14 June 2010

Bloomers


Peaches Geldof has been spotted in a pair along with Alexa Chung and Kate Moss and when Topshop starts selling a such tricky style in a wide selection of colours and fabrics, you know it's time you stood up and took heed. Now how to wear the less than attractively named bloomers? With confidence for one, a pair of youthful and preferably waif-like legs and lastly a moderate disregard for normal levels of modesty. If you pass all those criteria, congratulations: give yourself a slap on the back to regurgitate yet more food (preferably near a toilet). If not, join the club...you are normal.


The only way these can be 'got away with' for the normal British woman is with thick and heavy duty opaques that only M&S are capable of. But that's just not on for summer is it? So thanks Mr Dolce & Mr Gabbana, and you Mr Gautier - but if you were a woman you would understand the anatomical improbability that these micro shorts will flatter even 5% of the population and keep them in a box in the design studio marked 'haha' or 'pantomime'. Buy a maxi dress instead perhaps?

8 June 2010

Expressionism & Film Noir.

In the early twentieth century, Expressionism developed antagonistically as a reaction to the well established Impressionist movement. The movement was part of a wider cultural transformation throughout European but asserted itself most vividly in Weimar Germany. Germany Expressionists sought to represent the world in a primarily subjective manner, focusing upon psychological and emotional states rather than the physical world. As Edvard Munch put it, "No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint people who breathe and feel and suffer and love."


His famous painting The Scream (1893) was a source of inspiration for the movement.


One White II (1923) by Wassily Kandinsky.


Geschwister (1913) by Erich Heckel


The movement was not confined purely to fine art, finding room for expression in theatre, literature and (most interestingly for me as a former film student) cinema.


Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920)


Nosferatu, eine Symphony des Grauens (1922)


Schatten - Eine nächtliche Halluzination (1923)


World War I was a major factor in the development of the movement, as the huge amount of casualties resulted in a preoccupation with death. The distinctive use of angles, chiascuro, shadows, use of reflection, anthropomorphism, optical illusions and abstractionism illustrates this and continues to have a profound influence on other art forms. Because of the severe economic recession affecting Germany at the time, filmmakers were unable to afford grandiose methods of film productions, but these restrictions enabled them to develop a new style of filmmaking whilst critiquing society. There is no denying that 1920s German cinema was thematically and stylistically miles ahead of the silent Hollywood era which focused upon narrative content in a successful bid to generate money and establish a film industry.

As the majority of Expressionist filmmakers were Jewish they emigrated to America to escape Hitler and began to make films there, having an immediate impact as evidenced by the huge success of the film noir genre. Although film noir (and, subsequently, neo-noir) drew upon a variety of movements the influences of German Expressionism are abundantly clear.













Dark, foreboding but simultaneously sexy & glamourous. Love.