The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Written by Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz

Directed by Robert Wiene

Art Direction by Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann, and Walter Rohrig

Horror

Okay. I know. 

I swear this was initially going to be a short review.

I anticipated it. 

I thought an old movie from the 1920's with a single hour long plot would be maybe a thousand words long.

I thought the themes wouldn't run that deep, that it was going to be a relatively niche movie where the central interests would star in its age, practical effects, and writing at the near beginning of cinema.

I thought the documentation of the film itself would be sparse and disconnected, especially considering that the film has been out for over a century.

I did not consider that maybe I would be wrong on all of these accounts.

How Will The Review Be Structured?

The Movie, My Thoughts, and its Plot

Analysis of the Themes and Ending

A Ton of Facts Regarding the Creation, Thematic Analysis Already Performed, and Reception

Recommendations of Similar Movies

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The Movie, My Thoughts, and its Plot

Hey, this movie is only a hour long and is in the public domain. If you want to watch the movie itself, or just want a thematic analysis, then skip this section. 

The movie is structured into 6 Acts, with each Act going over a key point in the story and lasting about 11 minutes on average. It takes place in a small town named Holstenwall when a local communal fair is being set up. 

There are a few characters in this story that we need to keep track of, and will list here for easy reference.

Franzis - the main character telling the story

Jane - a woman whose romantic interest Franzis and Alan are competing for; and Franzis claims she is his fiancee at the start of the movie

Alan - Franzis' friend who wears a hat

Dr. Caligari - a man who wishes to perform a somnambulist (sleepwalking) act at the community fair

Cesare - the sleepwalker who is part of Dr. Caligari's act 

You probably have seen the movie before or read a synopsis, so I will quickly brush through.

Act 1

The movie begins with a man named Franzis, who is regaling another man about a terrible incident he experienced recently with his fiancee Jane. In the town of Holstenwall the local fair has come to town and Alan (Franzis' friend) and Franzis have decided to attend. Meanwhile a man named Dr. Caligari requests the town clerk to perform a somnambulism act in the town. Also they have a live baby chimpanzee in baby clothes in the foreground hissing at random extras because it was the 1920's and no one was concerned about OSHA and animal violations.

Act 2: 

Rather short act that previous one was. Anyways, there's been a murder. The town clerk has been found to have been stabbed to death. Anyways (again), back to the fair. Alan and Franzis attend Dr. Caligari's somnambulism act and spectate Cesare, a 23-year old man who Dr. Caligari claims has been asleep for 23 years, only wakes up when Dr. Caligari commands it, and knows the answer to every question in the world.

I would, as you might now be dear reader, skeptical about the credibility of a man who has been asleep since he was born. I would also be skeptical that this man apparently just so happens to be able to be woken up exclusively by the one person who is running the event. I don't know if the concept of comas, acting, or artificial anesthesia, was well-known in the 1920's (according to a quick Google search it was), but I also am aware that people were probably excruciatingly bored if they were going to see a man asleep and likely didn't care if it was genuine. Moving on then.

Alan asks Cesare when he will die, upon which Cesare claims he will be dead before morning. 

Rough luck buddy.

The two head home with Jane and say, despite competing for Jane's affection, promise to remain friends no matter what.

Alan, about to suffer from prophesized death syndrome. (Does the silhouette look like a man in a cowboy hat to you, or someone raising a knife next to their head to stab someone?)

Act 3:
Unfortunately, this friendship would not last long as Alan has received the affliction of a prophesized death and in the night Alan is murdered. Franzis vows to find out who killed his friend and enlists the help of the police to investigate the carnival tomorrow at dawn. Also, the murderer is caught in the middle of the night.

Act 4: The murderer that was caught was merely a copycat killer. Jane is almost murdered by Cesare, but he decides to try and fail kidnapping her instead.

Act 5: Caligari flees to an asylum, where it turns out he is the current medical director, and is placed under observation. After snooping around it is revealed that Caligari wants to replicate an old Italian serial killing from the 1700's where a man named Dr. Caligari used a sleepwalker named Cesare to commit a murder spree in a small town. The reason? Well, partially to gain insight into if a person can be subconsciously compelled to kill through their sleep, partially because the fake Caligari is obsessed with the idea of being the Caligari from the 1700's.

Act 6: We learn that Franzis, and Jane, are actually patients in an insane asylum. Jane isn't Franzis' fiancee, and Franzis has the delusion that the current director of the asylum is Dr. Caligari. 

The Analysis, My Thoughts (Again, but Structured), and The Ending

When I watched the Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the first thing I noticed was the distinct lack of sound. The movie was made in the 1920's, meaning it is a silent movie. Audio is portrayed through flashcards of giant jagged blocks of text that scroll up and down. Due to the silence in the movie, the only noise comes from the sound effects and orchestra composing of wind, rattling cobblestones, and harsh musical notes. The music is interesting because it consistently feels like its off-key; notes are jumbled together and the best word that comes to mind is disjointed, like my eardrums have started falling down the stairs and they just keep falling.

