Burton's Expressionism

German Expressionism was an artistic movement that emerged in 1920s Germany before World War I.  The goal of this movement was to express the artist’s emotions and thoughts on reality through the use of simple shapes, distorted images, melodrama, and noir color schemes.  The creation of German Expressionism came about when the German government banned all foreign films in the country, thus causing domestic studios to produce more films each year.  At the time, the world was in a dark place, so movies about romance and action did not satisfy audiences.  This is where Tim Burton comes along in the future.

Before we watched the Hansel and Gretel short, I watched a thirty minute video on Youtube about Tim Burton’s career, just for fun. In the video, I saw sketches of designs that he created for movies he directed like Batman Returns, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Edward Scissorhands, etc.  Burton had a fascination with darkness, which he naturally explored in his art.  His sketches are heavily influenced by German Expressionism, as his artwork is disturbing, geometric, colorful or black-and-white, and imaginative.  However, the blueprint for Burton’s infamous works is his short Vincent.  In this film, the character Vincent has a long, pale face, and large white eyes, there is a rectangular shaped spotlight over Vincent, the figure of the shadows are warped, either appearing as bigger or smaller than the subject. All of these elements are present in his later projects.  

Another element of German Expressionism that was apparent in Burton’s work is Anthropomorphism, which is the attribution of human characteristics or behaviors to an animal or object.  In Hansel and Gretel, the cake clown puppet teased Hansel and the bed had candy cane ‘arms’ that reached out to grab the children while they slept.  Even Hansel said that the witch’s house, “looks like a face, it’s got teeth.”  This story of Hansel and Gretel is extremely harsh because the kids had a mother who tried to kill them so that she did not have to take care of them anymore.  I feel that the abstract, angular set emphasized the disproportion within the film.  Tim Burton enjoys creating fictional worlds like this because they detail reality in an unfamiliar way.  His stories draw attention to gloominess through his visuals, which has opened the door for originality in a post-World War society.