Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari, The

Rating: 10/10
Year: 1920
Genre: Drama
Director: Robert Wiene
Cast: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the representative title of German Expressionist film. It is also a pioneer of the modern thriller genre.

The advent of German Expressionism could be attributed to the defeat of Germany in World War I. After Germany was defeated in the world war, the Germans were stirred to reconsider their traditional belief in authority, they began to investigate and discover progessive, experimental and avant garde genre in the arts. They tried to potray subjective realities in a objective terms by rendering the states of mind, moods and atmosphere through the medium of the photographic image. The result is a highly stylized and exagerrated dimensions and deranged spatial relationships as seen in this film - an unnatural and dark place in which buildings pile on top of each other at strange angles, jagged chimneys, and characters with heavy make-up. The backdrop is painted in an abstract manner aritfically as well.

The atmoshpere of the film is constructed well enough to keep viewers in suspense. The original idea of the film was an account of real horror, in which Dr. Caligari is really a necromancer who uses Cesare to kill people. But later the plot was modified to become a framing story in which the original story is supposed to be a paranoid delusion of a patient. The modification not only changes the film from an antiauthoritarian fable into a hallucination account, it also justifies the authority it was intended to subvert. Nevertheless, the framing story does succeed in "reflecting the double aspect of German life by coupling a reality in which Caligari's authority triumphs with a hallucination in which the same authority is overthrown." (Siegfried Kraucauer, "Caligari, from From Caligari to Hitler", 1947). The account of authority is so impressive that people at that time suspected if Hitler had seen it and was influenced by it in some way.

DVD (US version) - The DVD provides really nice image and sound qualities. Yes, it is a silent film, but as you might know, most silent films released nowadays come with a soundtrack. It is either a soundtrack added by the distributor or one that is intended by the filmmaker to play during the film. I am not sure which category the soundtrack of this film falls into though.

Cool guy(s) - Werner Krauss

Reviewed by: Kantorates