FEAR IN CINEMA – CINEMA OF FEAR
“No fear. Fear eats the soul!”
- Quote from Fassbinder's film “Angst essen Seele auf” (1973)
A text by Kenneth Hujer
It's scary in the dark. In the movies, we seek out darkness. Light casts a world onto the screen in which we sometimes feel creeped out, frightened, anxious. After all, we are not alone, there are other people sitting around us, both familiar and unfamiliar. We think we are safe. Perhaps that's why we dare to embark on a journey to our fears at the movies. The fact that we can be afraid at all in the cinema proves that we humans are social beings. “Been to the movies. Cried.” Kafka noted laconically in his diary. He could also have written: “Been to the movies, been afraid”. In the cinema, we empathize with the screen heroes who are separated from us and yet so close. We cannot completely separate our fate from theirs. Like in no other art form, we are gripped, touched and frightened by their narrated lives. Sometimes we even cover our eyes in fear.
“We are gripped by this fear because the screen heroes don't understand that it is actually them who should be afraid.”
In addition to compassionate fear, there is also a fear that stems precisely from our separation from what is happening on the screen. We are gripped by this fear because the screen heroes don't understand that it is actually them who should be afraid. Or to put it another way: We are gripped by suspense because we have a knowledge advantage over the protagonists. The “master of suspense” is Alfred Hitchcock. In his film “Rear Window”, photojournalist L. B. Jefferies – confined to a wheelchair with a broken leg – initially observes his neighborhood out of boredom. At some point, he thinks he has discovered a murderer. His girlfriend, played by Grace Kelly, finally breaks into his apartment and at that very moment the suspected murderer returns home. We see it, bound to our movie seats, Jeffries sees it, bound to his wheelchair, but she suspects nothing and no one can warn her. This is what “suspense” means – fear that arises from the powerlessness of the viewer.
Human fears are a broad field. In the history of cinema, they have been portrayed in just as many artistic forms. Once again Alfred Hitchcock: with “Vertigo” he created the classic movie about the fear of heights. Ex-policeman John Ferguson falls in love with Madeleine Elster, but is unable to prevent her fatal fall from a tower because he suffers from a fear of heights. All previous attempts at therapy have failed. Only a doppelganger gives him hope and he is in love again, until he tragically loses her too. In his science fiction horror thriller “Tarantula” from 1955 – then a B-movie, now a horror classic – director Jack Arnold mutates a poisonous spider that terrifies mankind. Arnold's intention with all his films was to “play with fear”. Arachnophobia, the widespread fear of spiders, was just one of the fears he “played” with. Another widespread fear is that of confinement, claustrophobia, which is also used in many films, for example in stuck elevators. In “Panic Room”, the David Fincher classic from 2001, Jodie Foster and her daughter (Kristen Stewart) flee from burglars in a secret, well-equipped high-security room for the particularly anxious. But the “panic room” of the luxury villa becomes a sinister trap. In addition to panic, there is also paranoia as in Hitchcock's classic spy movie “The 39 Steps”.
We can continue the list of movie fears and fear films almost endlessly: “The Birds” (ornithophobia, fear of birds), ‘Contagion’ (mysophobia, fear of germs), ‘Saw II’ (trypanophobia, fear of syringes), ‘Oculus’ (catoptrophobia, fear of mirrors), ‘Dead Alive’ (hemophobia, fear of blood), “Annabelle” (pediophobia, fear of dolls), ‘Cujo’ (cynophobia, fear of dogs), ‘The Descent’ (achluophobia, fear of the dark), ‘Rattles’ (ophidiophobia, fear of snakes), ‘The Walk’ (acrophobia, fear of heights), etc.
“Exposing yourself to your own fears in the cinema can be seen as a kind of cinematic behavioral therapy. In short: the cinema is a training camp for fears.”
With the knowledge that it can frighten us, cinema has developed its own genres: the horror film and the thriller. We are afraid in many films, but the aforementioned genres declare the affect of fear to be their actual goal and purpose. In thrillers we experience fear, in horror films we enjoy fear, according to a thesis by Georg Seeßlen. Exposing ourselves to our own fears in the cinema can be understood as a kind of cinematic behavioral therapy. In short: the cinema is a training camp for fears. In thrillers, fear is not the illness, writes film critic Seeßlen, but the therapy. We face our fears, make contact with them, act them out, experience them almost physically in order to be better equipped to deal with them in the future.
_________
IN ITS INTERNATIONAL FILM PROGRAM, LICHTER FILMFEST PRESENTS AROUND 20 POSITIONS OF CURRENT WORLD CINEMA ON THE SUBJECT OF FEAR IN RELATION TO EACH OTHER.
In addition to the fear in cinema, there is also a fear of cinema (of its future). But cinema will only have a future if the people who run it have the courage to think about it in a new and different way. Where can the cinema develop, what architectural forms can it take, what can it accommodate, where and how can it be integrated into urban planning?
As part of the publication “The Other Cinema”, published in 2022, Lichter Filmkultur brought together a wide range of essays dedicated to the future of cinema. Since then, several panels have been held at past congresses that deal with questions about the future of cinema – architectural, programmatic and socio-political questions.
_________
THE 5TH CONGRESS FUTURE GERMAN CINEMA WILL ALSO DEAL WITH QUESTIONS ABOUT THE FUTURE OF CINEMA - THIS TIME UNDER THE TITLE “COURAGE MAKES CINEMA”.