I am emerging from my blogatorial hibernation to post this late entry in the amazing and screencapalicious Production Design Blogathon curated by Too Many Projects Film Club. Check it out. This post partially answers the question about “what the hell have you been doing, Bob?” — one answer is that I’ve been watching a lot of movies that I “have to” for one reason or another, including a 4.5 hour silent Fritz Lang epic as preparation for the later Mabuse talkies I REALLY want to see. The following are just some great pictures, and a few slightly fuzzy thoughts.

“Expressionism is just playing about. But–why not? Everything is playing about–!” says the wily Dr. Mabuse in a rare moment of extremely early post-modern meta in Lang’s two-part Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler, the massively popular adaptation of novelist Norbert Jacques potboiler which became the subject of several more films (only two more of which were by Lang), eventually making Mabuse, played by Rudolf Klein-Rogge in the first Mabuse films, into one of the most recognized names in Germany and undoubtedly influencing, directly or indirectly, such latter day supervillains as Ernst Stavro Blofeld, Lex Luthor, and Keyser Söze.

I’m no expert on expressionism, German or otherwise, as an artistic or theatrical/cinematic movement — but I will say that the first Mabuse film expresses one of my favorite tendencies in production design: sheer artifice. Realism and location shooting are fine for many projects, but unrealistic material (and I think realism is kind of overrated) usually works best with unreal locations. This tactic was standard, of course, during the set-bound days of classic era Hollywood, but it’s largely returned in today’s CGI-driven comics/animation adaptations and certain more contemporary filmmakers have been keeping it alive over the years, including Alan Rudolph’s work with Steven Legler on films like Choose Me and The Moderns, Warren Beatty’s ultra-ambitious and underrated work with Richard Sylbert on Dick Tracy, as well as in with Quentin Tarantino’s collaborations with ace production designer David Wasco, most obviously in Kill Bill (which also had Yohei Taneda on board), which has more than a touch of the Lang/Mabuse spirit to it.

Killer feng-shui.

Of course, since these are all movies, they are all “expressionistic” in the sense that, of course, everything in them, production design includes, reflects an emotion. One supposes in more traditionally expressionistic filmmakers like David Lynch and others who come from what you might call the Caligari-school, production design often reflects the mentality of the characters. In films like Kill Bill, they reflect a world which reflects our own, but is not quite a part of it. Lang and his four-man team of art directors, I think, actually split the difference, commenting on both the world and his characters’s mentality. Certainly, that has something to do with this….

But sometimes we’re not talking about an individual so much as a group or social class, such as the patrons of a new casino whose slogan is “a taste for decadence fuels the soul.”

And gambling halls in general are (all too invitingly) pits of unreality.

Pretty much every place where humans enjoy themselves is called into question. For example, a dining table.

And, of course, theaters, those houses of illusion, are gloriously art deco sinister.

And, for Dr. Mabuse the master hypnotist, a theater is just a venue for mass hallucination.

Even the clock at the other house of illusion, the stock exchange, isn’t exactly to be trusted.

Other places seem a bit more real — jails, for example.

And the setting for a mad, sociopathic, dreamer’s destruction.

Note: These screencaps come from the gorgeously restored Kino release. An earlier, somewhat shorter and definitely less beautiful 2-disc release from Image Entertainment, which I watched about 50% of several years back until my vid-stores copy gave out, is less complete and less clear, but contains an extremely illuminating commentary by David Kalat and, I’m thinking, a better score by silent movie stand-by Robert Israel. Of course, I only got to hear 50% of both. Mabuse maniacs (not sure I yet qualify) will, I suppose, want both!