e the means of expression to create an external vision of the internal psychology of the characters. German Expressionism emerged in a world of psychological horror in films like Caligari and Nosferatu. Expressionism is thus clearly related to romantic literature, but in film it also has a social element, as Elsaesser notes (Elsaesser 117-125).
This aesthetic carries the psychological into other areas, combining images of the machine with the tensions of the mind. In Metropolis, director Fritz Lang also expressed the psychology of his characters in terms of the architecture and mechanism of the world in which they lived. The huge city that has been created in the future of Metropolis, rises high into the sky, while there is a vast city equally large below ground. This below ground city houses the workers who operate the machines that make the city above ground possible. Above the ground are the idle rich who benefit from the technological developments of the future and who live lives of luxury and indolence. Below the ground are the exploited workers who live lives of back-breaking toil, long hours, and depressing sameness. Rebellion is always just below the surface, with Maria keeping the workers from revolting against their oppressors with stories of a mediator or savior who will unite the two halves of the city.
Many critics of this film consider its ideology in terms of ideas of class and politics, while Huyssen examines the issue in terms of the way images of the sexuality of women are linked with the machine through the figure of the machine-woman, with male fantasies of women and sexuality interlaced with visions of technology (Huyssen 227). Expressionism is not specifically linked to this theme but is rather the means by which such themes are visualized, again bringing a sense of the internal psychology of the characters into a link with the external world in which they operate.
In Caligari, exaggeration was...