Modernism in Film

Modernism as Future Visioning.

Rather than attempting to represent a) the world, b) thoughts, c) feelings, d) relationships (or anything else) the modernist writer and artist attempt to draw attention to the way representation organises our often very different experiences of the world.

Moderism revolved around being new, experimenting with fresh and original ideas that revolved around abstract representations, not necessarily symbolisms - subtle and explicit messages left with both single, multiple and open interpretations, made to challenge the ideologies of art as the era knew it. By redefining art as modernist, old ideas were left aside and artists were left to their own devices as to what to produce, unrestricted and unrestrained by the trends set hundreds of years before. Noting the dates, as modernist art gradually fades to simply become modern, some examples of modernist art include:

László Moholy-Nagy

Painting 1921

Light space modulator 1929

Props for the H.G. Wells Alexander Korda film, "Things to Come". 1936 

I am familiar with H.G. Wells, as most others are, for his work of 'War of the Worlds'.

A newspaper article obituary dedicated to H.G wells after his death in the St. Petersburg Times, 13 August 1943.


Other case study examples of moderisms within films is The Day the Earth Stood Still (Harry Bates)

Modernism was described as the 'liberation of the unconcious' a concept that even Alfred Hitchcock sought to use. He used Salvador Dali as the set designer for 'Spellbound'.

By examining the subconcious, Salvador Dali is considered modernist. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past are thrown aside, forgotten and are not left to inspire the new in any way, shape or form, all in the spirit of radical freedom and experimentation. They experimented with the senses and new ways of seeing, with newer ideas regarding the nature of materials and the functions and purpose of art. Abstraction was a tendancy much modernist art leaned towards, and very much a characteristic that seperated it from other forms of artwork. 

Modernism as Abstraction: Len Lye Colour Box (1935) Mary Ellen Bute (Colour Rhapsody 1948) Disney's Fantasia


Oskar Fischinger, who was a year older than Walt Disney, devoted his major energies throughout his life to abstract animation. In the early Twenties, Fischinger, working on his own, struggled with radical experiments in non-objective imagery — from sliced wax to multiple-projector light shows. Even before sound film became available, he sychronized it with sound and music as he found the audience would grasp the message within the animation better. 


Charlie Chaplin and Dziga Vertov were also prominent in portraying modernism in technology within film.