The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
It’s pure horror. The shadows that play on the walls of our subconscious.
In a short form, it’s an exquisite mind fuck, but this is one of those movies that doesn’t deserve a short-form right-off.
Everything about it is visceral, with a strong emphasis on the visual: sets, costumes, title cards, filters, make up, actors. The version I watched had an updated score by Rainer Viertblock, a kind of twangy, discordant jazz that roots around and picks up all of the bizarre overtones of the film, bringing to the audience the need to sit up and pay attention.
While being extraordinarily different, there are pieces of it that fit into the usual movie scenario: The hero, a villain, an idyllic maiden.
It plays with your emotions, suspicions and expectations. It changes the perspective and the mood with painted shadows and grimly costumed characters. While touching on the Victorian Gothic, it also envelops Europe, post-WWI during the time of expressionism and Dadaism. If anyone ever doubted that film is art, sit them down and show them this movie.
It is part romantic Victorian novel and part trip into the hell of the mind, the entrapment of insanity and the escape of reality. It is dark and riotous and bizarre, a sleepwalker’s dream on the crooked streets in a surreal German village.
How is it pure horror? While the sets are highly designed, the horrific aspect of the film is simple compared to horror from later years. It is the fear of murder and of death– stripped down bare and unexpected. It is also the fear of no control, whether as a puppet in the hands of a cruel master or loss of control in one’s own mind.
It explores dark imagination, obsession, and the darkness of scientific exploration. Beautiful and frightening, it is not only a must see before you die, it is a film that haunts our nightmares.
