TOEFL COURSES --> Building iBT TOEFL --> Reading Section
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Read the passage and choose the one best answer to each question.
GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene in 1919, remains the supreme example of expressionistic filmmaking. The film is narrated by a young man who suspects Dr. Caligari, a mountebank who is part of a traveling fair, of being responsible for a series of violent crimes. Caligari’s instrument of crime is Cesare, a sleepwalker who is under the control of the evil doctor. Cesare captures a young woman, but she escapes, and in the subsequent search for the doctor we learn that he is really the director of a local insane asylum, in which the narrator is a patient. The film’s expressionistic sets and lighting reflect the narrator’s madness. Walls are slanted and windows triangular. Surreal effects of light and shadow are painted directly on the sets. Furniture is distorted and oversized, evoking a nightmare world of insanity. Dr. Caligari is a unique film with a secure place in film history.
The so-called expressionistic “street films” dealing with the lives of common people had a great influence on the popular imagination. Director Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1926) presents a chilling vision of life in the twenty-first century in which the rich live luxuriously in skyscrapers while the workers toil as slaves below the ground. Metropolis is another spectacular exercise in German expressionism, and the screen is filled with stylized shadows, sloping camera angles, and nightmarish underground chambers.
Glossary:
- mountebank: a seller of false medicines who attracts customers with lies or tricks
- insane asylum: mental hospital
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1. According to the passage, the plot of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is mainly about
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2. How do the walls, windows, and furniture in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari contribute to the film?
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3. How does the author characterize Metropolis?
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