Critical explorations of expressionist cinema sometimes produce profound ambiguities. Given the individual contexts of Expressionism, perhaps that is natural. Most of these ambiguities occur as critics negotiate defining expressionist film in general terms. On the evidence, it appears that some traps also lie in remembering at least to acknowledge the likelihood of creative authorial intention in any individual filmmaker's output. For example, Marc Silberman, writing in his essay “What Is German in German Cinema?” says this, expertly and yet somewhat paradoxically:

Silberman's analysis of German cinema is articulate and strong. But where here in his summary is the relationship between the authorial individuals and the aesthetic? Other notes in his essay suggest that Silberman is aware that personal relationships are significant in expressionist cinema, and that every expressionist film has at its core an exploration of a personal world as much as it has at its heart a response to the stark, mechanized intrusions of modernism into the external environment. Yet, when he explores the starkness of line in expressionist film he appears momentarily to forget that expressionism is, most certainly, profoundly about persons as much as it is about the place and the conditions it considers.

This is not really a strong criticism of Silberman. Beyond the fact that his essay is excellent in spite of this anomaly, he is also in good company in such a momentary absence of mind. He shares this absence with one of America's most renowned, and sadly recently deceased, film critics, Andrew Sarris. Death is often said to be a great leveler and one aspect it most certainly levels is that of nationality and culture. Regardless of the rituals around them, the dead persistently remain deceased. Thus, that Sarris writes mostly about American cinema and Silberman writes mostly about German cinema is of no consequence in the story of Sarris's death, or necessarily either in the connection between Sarris's critical apparatus and Silberman's.