Filmmakers use a lot of tricks to up the anxiety of a scene.
Music...
Sound mixing...
Lighting, color...
And then there’s this trick:
An ever-so-slight tilt of the camera.
Even without all of the other stuff,
the second you take the world off its axis,
things start to feel a little off.
Or at least a little more interesting.
That camera tilt, which you'll see everywhere
from blockbuster movies to perfume commercials,
it’s called a lot of things.
But most often, you’ll see it referred to as the “dutch angle.”
It’s a stylistic choice whose roots are based not in film, but in fine art.
Let’s get this out of the way.
The Dutch angle isn’t actually Dutch.
It’s Deutsch.
As in German for German.
Its origins trace back to World War I, when the German government banned
the import of foreign films.
So while, over in Hollywood, the movie business was booming
with Charlie Chaplin joints,
racist Tarzan adaptations,
and other straightforward, happy-ending-type flicks,
in Germany, movies were starting to look a little different.
Instead of turning to Hollywood for inspiration, German filmmakers turned to the arts.
And at the time, a movement called “Expressionism” had taken hold,
primarily in Germany and Austria.
Expressionism is famously hard to define.
But you can think of it as roughly the opposite of impressionism.
Impressionists like Monet, Degas, and Renoir painted things like this.
Floaty, lovely, soft scenes.
And expressionists like Kirchner, Beckmann, and Dix painted things like this.
One more time, for emphasis.
While Impressionists were interested in producing
spontaneous, but always refined versions of reality,
Expressionist painters were focused on depicting a subjective version of a world in turmoil,
grappling with the horrors of war and the anxiety of modern life.
Figures are distorted and painted roughly, often tossed about at impossible angles.
Colors are intense and unrealistic.
Scenes are eerie, even nightmarish.
It’s harsh and dark, in both content and execution.
All of which translated pretty well to film.
Starting in 1920, with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari:
A German silent horror movie about a hypnotist
who uses his sleepwalking patients to kill by proxy.
It’s got the distorted figures, by way of outlandish makeup,
harsh angular lighting,
and, in place of the exaggerated perspective of painting,
the whole movie is noticeably askew.
But not because of camera work.
The set is literally tilted, with sidewalks that lead nowhere,
walls arranged seemingly at random,
and buildings that look poised to collapse;
all rendered in stark, graphic lines, by a trio of expressionist painters.
When The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari came out, it was a revelation.
Critics called it startling!
Weird!
Sensational!
"The most remarkable picture ever shown."
They lauded its great acting and innovative story.
There’s a killer surprise twist at the end.
But, mostly, it was that set design that excited people.
Those turns and tilts enhanced the movie’s suspense and distortion.
Caligari was hailed a "prophecy," ushering in a new art-centric era for movies.
And, though critics couldn’t quite yet agree on which art movement it belonged to,
that prophecy kind of came true.
Expressionist classics like Metropolis and Nosferatu soon followed,
using that same lighting, drama, and of course, dutch angles --
this time, using the camera to tilt the scene, instead of the set.
From there, the dutch angle spread to noir films,
featuring prominently in Citizen Kane and the Third Man.
Then, it broke into thrillers, specifically Hitchcock thrillers, like The Birds,
Strangers on a Train, and the lesser-known, The Lodger.
Which the man himself said was heavily influenced by expressionism.
"That picture shared a strong German influence."
By the 60s, a very different genre picked it up.
1966’s Batman famously gave each villain their own specific tilt.
And from there the angle really took off.
Action movies.
Musicals.
Comedies.
Even commercials.
Today, it's featured across basically every genre, to varying degrees of success.
Movies like 2000’s Battlefield Earth and 2011's Thor
have been criticized for using the tilt as a crutch.
But filmmakers like Spike Lee, Terry Gilliam, and Tim Burton all seem to get it:
Tilting a shot to highlight tension,
or distortion,
or underscore a film’s dystopian confusion.
Keeping the spirit of expressionism alive.