In the cabinet, Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) keeps a man, a somnambulist named Cesare (Conrad Veidt). Now, “somnambulist” is just a fancy word for sleepwalker, but Cesare is a sort of mindless zombie slave that does the doctor’s bidding. And what does the doctor bid? Murder.

It’s a framed tale. Franzis (Friedrich Feher) points out his fiancée Jane (Lil Dagover), walking as if in a trance. To explain how she came to be this way, he tells of  the fateful day they saw the Doctor at a fair. The somnambulist awakens  from his “death-like trance” and answers questions from the audience. A friend, Alan, (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski) asks, “How long will I live?” Cesare answers: “Til the break of dawn!” That might, a mysterious, shadowy figure murders him in his bed.

Meanwhile, a string of other strange murders is happening in the town, starting with a mean town clerk that mistreated Dr. Caligari when he applied for a presentation permit.

Soon Jane becomes the target of Cesare’s killing spree, and Franzis must save her.

So, this is German expressionism in 1920. The sets are stark, high-contrast and distorted in perspective. They are made simply of cloth and paper, and the makeup is similarly cartoonish. This creates a dream-like, uncanny feel as the actors strut and fret through their tale.

This is also possibly the first film to have a twist ending. It’s predictable and cliche today, but at the time must have been revolutionary. It presented the story through the eyes of an unreliable narrator, leaving the audience to wonder just what is real.

This is a challenge in watching old, seminal film. What has become cliche was once an innovation, and it can be hard to see the work through the eyes of its time. Even with all that working against it, though, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari stands up pretty well for a silent flick from 1920. It is weird and a little silly and one is left with the idea that the filmmaker is actually poking fun at the conventions of film itself at the time, which is very likely.

Do yourself a favor and check out what’s in the Cabinet. Then maybe check out some of the other work of Conrad Veidt, the somnambulist Cesare, who had a storied career in which he starred in over a hundred roles, most notably  The Man Who Laughs (in which he wore a prosthetic that forced his mouth into a garish grimace throughout that was said to inspire later depictions of The Joker) and Casablanca.

 

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
RATING: UR
The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1920)
Runtime: 7Mins.
Directed By:
Robert Wiene
Written By:
Carl Mayer, Hans Janowitz

About the Author

Scix has been a news anchor, a DJ, a vaudeville producer, a monster trainer, and a magician. Lucky for HorrorBuzz, Scix also reviews horror movies. Particularly fond of B-movies, camp, bizarre, or cult films, and films with LGBT content.