The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

The film signed by Robert Wiene under the suggestive title of Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (Das Kabinett des Dr Caligari) is considered the first horror film. His legacy in modern cinema is evident, but not only for obvious reasons. While the most striking aspect of the film is the ingenious avant-garde design of the sets (mise en scene), palpably unreal and theatrical, in this revolutionary psychological thriller by director Robert Wiene, there are other elements, more subtle, that have become habitual of cinematographic narrative techniques. Architecturally speaking the film deals with issues of representation like 2d and 3d, flatness and depth all in terms of the set design.

Although the "unreliable narrator" was already fundamental in literature (since the time of the Greek playwright Aristophanes), it had not yet been used in cinema. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari introduces him with the character of Franzis (Friedrich Fehér). The story told by Franzis begins with a love triangle in appearance quite innocent (two friends compete for the love of the same woman), but of course, appearances deceive.

The writers, Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, initially wrote the plot as a criticism of the attitude of the German government during the First World War: Caligari is a villain who induces an innocent sleepwalker to commit murder. However, during the production process, the story was drifting towards something more complex and led to another first in the cinema: the unexpected ending.

Janowitz and Mayer were inspired by a dark 11th-century story about a trickster monk who exerts a mysterious influence on a man he welcomes. In his script, the monk becomes a doctor, whom Franzis and his rival, Alan (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski), meet at a town fair.

The strange Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) appears as a showman who shows the ghostly Cesare (Conrad Veidt) lying inside his so-called cabinet (actually, a coffin). Caligari, the "master" of Cesare, assures that he "knows all the secrets" and invites the audience to ask him anything. Alan, visibly upset, asks: How long will I live? To which Cesare replies: Until dawn. Here is another resource of horror movies taken from innumerable stories: the fool who tempts fate. The unfortunate Alan is found dead the next morning.

The expressionist style

The aesthetics and style of the film were greatly influenced by the legendary Max Reinhardt, director of the Deutsches Theater in Berlin. His anti-realist style, inspired in turn by the expressionism of the early twentieth century, combined the artificiality of the theatrical setting and the manipulation of darkness (instead of light) to create chiaroscuro envelopes, thus generating a mysterious and disturbing atmosphere.

Wiene uses lighting with astonishing ability to suggest that we are only witnessing an extravagant melodrama, an idea reinforced by the frequent and sinister close-ups, most of the supposedly insane Caligari, to convince the public that he is seeing a story of good and evil . However, when it becomes clear that the perspective of any character should not be taken literally, the distorted backgrounds and angles begin to make sense. They do not obey only a disturbing style, but are part of the plot: the sets of Walter Reinmann, Walter Röhring and Hermann Warm seem to reflect a world gone mad.

One of the reasons for the prevalence of the film is that it is the first that leads the public into the mind of a madman, anticipating Hitchcock's psychosis. His horror reverberates in our own fear of the mask of sanity with which even the most disturbed individuals can deceive us.

Robert Wiene Director

Born in 1873, in Breslau, Wiene wrote and directed in 1913 the short film Die Waffen von Jugend (The Weapons of Youth), the first of about twenty films (long and short) that he made during the silent era. After a prolific career in Germany, he fled the Nazi regime in the early 1930s and settled in France. He died of cancer when he shot The Ultimatum (1938), and was finished the also exiled Robert Siodmak.

Main films

1913 The weapons of youth.

1920 The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari

1923 Raskolnikov.

1924 The hands of Orlac.

s of strangeness, irrationality, elements of a imaginary world where there is no sense, but that reflects a very real feeling, such as sexual desire, when a woman's breasts are seized, there is a rebellion to express her beliefs.