The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari

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Film Description

One of the most inspired and influential horror movies ever made in which a hypnotist uses a somnambulist to carry out his murders. With admirable use of painted light, this is the finest flowering of the Expressionist impulse ever captured on film. Intended as an attack on the political leaders who had led Germany into the war, the prologue and epilogue, originally suggested by Fritz Lang and added by the producer, completely inverted this theme. Veidt, who would become one of cinema's most charismatic and cherished bad guys, is outstanding as the unwilling killer.

Film Information

DVD Extras

Audio commentary; musical score; photos; advertising & art; 'Tale Of A Vampire' featurette.

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Reviews & Articles

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Review by James Day on 7th January 2000

A masterful piece of classic horror. This film should be an inspiration for film makers alike as the plot to this horor/fantasy movie, still works, even some 80 years after it's release. I for one recommend this to a serious horror fan. If you like hypnotism, Gothic somnambulists and distorted set designs, this is a must. 9/10

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Review by wolfram parge on 20th May 2003

Dismissed by its authors Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz as a "ruined" work because of unauthorised detractions from the screenplay, The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari still remains the crown-jewel of German expressionist cinema. It is also one of the world's earliest horror films, unafraid in its stylised experimentation with expressionism. Werner Krauss plays Dr. Caligari in this strange, dream-like tale, a physician who exhibits a curious sensation at a fair in a German town. This spectacle is a medium introduced as Cesare, a somnambulist who can forsee events of the future. The display turns sinister when one of the spectators is prophesied his death for the following morning, an event leading to a series of unexplained murders. Only the community's hero Francis determines to unravel the mystery of Caligari's showpiece Cesare, played by the legendary Conrad Veidt. Robert Wiene filmed entirely in the studio without compromise, and no other film uses such overbear ing sets, in which sharp, un-mathematical angles create warped perspectives which consume the performers. In its use of fear and oppression, The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari created a claustrophobia far ahead of its time.

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Review by Andrew Hoellering on 18th May 2006

My main interest is in the changes which completely distorted the main idea of the film and horrified its scriptwriters, Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz.



A psychiatrist posing as showman sends Caesare –the ordinary representative brainwashed soldier - to kill indiscriminately. This was intended as a parable of authority in World War One.
In the finished film this main narrative is shown as a flashback from a framing scene set in a madhouse, so that Caligari – a psychiatrist masquerading as a showman – is seen to use his creature –the hypnotised somnambulist Cesare- to commit murders . So the key idea in the whole film -Cesare as the victim -is presented as no more than the fantasy of a deranged asylum patient. What is distorted is precisely Janowitz’s hatred and savage symbol of an authority which sent millions of young men to their senseless and untimely deaths.
Cesare is Caligari’s innocent victim –the common man who under the pressure of compulsory military service is drilled to kill and to be killed. The surprise that Erich Pommer had accepted so unusual and subversive a script turns into disgust. Only art and artistic achievement, Pommer felt, could capture the export markets –but he was responsible for reversing the original idea!



Instead of exposing the madness inherent in authority, Wiene’s CALIGARI glorified authority and convicted its antagonist of madness, turning a revolutionary film into a conformist one. Wiene wanted his film to fulfil his audience’s desire –to mirror the general retreat from the real world.
The revolutionary story was preserved , but purely as a madman’s fantasy.

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Article - "Beautiful Spring; 10 Silent Classics" by John Davies
Monday 23rd September 2002

I hope with this selection both to challenge the prevailing notion of silent cinema as hopelessly primitive, and to encourage pleasurable discovery. Spurred by pioneers like the aptly named Lumiere brothers and Georges Melies, (whose fantasies seem sprinkled with mag...  View article in full

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This film is part of the following Film Collections

Great Film Twists

Including: 24 (Season 1), A Tale of Two Sisters, Angel Heart, Citizen Kane, Dont Look Now, Fight Club, GoldenEye, House Of Games, Les Diaboliques, Manon Des Sources.

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