The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Directed by: Robert Weine

Written by: Carl Mayer & Hans Janowitz

Starring: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher

One of the confusing aspects of watching old silent films is that they have been restored to make them viewable by modern audiences. That means that the version we are watching today may not be the way the film was originally presented, and an audience's emotional reaction to the movie might be different because of these changes. The restored print of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari I watched contains colour grading, a jazz soundtrack, and creative title card design which all added to the horror and engagement of the film. I'm fairly certain the colour grading is from the original, and perhaps even the subtitles (translated from German of course). However, there is no way a jazz band was synced up to the steps of a character as he walks downstairs.

Caligari is regarded as one of the highlights of the German Expressionist movement. Expressionism is an artistic style concerned with subjective reality. Warping images for emotional effect. A highlight of my watch was not only the painted backgrounds, but the way sets were constructed with wonky perspective, creating a sense of claustrophobia as the characters moved through them. Everything seemed off-kilter and surreal, and that added to the horror of the story.

A somnambulist is in town and gives people their fortunes, controlled by the creepy Dr. Caligari. A string of mysterious murders start happening. One young man whose friend is a victim seeks to discover the truth. The way the film ends was a little confusing. It turns out that the story that the young man told was to a doctor at the very insane asylum that Caligari is the director of. Earlier in the tale, when the young man finds out that Caligari is the director of the asylum, in horror he tells the orderlies of the hospital what he's encountered. After so many years of horror stories, the trope I was expecting is that the orderlies think the young man insane and commit him to the asylum, Caligari having used his position to get away with his crimes. I'm sure you've encountered such a story before.

To my surprise, the orderlies believe the young man. They wait till Caligari sleeps and then search his office and find the evidence they need to commit the Director. The young man is vindicated. The ending shows that this was just a story. The question raised is whether or not Caligari has actually gotten away with it, or if the whole ordeal is just the delusion of a mental patient. The film ends on an ambiguous note when the Director says that since he now understands that the patient thinks of him as this Dr. Caligari, he knows how to cure him. The end credits come on screen. Whether this last line is meant to be menacing or hopeful, I do not know.

This might be one of the earliest examples of the unreliable narrator in film. The girl in the story who was attacked by Cesare the somnambulist is in the asylum too and the young man asks to marry her at the end of the film. At the start when she wandered by he called her his fiancee. I'm inclined to think the whole story is actually the delusions of an insane asylum patient. It would also explain the backgrounds and set design. that are not present in the final scenes of the film.

The version of the film I watched can be found here.