ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the debate between modernism as an attitude to living, as a statement of progress and modernism as a design expression. In the true modernist film, not just the set but the plot as well, is modern. The narrative and characterization are enhanced by the modernist set design, and modernist filming techniques that include split screen, double exposure, or fancy lenses. This modern world appears in non-Western films as well. For example, although Japanese filmmakers such as Kenji Mizoguchi were more influenced by German Expressionist films than French moderne, a Japanese film of the same era, A Page of Madness, utilized avant-garde narrative techniques, such as double exposure and abstraction of image, as well as mise en abyme. Filmmakers and architects shared an image of the future, of the individual, moving forward, faster, into an unknown world, one where anything, from space travel to individual reinvention, revivification even, was possible.
