As American cinema progressively got more opulent, the flourishing German expressionist movement of the 1920s had to get creative with its much more strict budgets and physical limitations. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) is a great example of this, using light and shadow painted directly onto the set's floors and backdrops to give a warped and off-kilter look to a world overwhelmed by terror and madness that takes place in the mind of a delusional man who is one of Dr. Caligari's insane inmates.
In a cinematic world prior to sound, background design had to do the job of setting the mood of the film, in addition to adding depth to the story being played out by the actors in front of the camera. The film drove home for me the idea that background design in film plays such an important but subtle role in visual storytelling.
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