The history of Expressionism in the cinema is marked not only by those films that embraced the German art movements of the early twentieth century, most famously The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920), but also by those who have sought to study, define, and explain the subject area, resulting in an extended conversation that may have obfuscated as much as it has clarified.

Despite commentary from such notable figures as Bela Balazs and Kasimir Edschmid, two figures have towered above the others in terms of their lasting influence. In From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film (Princeton University Press, 1947), Siegfried Kracauer attempted to explain Weimar-era German cinema not for its own sake, but rather to increase “knowledge of pre-Hitler Germany in a specific way.” He adds, “the films of a nation reflect its mentality in a more direct way than other artistic media for two reasons,” the first being that they are collaborative works and the second that they target the “multitude.”

Of the Weimar period, meaning November 1918 to January 1933, he added: “The German soul, haunted by the alternative images of tyrannic rule and instinct-governed chaos, threatened by doom on either side, tossed about in gloomy space like the phantom ship in Nosferatu [F. W. Murnau, 1922].” For Kracauer, Expressionism in the cinema was German, and it anticipated the rise of Nazism.

And then there was Lotte Eisner, who also sought to connect Expressionism and film culture with political culture, albeit in a manner quite different from Kracauer. In her landmark text The Haunted Screen of 1952 (English edition 1969), she complains: “the word ‘Expressionist’ is commonly applied to every German film of the so-called ‘classical’ period,” meaning Weimar cinema produced between 1918 and 1933. And yet, The Haunted Screen nevertheless constructs an expansive category for Expressionism, one in which Fritz Lang, F. W. Murnau, and many others operated. Eisner's approach draws not only upon Expressionism, but also German Romanticism and the theater of Max Reinhardt in an effort to understand key works of Weimar cinema from an art-historical perspective. As for Kracauer, the foundation of her discussion is national cinema.