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The analysis of some of the German expressionist films produced in the early twentieth century enables us point to the existence of common and recurring themes such as the voluntary submission of individuals, the mass manipulation by leaders, the split personality, and the double. Although such issues seem to refer, at first, only to the characters' psychological disorders, Sigfried Kracauer seeks to demonstrate the relationship between the topics covered in expressionist films and Germany's social reality in the postwar period. In this perspective, the aim of this paper is to discuss the relationship between aspects of the individual psychic reality, especially alienation, mental alienation, and estrangement produced by social reality. It puts together the strange (Das Unheimliche) discussed by Freud, the concept of estrangement (Entfremdung) by Marx, and the effect of estrangement in art (Verfremdungseffekt) by Bertolt Brecht, discussed by Herbert Marcuse. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]