THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI Movie Review

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari

In the early 19th century. Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) exhibits a sleepwalker, Cesare (Conrad Veidt), at a carnival. Soon after, a murder takes place and it is Caligari, the “master” of Cesare, who is the chief suspect. Before long, however, it's discovered that Caligari is actually the director of a nearby insane asylum, but is himself quite insane. But wait! As those who have seen The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari will remember, everything we have seen up until that point of revelation turned out to be the fantasy of a real inmate in that same asylum, who has imagined that the hospital's director (Krauss) is the dreaded “Dr. Caligari.” It's all simpler than it sounds, but the plot is not what makes Robert Wiene's film a landmark (admittedly, some aspects of the plot, such as those that touch on blind obedience to authority, are ripe for study when examining German film history). The expressionist style of the film was the brainchild not of Wiene but of the film's producer Erich Pommer, who wanted to bring to the cinema an example of the expressionist movement taking hold in the art world at the time. The result was the movie's extraordinary visual representation of madness through the use of distorted and twisted streets, doorways, windows, and rooms, as well as makeup that provided a ghostly and terrifying approximation of a nightmare. Though it was made on a low budget and directed by Wiene in generally pedestrian fashion, it is the ingenious and daring visual design of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari that makes it the head-turning shot from a starter pistol that began the race toward a new era of cinematic expression. A pointless Hollywood remake was done in 1962.

NEXT STOP … The Last Laugh, A Page of Madness, Invaders from Mars (1953)

1919 92m/B GE Conrad Veidt, Werner Krauss, Lil Dagover, Friedrich Feher, Hans von Twardowski, Rudolf Klein-Rogge, Rudolf Lettinger; D: Robert Wiene; W: Carl Mayer, Hans Janowitz; C: Willy Hameister. VHS, LV KIV, REP, MRV