The Universal house-style, 1927 - 1933
On March 15th, 1915, Carl Laemmle opened ‘Universal City’, a 230-acre, self-contained film factory designed to facilitate what he referred to as “‘a scientifically balanced’ program of shorts, newsreels, serials and modest features’” (Shatz, 1988, p. 20). During the construction of the facility, Laemmle would frequently visit Europe to oversee and expand the studio’s European distribution networks and it was during these trips that Laemmle became interested in the German Expressionist movement. Laemmle sought to replicate the Expressionistic style in an American studio context by recruiting German talent such as cinematographer Karl Freund and director Paul Leni, whom would go on to heavily influence Universal’s horror productions. Using Dracula (Todd Browning, 1931) and The Mummy (Karl Freund, 1933) as case studies, this portfolio will examine how Universal studios’ adoption of German Expressionist techniques led to the development of their house style whilst stabilising the company during their depression recovery.
The re-positioning of Horror as Universal’s house style was cemented in 1930 when Carl Laemmle Jr inherited the studio. Before the end of that year, Universal had won its first best picture Oscar but carried a $2.2 million loss, prompting a restructuring of Universal’s holdings with Laemmle selling cinemas and reducing shorts and programmers. Abandoning an initial pursuit for prestige status the studio returned to formula pictures working in the low-cost horror genre that offered an escape from the realities of the depression and allowed the studio to adopt an efficient, assembly line mode of production. Cast and crew where contracted players who would be shared across multiple productions passing on their own skills and taking those of others they worked with, all the while being reinforced through repetition.
A technical influence on Universal’s adoption of horror comes from the transition from silent to sound films as the visual style of horror allowed the transition to sound to take place more economically with Dracula exhibiting expressive camera movement and framing, reducing the reliance on sound, with Shatz admitting that “Universal by far the best equipped (studio) to turn them (horror films) out” (Shatz, 1988, p. 89). The genre is predicated on suspense and the slow reveal of narrative information, cinematography, lighting, set design, and performance are enough to generate the atmosphere and tension required to horrify an audience. The decision to adopt horror was not as safe as history suggests as many at the time thought that audiences sought positive escapist behaviour, not the macabre depictions of their reality. Paramount Studios rejected the notion of horror as a commercially viable genre, with story editor E. J. Montague stating that horror films contained “the types of stories which would be more palatable for Europe rather than the US” due to the “strictly morbid types of crime” (Shatz, 1988, p. 89). The factors that persuaded Paramount to avoid horror aligned with the Universal ethos of formulaic formats that would repeat aesthetic and narrative styles with only slight variation between each production, managing costs whilst appealing to both American and European audiences.
For several years before Dracula’s release in 1931, Universal had been cultivating a unique horror aesthetic and production method heavily influenced by German Expressionist films such as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (F.W. Murnau, 1922) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920). After World War One most German production companies were compelled to become part of the government subsidised UFA, aiming to differentiate their formulaic productions through the adoption of an industry-specific horror aesthetic and assembly line mode of production. Universal’s integration of these production techniques differentiated the studio's product in domestic markets, while simultaneously appealing to European audiences. Identifiable through its stylistic expression of inner turmoil, horror and trauma are presented through low-key lighting, extreme camera angles, heavy shadow, and silhouettes, German Expressionism’s influence can be found across all Universal Monster films.
Paul Leni, one of Laemmle Snr’s German recruits directed ‘The Cat and the Canary’ (1927), a riff on the ‘Haunted Mansion’ formula originally inspired by German cinema that fulfilled the requirements of the studio and resonated with depression era audiences. Deni, like Karl Freud, had been schooled in the Weimar industry and their works for Universal significantly developed the expressionist aesthetic already present in Universal’s earlier horrors. Deni’s employment of chiaroscuro lighting to create large cavernous interiors of Gothic mansions demonstrate a direct connection between UFA and Universals later horror cycle.
Drawing from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Leni shot his antagonists in tight close-ups with hard lighting that casts deep shadows, giving characters subhuman qualities. This combination of close-ups and hard-lighting can be found in most of Universal’s horror films following The Cat and the Canary, and served as one of the ‘cornerstones’ of its instantly recognisable house style (Clarens, 1971).
The success of The Cat and the Canary encouraged Laemmle to pursue the genre and in 1931 Dracula (Todd Browning) was released to an overwhelmingly positive response. The film struck a nerve with European and American audiences and refined the studio's standard production practices by reducing budgets, adapting existing properties, supplementing in-house staff with outside specialists and casting non-stars. As well as maximising the output of their human resources Universal also scaled back budgets by re-purposing sets and locations and Dracula further played to the strengths of the studio set up by restricting sound and not ordering a commissioned soundtrack. Without the facilities for post-dubbing, most of the scenes were filmed with minimal use of sound, using the technical constraint enhanced the silent expressionistic elements of the film as it increases the significance of mise-en-scene and camera in conveying meaning. One of the most unsettling depictions of the vampire has him silently overpowering a young woman on a busy London street as the film’s silence increased the tension and horrific nature of the scene.
