LACMA to present exhibition on German Expressionist cinema

An exhibition devoted to the German Expressionist cinema of directors such as Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau and Robert Wiene will open at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in late September for a seven-month run.

“Haunted Screens: German Cinema in the 1920s” is scheduled to run at LACMA from Sep. 21 to April 26. The Weimar-era-themed show comes from the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris, where it ran in 2006.

The show is the latest exhibition from LACMA exploring the art of cinema, following other shows focusing on Stanley Kubrick, Gabriel Figueroa, Agnes Varda and Tim Burton.

LACMA said the new exhibition will feature nearly 150 drawings, as well as set stills, manuscripts and posters, the majority gathered by Lotte Eisner, the late film historian. It will also include objects from the collections of LACMA’s Robert Gore Rifkind Center for German Expressionist Studies and from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Margaret Herrick Library.

Among the approximately 25 movies to be spotlighted in the show will be “M” and “Metropolis,” both directed by Lang; and “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,” directed by Wiene.

The exhibition will run in parallel with two shows at the Skirball Cultural Center that share some similar themes.

“Light & Noir: Exiles and Emigres in Hollywood, 1933–1950” is scheduled to run at the Skirball from Oct. 23 to March 1. The show will focus on directors, actors, writers and composers who fled Nazi rule in Europe and found work in the American movie industry.

A separate exhibition titled “The Noir Effect” will run for the same dates at the Skirball and will explore the noir genre in film and other media.

The LACMA exhibition will take place at the museum’s Art of the Americas building, where the Kubrick exhibition was situated. Architect Michael Maltzan and USC architecture professor Amy Murphy have contributed to the layout of the show, the museum said.

German Expressionist cinema was “was one of the first consciously ‘art cinemas,’ so it seemed like one of the perfect movements to feature in an art museum,” said Britt Salvesen, a curator at LACMA who heads the photography and prints and drawings departments.

The German Expressionist exhibition will feature clips from some of the movies that will be seen in the galleries. In addition, there will be a screening series to complement the show. Details about the screenings will be announced later.

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[Correction: a previous version of this post said the Cinematheque Francaise exhibition opened last year. The exhibition was in 2006.]