Robert Wiene (director)
Eureka! (studio)
Cert U (certificate)
77min (length)
29 September 2014 (released)
06 October 2014
The cinema release of Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari has recently been reviewed on this site. Now the official Blu-ray/DVD version is now available, complete with a battery of Special Features!
The SPECIAL FEATURES include audio commentary by film historian David Kalat, a new video essay by film critic David Cairns, re-release trailer, a 56-page booklet, and the fascinating 52-minute documentary ‘Caligari: How Horror Came To The Cinema’. This documentary is particularly insightful as a result of how this genre of film came to be made – given the political climate at the time. These cinematic treasures could have only have been made in Germany and in a sense were all the better for it. Well, from an artistic point of view anyway!
Arguably one of the most influential horror films from the German Expressionist movement and the silent movie era per se, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) inspired countless other movies with its stark and creepy use of light and shadow. Now, this classic horror film can be seen in a definitive restoration in UK cinemas across the country.
In the frame story, we are introduced to a young man called Francis (Friedrich Fehér), who sits on a bench and is in conversation with an elderly man, revealing a story that happened to him not so long ago. We are then told in flashback how Francis and his best friend Alan (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski) are in love with the same girl, Jane (Lil Dagover). Vowing not to have a fall-out over their joint feelings, the two friends decide to pay a visit to a travelling carnival in the mountain village of Holstenwall, to take their minds of that slight problem. Little do they know what lies in store for them… really, they would have been far better off going to the local beer garden! At the fair, they soon encounter the seemingly sinister Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) and his sideshow attraction, the lithe somnambulist Cesare (Conrad Veidt), whom the Doctor keeps in a coffin-shaped cabinet (hence the film’s title) and controls via hypnosis. Caligari informs his audience that Cesare can predict their futures. Alan, trying to be clever, asks Cesare how long he’ll live, and receives the shattering reply that “he shall die at dawn.” Thus begins the first in a string of mysterious murders in the small-town, however, one potential victim – the aforementioned Jane – is spared her life and is kidnapped by Cesare instead. Chased by the locals, he dies from exhaustion and the young woman is freed. Distraught by the recent tragedies, Francis makes his way to the local lunatic asylum to find out whether a certain Caligari was one of the former patients, only to learn that Dr. Caligari is in fact the head of the asylum! But as the twist ending reveals, things are not what they appear to be…
Director Robert Wiene succeeds only too well in bringing out the sinister side of Dr. Caligari, performed to perfection by Werner Krauss. As for Cesare, Conrad Veidt’s facial expressions are always the right side of subtle and never overdone. The partnership of Krauss and Veidt works extremely well, in a macabre sort of way.
Even if you haven’t seen this film before, chances are that you will be well acquainted with various still pictures from it; most notably the painted and jagged-shaped sets. The ground-breaking sets were designed and painted by Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig respectively. In fact, one of the most memorable images, namely that of Cesare carrying the kidnapped Jane over the distorted rooftops, has been re-created for a scene in the 2002 vampire flick Queen Of The Damned, in which rock singer Lestat (Stuart Townsend) is seen as the Cesare character in a music video.