Dracula exhibited expressionist connections to Nosferatu: A Symphony of Shadow with both presenting their vampires in equally macabre aesthetics that embodied the anxieties of each respective culture. Murnau adopts a gothic characterisation of Count Orlok in Nosferatu, introducing him in a black costume with a pale face, erected from his coffin he is contextualised as an animalistic predator. The introduction of Browning’s Dracula displays a more romantic sensibility as he is teased through a series of shots showing animals fleeing, anticipating the vampires reveal and hinting at the coming menace. The Mummy’s opening also teases the introduction of its antagonist as a series of close-up shots hint at reanimation of the corpse before his bandages are glimpsed sliding out of the room. Imhotep is not fully shown in the sequence but when we next see him his eyes are lit with a surreal light and shine out from a face masked in shadow, staring into the camera, consistent with Dracula.
Heavily reliant on visual aesthetic both Dracula and The Mummy share similarities with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari through the emotional expression of their characters; Caligari’s somnambulist’s (Conrad Veidt) madness, Dracula’s deathly intent and Imhotep's mysterious ambitions. When compared to the sets of Caligari and even Nosferatu, the sets of Dracula and The Mummy look suitably impressive and give a sense of scale, but shadow and black paint was used to hide areas that did not need to be built and exhibit expressionistic production techniques within the larger industrial context. The shadows are sharper and more angular in Caligari than the American works as domestic audiences were not accustomed to the extent of the harshness of style of the German filmmakers. It is fair to assume that American audiences would not reject a purer expressionistic style in say, one film, but when considering the production needs of Universal the risk of alienating the audience was too severe.
Karl Freud further refined the expressionistic sensibilities through his work on Dracula (he is now credited with directing large sections of Dracula, covering for Browning who was dealing with the death of friend and creative partner, Lon Chaney) and his Universal debut, The Mummy. Both films are heavily influenced by the director’s native style through their constantly contrasting lighting effects, mise-en-scene, and editing. Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) for which Freud was cinematographer, used transitions and dissolves to create narrative extensions, carrying emotional connections between scene, whereas The Mummy uses fades to black to create a sense of horror and foreboding. Certain camera techniques do deviate across the Monster series with all the number of tracking shots being reduced in The Mummy and replaced by pans and tilts after upgrading their sound technologies. Throughout Dracula Freud and Browning use creeping tracking shots to tighten the frame around the count as he approaches his prey like an animal, whereas The Mummy uses straight cuts to the close in on Imhotep, using more shots to track his movement which is more jarring and less successful in depicting his threat.
The Mummy is effectively a re-imagining of Dracula, borrowing the plot of the foreign invader whose ancient love has been reincarnated as a modern woman and like Dracula, the film is indicative of Universal’s assimilation of expressionist ideas into their own studio set up and its formulaic production ideology. The Mummy, for the most part, takes place in small rooms or contained sets, lit with dark shadows that fill the corners of rooms, hinting that we are only seeing a small part of a world that feels larger than is shown to be. The camera movement of Freud in this film is less fluid as new sound technology restricted motion, and this is evident when comparing the film to Dracula. Both films even open with Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, a mysterious and melancholic piece that structurally and thematically links the films and more importantly was an existing part of the Universal Music Library.
The Mummy also bears a heavy debt to Nosferatu, observable in a scene where Imhotep(Karloff) calls his love, Helen mirroring Orlok’s call to Ellen. Both characters looking down on their prey, their faces lit with a hard light and ominous threat. The sequence also exemplifies Universal’s serial approach as Browning / Freud used low key lighting and deep sets to create visual depth and strong juxtaposition between light and dark.
Karl Freud’s authorship can be traced across the two films by replicating lighting and camera setups in the scenes in which both Dracula and the Mummy first encounter their female prey. Both sequences begin with the monsters in a wide shot framed by doorways and surrounded by shadows, before cutting to low angle wide shots of the monster approaching, right to left. The audience then shares each monster's point of view before cutting to close-ups of ghastly faces. The similarities may evoke notions of authorship and attribute this consistency to Freud, and that is true to an extent. Universal’s technical and expressionistic tendencies where crystallised through the work of Freud and Leni but both where contracted employee like Freud’s editor on both films, Milton Carruth. By sharing talent and production practices across the studio Universal’s house style and market position were consolidated by playing to the strengths of their human resources and production architecture.
Despite their differences, the films of UFA and Universal are both inspired by their production contexts, sharing contracted players across multiple productions, producing formulaic genre films that resonated with audiences because of their reflection of their respective societies through an industry-specific horror aesthetic. The genre to work within was prescribed by Universal but the films remain very consistent on a stylistic level, underscoring the significance of the industrial factors in determining their aesthetic or ‘house style’. German filmmakers like Freud and Leni learnt their craft in Germany but the America industry would provide them with a strictly controlled system required to make their films and impart their influence on to the system. It would not be accurate to identify any of the Universal ‘Monster’ films as expressionist cinema but through the assimilation of the style Universal was able to craft a mode of filmmaking that simultaneously appealed to their target audience groups, played to the studio's production strengths and differentiated them in a hectic market.
Bibliography
Clarens, C., 1971. An Illustrated History of the Horror Film. 1 ed. London: Panther.
Nosfertu: A Symphony of Shadow. 1922. [Film] Directed by F.W. Murnau. Germany: UFA.
Shatz, T., 1988. The Genius of the System: Hollywood filmmaking in the Studio Era". 2nd ed. Los Angeles : Faber & Faber.
The Cat and the Canary. 1927. [Film] Directed by Paul Leni. USA: Universal Studios.
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