New Objectivity (filmmaking)
movement in film
New Objectivity (a translation of the German Neue Sachlichkeit, alternatively translated as "New Sobriety" or "New matter-of-factness") was an art movement that emerged in Germany in the early 1920s as a counter to expressionism. The term applies to a number of artistic forms, including film.
History
In film, New Objectivity reached its high point around 1929. It translated into realistic cinematic settings, straightforward camerawork and editing, a tendency to examine inanimate objects as a way to interpret characters and events, a lack of overt emotionalism, and social themes.
Notable directors
The director most associated with the movement is Georg Wilhelm Pabst. Pabst's films of the 1920s concentrate on subjects such as abortion, prostitution, labor disputes, homosexuality, and addiction. His cool and critical 1925 Joyless Street is a landmark of the objective style. Pabst's 1930 pacifist sound film Westfront 1918 views the World War I experience in a bleak, matter-of-fact way. With its clear denunciation of war, it was soon banned as unsuitable for public viewing.
Other directors in the style included Ernő Metzner, Berthold Viertel, and Gerhard Lamprecht.
The public source identifies “New Objectivity (filmmaking)” as movement in film. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Objectivity, filmmaking and movement.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 25, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q15055145. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1929, 1925, 1930 and 1918.
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This entry incorporates text from “New Objectivity (filmmaking)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.