The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

This silent horror film is still remembered today due to it's groundbreaking use of expressionism and a few other highly influential touches. We don't see expressionism in major films so much at the moment... The Dark Knight, The Bourne Identity, and all their ilk have ushered in an era of realism in production design that will probably last a few more years yet. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari's use of expressionism has its origins in the theatre, and manifests itself in the film through both makeup and set design, as well as blocking and camera angles. A prime example of this is the famous image of Cesare (Conrad Veidt) carrying a woman's collapsed body along the dark and twisted rooftops of a German city; a stark vision that embraces the artificiality of film in a way that no film had done before (and few have done since). It's quite striking, even from a modern viewpoint, and the fact that the film has a lot to offer beyond this is just the cherry on top.

Francis (Friedrich Feher) sits down with another man and offers to tell him a true story of his past. He reminisces about a fair that came to town, and the carnival attraction that Dr. Caligari (Werner Krausse) brought with him - a creepy somnambulist named Cesare. At night, the insane Dr. Caligari bids Cesare to go out into the town and murder people they have entertained at the fair. Francis and his friend, Alan (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski), both love Jane (Lil Dagover). But when Alan gets murdered suspicion falls on Francis and he must prove the guilt of Dr. Caligari to save both himself and his love. This leads Francis to an insane asylum, where the crazed director of the institution hides some very sinister secrets.


Dr. Caligari is an odd and disturbing looking figure, and there's something unsettling about the way that he has to spoonfeed Cesare. The film is careful to hold back a lot of details at first, showing only the aftermath of the serial stabbings at first before gradually revealing Cesare's compelling murders in more detail. The director understands that less is more, so the first time we see an actual murder it's shown only in silhouette.

The plot is unusually complex for a silent horror film. In The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari we have the first example of the story-within-a-story device. As the lead character is retelling his cautionary tale it allows for an off-kilter production design. This expressionism is actually therefore a metaphor for the twisted mind that tells the story. The storytelling device also allows for some unexpected twists, such as an unreliable narrator. It's quite clever as the film takes advantage of the fact that film audiences in the 1920s took certain things for granted that modern viewers wouldn't (EG. That what they see is true in the context of the film). The medium was still quite young so a lot of viewers wouldn't have been fully aware of what films were capable of, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari must've been quite shocking at the time due to the way it plays with these expectations. In true horror tradition, the film also has a grand old time exploiting the public's fear of crazy people for its scare factor.

DIRECTOR: Robert Wiene
WRITER/SOURCE: Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer.
KEY ACTORS: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher, Lil Dagover, Rudolf Lettinger, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski.

RELATED TEXTS
- From Caligari to Hitler, a psychoanalytical history book by German film critic Siegfried Kracauer.
- Remade in 1992 as The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez. It was an experimental silent film and has never been released.
- Also remade in the 1960s as The Cabinet of Caligari, although this version bares very little resemblance to the original.
- The original film has also influenced more recent films such as The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus and Shutter Island.
- More early German expressionistic classics: Nosferatu, M, Metropolis, The Golem and The Haunted Castle.