This article discusses the influence of electric illumination on theatre and
the so called expressionist film. It starts with a short historical overview
and will then argue that the only film with a narrative as well as a visual
design in expressionist tradition is From Morn to Midnight, based on a play
written in 1912 by Georg Kaiser and released in same year (1920) as its
legend counterpart The Cabinet of Caligari. But different then Caligari or
many other famous German silent movies from the 1920s it is not located
in a romantic shadow world, syntactically created by lightning effects, but
renounces the dark and spooky irrational in favor of an urban environment
in the early twentieth century: a story of money, erotic seduction, escapist
fantasies, eccentric bohemian life, crime and rapid alteration of scenes.
