Dutch angle

[4][5][6][7][8][9] The earliest recorded occurrences of the camera technique is to be found in the Edwin S. Porter American film Dream of a Rarebit Fiend (1906), itself based on Winsor McCay's comic strip of the same name, already known for its use of surrealist and oblique angles in its drawings.

The 1949 film The Third Man makes extensive use of Dutch angle shots, to emphasize the main character's alienation in a foreign environment.

Director Carol Reed has said that William Wyler gave him a spirit level after seeing the film, to sardonically encourage him to use more traditional shooting angles.

[3][15] Dutch angles are frequently used by film directors who have a background in the visual arts, such as Tim Burton (in Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood), and Terry Gilliam (in Brazil, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Tideland) to represent madness, disorientation, or drug psychosis.

[15] In Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss (1982), a Dutch angle is used to convey the odd tension that strangers are exerting on the main character.