This aspect of skewed audio applies to the visuals of the movie as well. The props are slanted, bars and windowsills are at diagonal angles, dark lines run in swirls and paths across the set pieces, roads twist back and forth in sharp corners - its almost reminiscent of a play-pretend house from a children's book. Indeed, many of the backgrounds were actually painted onto giant canvases making the whole thing feel simplistic and out of place. 

One of the best shots in the movie

The lighting also should be mentioned. Every shot is either tinged in a blue, orange, or white filter. Initially while watching I thought that the difference in colour insinuated a theme that would be running deeper in the movie, but I noticed that the colours most often shifted for an easier reason - the time of day; blue for night, orange for day and dim indoors, and white for what I presume to be extremely bright light.

While watching the movie, I found the whole thing to be a form of "cosmic horror". Not the traditional genre of cosmic horror, that with the meaningless and insignificance of existence so often quoted, but instead the similarities in narrative structure for cosmic horror at the time. I of course am talking about H.P. Lovecraft, who was alive and writing during this time period. 

Tracing aliens, dead gods dreaming of living cavities in between the callous stars, and the foul insidious nature of air conditioning, it must be noted that the movie follows the narrative structure and flow of these stories instead of the original plots.

The typical narrative structure of H.P. Lovecraft is an ordinary person who is suddenly thrust into investigating supernatural or horrific circumstances, usually caused by some major implication about the world that is revealed at the end. Franzis finds himself bludgeoned with the sharp reality of his best friend's murder and compels himself into solving it, learning the terrible truth behind Dr. Caligari and his experiments with sleepwalking.

There was a similar story actually by H.P. Lovecraft that follows an identical parallel. While I have not read this story myself, I know the near legendary synopsis of the tale of Charles Le Sorcerer (that is his name). In the story a family vulgarly upsets a man who claims to be a wizard, named Charles Le Sorcerer, who prophesizes the tragic deaths of each of the family members. What follows is the stricken shock of the family finding their relatives dying one by one, and toss themselves forth in a desperate attempt to solve the murders before the curse presumably comes for them. It is however eventually revealed that the murders are merely caused by Charles Le Sorcerer himself, who is breaking into their house and killing them in the night.

The comparisons between these two stories reflective of the common horror plots of the time enunciate why The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is regarded as a horror movie classic, perhaps even being the first horror movie in cinema.

One tidbit in the movie is that, while Caligari is beginning to develop his obsession about the prior Italian murders, he is pursued by the words "Du Musst Caligari Werden" - you must become Caligari.

Skipping towards the end of the movie we are shown that the protagonist is actually in an asylum and Jane isn't his fiancee. We do not know if the story Franzis told is a complete fabrication, a partial truth, or is true and Dr. Caligari is actually the asylum director. The story is based on an unreliable narrator, and thus cannot be cemented entirely in reliable truth. Franzis is biased in his retelling of events; is Alan real, were the murders real, if so did Franzis commit them or someone else? These are never answered. But Francis does portray himself in no negative light through his story. In fact, we also see Cesare at the end while Franzis is in the asylum; awake, cognizant, gently petting a flower - not silent startling and stern, reducing credibility in Franzis' story of Cesare as a persistently sleeping murderer. 

Jane is an interesting character in this scene, as she says the words:

With this we can insinuate that, if Franzis' story is true, then Jane was in love with Alan and has spurred Franzis. It could also be implied that, even if the story of Dr. Caligari is false, it is not unreasonable to assume that mayhaps Franzis murdered Alan himself. 

If the story is entirely false and Franzis bears no relation to Jane, then she is a person who Franzis has projected his delusions onto.

A Ton of Facts Regarding the Creation, Thematic Analysis Already Performed, and Reception

I was not expecting this film to have much external insight or analysis performed on it. I was expecting it to be niche, with quiet review and sparse documentation. I was not expecting it to be a significant cultural cult classic with a Wikipedia article spanning 13k words. 

Dr. Caligari and Cesare

The movie has been subjected to decades of review and analysis by scholars, critics, and historians of German cinema. There has been a lot on it, and therefore it is too much. I don't want to just regurgitate meaningless facts and portions of newspaper articles without a point. I will go over some of the interesting facts that relate to the plot, and contextual influences, of the movie. I cannot, however, go over every single thing that is known across the numerous articles of media - I have an abundance of reviews after all, and dwindling time. This means I will not be able to do the film justice, unable to cover its extensive history or every interpretation that's been pronounced. However, if you do want to learn more, check Wikipedia, the book Caligari to Hitler, Britannica, or other online articles. From what I could find, many people have similar opinions about the movie, often referring to it using the tagline "the first horror movie ever made", as I have earlier in this article (I presume this is due to a tradition much like when you first start coding where you are expected to write the phrase, "Hello World" as the first command.).

