Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) [PG]

Two men exchange horror stories that they have witnessed. One, Francis, recounts the tale of a strange attraction in a fair ground: a sinister mesmerist named Dr. Caligari and his eerie somnambulist Cesare. Shortly after the pair arrive in a town a string of mysterious murders start happening and Francis is sure that Caligari is involved. The plot thickens when he discovers that Caligari is director of a lunatic asylum and obsessed with an old article of psychiatric mesmerism. 

When we think about silent 1920s cinema, many of us forget about the fantastical and distorted images that Georges Melies made into moving pictures. Images that are dated yes, but still hold their intrigue and power to frighten or enliven audiences. 

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a film that seeks to return to a time when cinema was not so intent upon recreating reality, by dragging its audiences into a world of strangeness and mystery. From the first scene of an almost spectral woman floating past two men to the final scene of the hero in a straitjacket, nothing in this film is what it seems and everything is made to be distorted and unbelievable. 

The timeless creepiness of Dr. Caligari comes namely in the visual spectacle of the film. A large part of the film is of course in black and white, but there are three filters of green, purple, and dull red that add complexity and atmosphere to the scenes where they are used. 

The film is shot more as a stage play, with the camera remaining centre-fixed all the time and the actors and sets doing all of the work. Whilst the performances aren’t as overdone as in Metropolis, they are still larger than life and the costumes and makeup work in perfect tandem with them to create suspense, beauty, and horror. 

Casare the somnambulist, whilst really just a tall, thin, and pasty man who sleeps a lot, is made profoundly haunting by the heavy use of eye and lip makeup that is traditional with stage plays. In those close-ups of his face, he suddenly becomes the stuff of nightmares as he slinks through the town in his black bodystocking armed with a knife. 

Stage style eye and lip makeup also create such beauty and poise within the heroine, making her very elegant and pure: a real damsel. 

But without a doubt the standout of the film and the title of leading man and lady go to anyone and everyone concerned with the set design and execution. Expressionist designers Hermann Warm, Walter Roehrig, and Walter Reimann have created this incredibly distorted and caricatured set of the town and the rooms, giving the film an almost puppet-show quality. There is absolutely no straight line to be seen, shadows are elongated and tipped at angles from whichever way they are lit, characters of authority sit hunched up on humorously high chairs, and the patterns that decorate the interiors of prominent buildings are both beautiful and uncanny when blended with the film’s context. 

If we are to take a slight Freudian angle, this movie is a wonderful display of the uncanny: taking something familiar and friendly and turning it inside out to become different and terrifying. Theatre, puppet shows, and fair grounds become sources of peril and suspense and this is where the true horror of Dr. Caligari lies. 

That and the unsettling Wizard of Oz-esque ending that leaves you staring at the screen with your mouth hanging open. 

Starring Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher, Lil Dagover, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Rudolph Lettinger, and Rudolph Klein-Rogge, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a captivating and unsettling landmark of cinema that still has power to thrill and captivate modern audiences: history, culture, art, and theatre are all represented within this film. Filled with suspense, romance, drama, and horror, it’s a remarkable piece of cinema.