Expressionist Impression

We don't watch a lot of silent movies, but thought that Terror-tober is the right month to finally watch The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).

It starts with a young man (Frederic Feher) telling his troubles to an older man in a garden. It seems that a certain Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) had come to the fair in his town to display a somnabulist. Caligari was a weird looking man in a cape, top hat, and round glasses. Feher and a friend went to see his act. Caligari opened a coffin-like cabinet to display Cesar the somnabulist (Conrad Veidt). Cesar is deathly pale and thin, and appears to be sleeping. Caligari has him get out of the coffin, and claims he can answer any question. When Feher's friend asks him when he will die, Cesar says "before dawn!". 

And it comes true, because Cesar, still in a trance, sneaks into his room and kills him. And this isn't the only mysterious killing in this town.

Feher and his girl Lil Dagover suspect that Caligari and Cesar are behind these killings. And so, with a dummy in his cabinet, Cesar sets out to kill Dagover. But he can't do it - instead he grabs her and carries her away over the rooftops. But the townspeople give chase, and finally Cesar drops her, and collapses dead.

Caligari runs off with Feher chasing, and ducks into an insane asylum - and it turns out that he is the director. And, in the end, it turns out that Feher and Dagover are inmates of the asylum. And the man he was talking to in the garden (of the asylum) is his doctor. 

It's an interesting and bizarre tale, but the visual elements are the real excitement. This is the height of German Expressionism, with wildly tilted scenery, painted shadows, and cartoonishly graphic painted backdrops. Veidt's Cesar is also very Expressionist, dressed in a black skinsuit, with angular elbows and a sinuously curved spine - rather Nijinksy. He made a great monster.