Twisted, crooked, and just a bit mad

...and thinking about it, the famous twisted sets of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari are another interesting case for semiotic analysis.

The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (Robert Weine, 1919) on YouTube

At a denotative level, we see stylised and consciously non-realist streets and houses, but connotatively we get a sense of psychological disturbance and threat. All very appropriate when we think about the plot (especially its final twist) and the themes that run through the film. For those who haven't seen the film, it's very old - but it's also rather wonderful, and has had a massive influence on filmmakers such as Tim Burton, Henry Selick and Paul Berry.

 Tim Burton's Vincent (1982) on YouTube

 Paul Berry's The Sandman (1992) on YouTube

 Trailer for Henry Selick's Coraline (2009) on YouTube

Which brings us back to intertextuality, coming to a lecture near you very soon...

Smile like you mean it...

Since Thursday afternoon's seminar with the good folk of Character Creation I've been pondering the semiotic nastiness of fixed grins. The notion that something as warm, reassuring, and life-affirming as a smile can become so cold, disturbing and psychotic when it lasts too long is weirdly fascinating. Conrad Veidt's slash-grinned portrayal of Gwynplaine in Paul Leni's The Man Who Laughs (1928) is astonishing - almost as astonishing as his portrayal of the blank-faced assassin Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919). Denotation: smile, connotation: loneliness, abuse, mutilation, exile... Myth? God knows... Gwynplaine, 'cut' into a permanent grin so that he must laugh forever at his executed father, is meant to have been the inspiration for Jerry Robinson, Bill Finger and Bob Kane when they invented Batman's arch enemy the Joker in 1940, but the character's origins are in Victor Hugo's novel of 1869. It's a stroke of genius, I think, to have the ultimate sign of human happiness translated into a sign of tragedy, isolation, cruelty and/or menace. And the most recent suggestion of the Gwynplaine/Joker rictus was in the design of the Nightmare Man (played by Julian Bleach) in the Sarah Jane Adventures last week.

The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni, 1928) on YouTube

It's a larf, innit? And it all leads rather nicely towards next week's subject of intertextuality...