What Genre is the Movie? - German Expressionism and Horror

The film was shot in 1920's Germany, post World War I, and was part of German expressionism. What is German expressionism? German expressionism is defined by is extreme angles, reflection of internal perception and ones own subjective state of mind, and a strict detachment from the notion of reality in favor of more emotional experiences

German expressionism stemmed from the isolation of Germany during World War I, where all foreign media was banned and the urge for domestic cinema was on the rise, and the Weimar Republic that shortly followed. I, unfortunately, do not know enough about German history or the Weimar Republic's impact on the social, economic, and political context of Germany so I cannot give an adequate analysis on its impact. If you want, you can check out the "Interpretation" section in the Wikipedia article here, or Siegfried Kracauer's book titled, "From Caligari to Hitler", which analyzes the phases of German cinema between World War I and II. According to Wikipedia, one reason for these surges of German viewership was in part from inflation, with the mindset of you may as well spend your money if it was going to be worth less tomorrow. 

Odd Beginnings

The following analysis is mostly taken from Wikipedia, which cites several sources, regarding the peculiar nature of the film's script writing. I have decided to summarize the points made for two reasons: One, to demonstrate that the entire film, whether deliberately or not, was directly inspired by real life experiences and feelings that the writers had. Two, the nature of the films production and the source of these themes are interesting to learn about. The two writers of the film initially met post-WWI, an experience which left them distrustful of authority and medical treatment of the time. One of the writers faked insanity to avoid military service - with the resulting experience serving as the main inspiration behind Caligari. The scene of Cesare predicting Alan's death is also inspired by a real life incident where someone the writer knew had their death prophesized at the beginning of WWI, which eventually came to pass. Obviously the carnival was also inspired by real life fairs at the time.

One of the writers, Janowitz, says the film likely reflects an unconscious bias he had towards authority and the authority of the state at the time of filming, however this was on reflection several decades after the film and is noted to possibly influenced by already established interpretation. Despite this, it is clear that the majority of the film is taken from the script writers own personal world.

The Frame Story Debacle

Dr. Caligari looks like a cat that was suddenly transformed into a human, I do not know why

A frame story is when a single story is told inside of another story; think of it as reading a book about two people chatting for coffee, and partway through one person goes on a tangent about a story they experienced for a wide section of the book. In the movie, this is used when we find out that the main "meat" of the story (the tale of Dr. Caligari and the murders) are overshadowed with the revelation of the "end story" that Franzis is trapped in an asylum.

I do not know all of the details and may have the accounts slightly wrong. A lot of people have a lot of opinions about this, and I had to mentally map out a chart to make sense of it.

One of the directors wanted to add a prologue and frame story into the plot in an attempt to help the audience better watch and understand the movie. Apparently, the writers (according to Janowitz) heavily disagreed with the use of a frame story, feeling it would devalue the anti-authoritarian messaging in the film. Instead there was initially not going to be an opening prologue where Franzis sits down and discusses his tale, and it was theorized the original film  had no frame story at all. According to more recent findings we now know that the frame story, according to the original screenplay, DID exist but only the prologue; Franzis would tell his story to guests at a dinner party, easing into the tale of Dr. Caligari. It was the conclusion, where Franzis is institutionalized, which was added.

The reason the frame story is important is because many people debate over the meaning of the film itself, given the socio-political context of the time. 

Without the frame story (i.e. Franzis' institutionalization and revelation of the story being possibly false), the tale is about an asylum director who thoroughly abused their authority to pursue their own ends; needlessly preying on medical patients and killing out of self-aggrandizing egotism. 

The addition of the frame story subverts the tale into one of speculation, where it can possibly still be interpreted that Franzis is telling a partial truth, but also one where it could be interpreted as the entire tale being fabricated - a tale where the asylum director is the good, benevolent, kindhearted doctor and Franzis is the extreme and jagged one. 

Some Interpretations of the Movie (SOME, not All)

Authoritarianism:

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari clearly defines authoritarianism as a prominent theme throughout it's plot, a sentiment shared by (one) of the writers and other critics. Caligari is the head of an institution who is abusing his power for his own gain, a gain that the public must bear to lose, while Cesare acts as an independent "henchmen" or personal killer for Caligari to indulge his power fantasy. This negative perception of authority extends to other characters of the movie as well, such as the asylum doctors, police, and town clerk. It is not unreasonable to state that the majority of investigative work, and pursuit for the truth behind the murders, is solely performed by Franzis. Even at the end of the film when we realize Franciz is an unreliable narrator, we are still told by him that it is the authority of the doctors that placed him there, not insanity.

World War I and Post-War Germany:

The film was written and directed in a post-war Germany, and as such many critics have mentioned that Caligari may represent the fears of the public at the time. Still recovering mentally from the sudden death brought about by the war and living in a period of economic and political uncertainty, especially with the validity of institutions being called into question, the film offers itself as a reflective lens into a small isolated town that has found itself hurdling towards an unspeakable rash of death.

Of course, both of these viewpoints are taken from Siegfried Kracauer's, "From Caligari to Hitler", which takes an angle of debate that views the movie as an insight into themes of authoritarianism. However, the intent of the critic does not always align with the view of the writer, especially when there have been numerous influences for the movie. Other viewpoints may be more prevalent depending on the souce.

Recommendations 

If you enjoy German Expressionism, the childish playful backgrounds, or the unsettling brooding nature of the film, the movie House (1977) would be right up your alley. It has gained a cult following in recent years and I found it to be a pretty good movie to watch with friends.