent the clock in the main office. HEL represents another interesting lighting idea as whe wakes up from her slumber, here understage lighting has been used to light up the glass like runway that she walks down, i thought that this was interesting because of the nice uplighting it gives the character and the beams of light that shoot skyward. Hand held light sources also create interesting effects when used in the caves under the city, here torches and candels are used as a source of light to both help the characters see and add shock value when Maria is being hunted with the torch beam.Lastly the scene that was also interesting was where the curtains in the office move and become shut by themselves thus darkening the scene and creating a more interesting atmosphere, as a side note this was also copied in Blade Runner in Tyrells office.