How the Goths Influenced Cinema

These days, when someone talks about Goths you may think of this:

Well before these long-haired layabouts were moaning and wailing, however, the Goths looked more like this:

Purveyors of destruction (equally hirsute and unkempt but a lot more active and outdoors-y), the Goths, originally from Sweden way, travelled around on an extended European tour. They clashed with the Huns in the East and the Romans in Italy, splitting into two (Ostrogoths and Visigoths) and wearing hats with wings on. They defeated Attila the Hun, sacked Rome and were pushed into Iberia by the Franks. There they settled, mixing with the Hispano-Romans to create modern day Spain and Portugal.

Surely the Goths would be appalled at their descendants' style of play. I think of them more embodied in scrappy underdogs Croatia

Despite their fast-living lifestyle, like Hell's Angels on horseback, the Goths could be sensitive and artistic. They made some stuff, learnt from the Greeks and Romans, and influenced Germanic styles later. However, their forays into creativity were not actually that influential.

So why do we talk about Gothic art?

Well, many centuries later, during the Renaissance, the term Gothic was disapprovingly thrown about by the more artistically inclined Italians. The Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Vandals were all evoked to dismiss Germanic vulgarity and imply an unhealthy invasion into civilised Italy. The term Gothic is therefore retrospective, and has little solid link with the ancient tribe. The real connection comes in a more general, cultural belief of primitive Northern European doom and gloom.

Architecture

The most important aspect of Gothic art was undoubtedly architecture, a descendant of Romanesque. In the mid Middle Ages, stonemasons and architects created innovative ways to support large stone structures in the bigger churches and cathedrals popping up. New types of vaults and arches looked different to before, conveying the imposing grandeur of style that would find itself well used in later horror fiction and film.

 

Painting

The stylistic innovations of buildings influenced painting during the latter stages of the Middle Ages. Bear in mind that art was mainly religious at this time, being used to portray scenes of God and wholesome stuff like that. Bibles were illuminated by monks, which naturally grew more sophisticated as time went on. It became similarly flowing, the curved arches of stonework reflected in the less stiff, Lowry-like humans now appearing on canvas. A more 'realistic' approach was gradually mastered through depth perception. Secular themes became more prevalent. This all influenced the Renaissance.

Absolutely classic Gothicism. I didn't realise there were so many tiny men in the Roman Empire.

Romantic art, with its focus on feeling, turned back to the earlier stages of Gothic as inspiration. If we look at the works of Caspar Friedrich, for example, we see clearly the use of Gothic architecture in a way that we would recognise as 'spooky'. Much the same as when we see Dracula in his crumbling castle.  

Friedrich's The Abbey in the Oakwood. Not an environment conducive to contemplative prayer.

Literature

The sensual qualities of Romanticism and eerie qualities of Gothicism were further combined by writers in Gothic Horror. From the mid-eighteenth century, novelists turned to Gothic architecture's ability to inspire unease as settings for their spooky stories. Edgar Allen Poe is a good example, The Raven especially; Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein are the peaks of Gothic Horror. They also exploited fears of the day to inject further discomfort in their readership, such as Frankenstein's monster coming alive thanks to the new developments in this pesky 'science' business that the pious Victorians were hearing so much about.

Gustave Dore's illustration of The Raven visibly harks back to Friedrich

Cinema

As this is a film related publication, it would only be right to ask: how does this pertain to cinema?

In 1922 German director F.W. Murnau produced Nosferatu, based on the novel Dracula. It's pretty similar, but with minor changes like names. At this time, Germany was in between World War One and Nazi rule, and the general sense of unease and impending doom can be clearly seen in the nation's artwork. German cinema learned from Gothic Horror and Romantic painting to create suitable settings for their terrifying (at that time at least) stories. Nosferatu shows the link explicitly because it is an adaptation of Dracula, but take into account works like Dr. Caligari (1920) and Metropolis (1927).

Nosferatu

Metropolis

Dr. Caligari

By the end of the decade, sound had arrived, and Hollywood set about becoming the top dog for scary films. In 1931 Dracula was released, which starred Bela Lugosi as the titular count. His slow, deliberate speech and movements were terrifying and definitive: the image of Dracula as a pale aristocrat in white tie and a cape come from Lugosi's performance, not the novel or any other stage / film adaptations. It was enormously popular, and the use of his crumbling Transylvanian mansion gave rise to the genre of film Gothic Horror: the term had found a new home.

Hollywood rushed to release Frankenstein, with Boris Karloff as the monster, using similar techniques and a Gothic setting and proving equally as popular. Again, Karloff's portrayal is what we think of today: bolt through head, arms outstretched, stitching all over.

Gothic Horror proved enormously successful. The Bride of Frankenstein and The Mummy are just two of a slew produced in the 30s. However, tastes change quickly in cinema, and by the Second World War, with all its horrors, Lugosi and Karloff mugging it in black and white on obvious sets seemed a little quaint. Lugosi could never quite shake off the character, professionally haunting him as it had the fictitious victims.

Meanwhile, German Expressionism was continuing its influence. German emigree directors, fleeing the Nazis, found themselves in Hollywood making American films. Gangster movies, stuff with guns and whiskey and cops, and cynical love plots were their stock in trade during the 1940s and 1950s, but their roots were clear. The chiaruscuro, the night scenes, the evil that lurked round street corners, the filthy world of violence and death: it is now called Film Noir.

Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall ruled this genre, and the image of a jaded private eye in a mac and trilbee, smoking as he holds a gun, is as recognisable as Lugosi's count.

In the 1950s, Gothic Horror saw an unexpected surge in popularity. But it wasn't the Americans or Germans: it was the British. The relatively tiny Hammer Studios found success with The Quatermass Xperiment. Remakes of Frankenstein, Dacula and The Mummy were released, all to rave reviews and enormous global popularity. Now in colour, they made full use of red to scare audiences as blood was splashed liberally over the screen.

Today

After the 1960s, horror became more graphic and less interested in Gothic trappings. Films like Saw and Hostel still display signs of the early Gothic Horror cinema, however. Tim Burton and Guillermo Del Toro produce works which directly mimic the style, and productions like The Woman in Black are as Gothic as Robert Smith. Hammer Studios was re-started after closure, and is producing Gothic Horror once again.

Neo-Noir is now considered a genre (or perhaps sub-genre) in its own right: Chinatown; True Romance; Sin City. The elements may be strained, but they have all the hallmarks of Touch of Evil.

So there you go. Ryan Gosling in Neo-Noir Drive can be directly traced back to the Goths. In fact, without the marauding destroyers of civilisation, we might not even have a Drive. Europe may have been set back a millennium or so by the sacking of Rome, but at least we have In Bruges.

Hooray!