German Expressionism

German Expressionism was developed in Germany during the 1920s. This filmmaking style focus on expressing the internal feeling of actors through the setting. Forexample, a disorganized apartment being used to reflect the disorganization in a character's thought. By using this technique, German filmmakers try to make a new approach to the movie which help to add mood and deeper feeling.

Some famous Expressionist films are The Golem (1915), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari(1920) and Nosferatu (1922).

Nosferatu

The plot of Expressionism films mainly about intellectual topics such as madness, insanity. So, they have a different kind of viewers compared with traditional Hollywood films (with contents about love, action or Chinese kungfu) created for only entertaining purposes.

Expressionism then became an inspiration for other genres especially the film noir in 1940s-1950s. This genre often uses harsh light which creates a highly contrast between light and darkness, black and white. This use of light also appears in some horror movies later such as Alfred Hitchcock films.

The Big Combo(1955), a notable example of film noir

A scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)

References
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Expressionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psycho_%281960_film%29