Do the fraktur intertitles in the Nibelungenlied count?

Check out the work of Guy Maddin. He is contemporary but might be exactly what you want.
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0534665/

There is a nice typographic study of one of his best short films here:
http://fawny.org/typecasting/

Most silent movies have pretty typical hand lettering ranging from restrained to ornate deco. I've seen a number with pretty fancy ornaments and borders. I'm not sure how expressive any of that was in regard to the plot and themes in the actual movie. I can't think of any good examples off the top of my head.

Hi,

I'm not a type expert, but Stewf sent me this thread for my film expertise.

The most expressionistic intertitles are probably found in, appropriately, German Expressionism. This can be seen in Hollywood productions like "Sunrise," by the movement's greatest director, F.W. Murnau. In "Sunrise," the intertitles are in many instances animated, alternating size or at one point taking on the form of water. (Guy Maddin, mentioned and linked above, obviously took inspiration from these styles in his intertitles.) Among silent film scholars, these intertitles are a point of contention with purists, who prefer them stationary, and there is debate over whether or not Murnau was actually involved in those titles since he generally made an effort to use little to no intertitles in films like "The Last Laugh."

A restoration of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" from a few years ago tried to make titles in the same distorted type (or at least the spirit of it) as the German original. I don't know if you can get your hands on the original German, as I've only seen English versions, but you might be able to get the feel for it if you find the quality transfer. Many films don't have their original intertitles because their only surviving copies were found in other countries, where they were re-shot in a different language, but those are generally easy to detect, especially for typophiles.

Also, due to problems with copyrighting early films, a monogram was often used in the intertitles (and in some films, especially Biograph productions, built into the sets). This tradition continued after some of the legal issues were resolved.

wow, thanks very much, you have all been extremely helpful! ah, i should have thought of dr caligari, i've been meaning to watch that one for ages...now i have an excuse to.
but yes...thank you again, kind people you are.

>but does anyone know of any 20s films that used
> intertitles/type in a more expressive manner?
See "The Thief of Baghdad" (1924, as opposed to the 1940 or 1978 versions), for something expressive, ((and www.silentera.com specializes (indirectly) in film fonts, if you're reeeally interested;))). The type think I am working on, as encapsulated in the presentation I gave at ATypI in Rome, is ongoing and has expanded, but the font based on the font in this film is still part of it.

http://www.fontbureau.com/fonts/MeyerTwo is based on this era as well. . .

I think each studio had its own staff or hired from the foundries, to create fonts on film for film. I wish someone would catalog them all but...

There's also this guy named Joe Clark(.org), but you might need some help figuring out what's goin' on there, or at least I did. He's primarily interested in Captioning fonts, which he seems to think are "totally different" from intertitles, or to come to my extreme, screen fonts. I think, they are all the same because of their intent, which is to bring the dialog from the screen to the user via type. . .

I suppose it is inevitable that David Berlow would imply that captions and intertitles are pretty much the same thing when you get right down to it.

—
Joe Clark
http://joeclark.org/

Great images, Nick! I have only seen the Herzog remake but would love to check out the original!