German Expressionism: How 5 Films Built Modern Horror (1919-1927)

Between 1919 and 1927, a handful of German filmmakers - some barely out of the trenches - invented the entire visual language of horror and science fiction. Crooked streets. Shadows that move before the monster does. The first unmasking. The first robot. The first "created thing that turns on its creator." This is the full story of German Expressionism: the broken country that made it, the five films that defined it, and why every horror film you've ever loved is still living inside it. 🎬 Chapters 0:00 Cold open — Du musst Caligari werden 1:02 A country in ruins — Weimar Germany 4:27 Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) 9:32 Nosferatu (1922) — the shadow that acts 13:35 Der Golem (1920) — the original monster movie 17:24 Metropolis (1927) — the robot 22:56 The Phantom of the Opera (1925) — the unmasking 24:29 The Blueprint — noir, Burton, Lynch 26:12 Outro 🎵 Music: Mussorgsky's Night on Bald Mountain (public domain performance) 📼 Films: all public domain (pre-1930 US) Every film on this channel is public domain — the strange century of cinema, dug up and given a voice. Still credits: Wikimedia Commons (Kirchner, Munch, Schiele paintings — public domain; Bundesarchiv Weimar photos — CC BY-SA 3.0 de, attributed per license). #germanexpressionism #caligari #nosferatu #golem #metropolis #cinemahistory #classicfilm #silentfilm #horrorhistory #filmtheory #publicdomain #weirdcinema #1920s #fritzlang #murnau