Arguably, Robert Wiene (The Hands of Orlac) created the first significant horror film in cinema history. Irrefutably, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was the first psychological horror flick. Interestingly, most every element of horror can be found in Wiene’s highly innovative, visually inspired, vastly influential masterpiece: a mad scientist, insanity, murder, zombism, etc., the aesthetic ripples of which continue to reverberate even today within the canons of some of the cinema’s most powerful filmmakers. The work was well ahead of its time as its subjective, unreliable narration preceded post-modernism by half a century but, most importantly, the film serves as a mirror which masterfully reflects the fears and anxieties of the time and continues its legacy as one of the greatest cautionary tales ever told on celluloid.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a framed narrative, opening with a character named Francis (Friedrich Feher) telling his tale of madness and terror. He begins his story in Holstenwall, where a carnival is scheduled to arrive shortly. One of the attractions is Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss, the fraternal twin of Richard Liberty, whom the latter would, ironically, also mimic his predecessor in his choice of roles as mad scientist almost seventy years later) with his twenty-three year-old somnambulist named Cesare (Conrad Veidt, Casablanca), whose gift is that of omniscience. Upon Caligari’s first performance, Alan (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Casablanca), steps up to the stage and away from the crowd, which includes his friend, Francis, and the Francis’s fiancée (and Alan’s love interest), Jane (Lil Dagover), in order to test the somnambulist’s aptitude for prophecy by asking when he will die. Cesare replies that Francis has until dawn. The following morning, Cesare’s prediction is revealed to be accurate as Francis’s body is discovered containing multiple stab wounds. Shortly thereafter, we watch as Cesare is instructed by Caligari to kill Francis’s fiancée, Jane. However, the sleepwalker is taken by the woman’s beauty, fear, or otherwise, and kidnaps her as he escapes the enraged mob of locals by way of the rooftops until he dies of exhaustion. Cesare’s corpse is brought to Caligari at his work, a mental asylum. Upon seeing the somnambulist’s body, he goes mad. Yet, all is not what it seems as Francis continues his convoluted tale as Wiene presents a thought-provoking plot twist during his closing scene.
Wiene posits the possibility that Francis has fabricated the story for one of two reasons: One, to justify his murdering of Alan in order to obtain Jane or two, that it is he, Francis, who is insane and, due to an overactive imagination, has created the story in order to sublimate his own mental deterioration. However, the prospect remains that Francis is not insane nor a murder and that Caligari, using his position of power, has silenced, not only the one man who could incriminate him, but also everyone involved (Cesare and Jane). Thus, the antagonist, depending upon the audience’s interpretation, could be Caligari, Cesare, or Francis. Wisely, Wiene does not provide easy answers nor should he considering the work is not unduly complex but rather is presented in a manner as lucid as the narrator telling the tale. This is where the film’s prowess lies: its thoughtful control as it predates, nearly half a century prior, the offset of postmodern subjective narrative instability i.e.–Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, David Cronenberg’s eXistenZ, and Mary Harron’s American Psycho.
Hermann Warm, responsible for the sets of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr and The Passion of Joan of Arc, as well as F.W. Murnau’s Phantom, created standards for parallel meaning and content via atmosphere with his visually stunning, expressionistic set decorations, reminiscent of impossible Escher-esque architecture, constructed of mere paper (the metaphorical import of which is readily apparent in and of itself). The whole of Holstenwall is composed of jutting, hard, high-contrast angles which ooze instability in various forms (psychological, social, political, etc.) as they duly offset the viewer’s equilibrium. As a result, Warm’s influence can readily be viewed in such landmark genre foundations as F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu and Faust, Paul Leni’s The Cat and the Canary, and Carl Boese’s The Golem, as well as such steadfast horror masterpieces as Fritz Lang’s M and Metropolis, Robert Florey’s Murders in the Rue Morgue, and Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter, all the way to Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Warm’s sets are complimented and strengthened by the ingenuity of cinematographer Willy Hameister (Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia), who shot various sequences through green, blue, and ochre gels in order to heighten the film’s eerie atmosphere atop issuing narrative signposts for its viewers.
Admirably, no aspect of the work, much like the films of Murnau, was too small for aesthetic consideration as nothing within the frame went unexamined in regard to its capacity to convey meaning. Even the title cards (“intertitles”) echo Warm’s unbalanced environment as the typefaces are set in angular, menacing lettering.
Perhaps most importantly, co-screenwriters Carl Mayer (Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans) and Hans Janowitz (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) present one of the first, and arguably the most powerful, political allegories that the genre has ever seen using the medium of horror as a metaphor. They do so by presenting staunch, omnipotent authoritarianism in the figure of Caligari controlling and dictating the common man, i.e.–Cesare (by means of brainwashing nonetheless). However paradoxical, due to governmental pressures, filtered through the forced hand of the producers and the director, Mayer and Janowitz were obligated to insert narrative bookends, thus reversing the film’s entire context. Yet, in lieu of this, the political parable remains intact and is as potently cautionary as ever.
Not until James Whale gave the world Frankenstein twelve years later would the horror genre feel an impact as great as Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. However, arguably, the influence of Whale’s masterpiece remains second-tier in relation to what Wiene created in most every respect within the confines of horror cinema. By fashioning a film where the minutest shadow or object inside the frame aptly lends itself to the overall meaning and content of the work, Wiene simultaneously made a succinct cautionary tale, a psychological thriller, and a postmodern nightmare which his successors, almost a century later, continue to emulate. Few would argue that Dreyer’s Vampyr, Boese’s The Golem, Murnau’s Noferatu are early landmarks in horror, yet Wiene’s The Cabinet of Caligari deservedly sits as the building block upon which the whole of the genre securely rests.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
