Category: 1910s & 1920s

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

Robert Wiene | 1hr 15min

For what becomes such a violently expressionist film, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari opens rather softly with the introduction of Francis, our narrator, sitting in a garden. We observe as a woman dressed in white glides by like an ethereal spectre, mysteriously vacant in her expression. He tells us that this is Jane, his lover, and from there he unravels the tragic tale which bound them together. 

Suddenly, we find ourselves flashing back to a warped, sinister village sitting upon a sloping hill, its buildings and streets made up of dark, twisted shapes and shadows splashed all across its scenery. Still in the early days of cinema, Wiene takes inspiration from George Méliès himself in his breath-taking matte paintings, while simultaneously lifting the artistic use of such backdrops to a whole new level in their gothic imagery. One may convince themselves that this use of painted backgrounds brings a certain flatness to these shots, and yet they would quickly find themselves lost for words when they witness characters move from the foreground to the background of the cluttered mise-en-scène, revealing the true depth of such images. At the town fair where spinning carousels jut out at strange angles and oddballs congregate to share their eccentric acts, Wiene creates the look of a demented, Edvard Munch-like painting brought horrifically to life.

Maddening production design, always looking as if it is on the brink of collapse.
Painted shadows and warped proportions, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a nightmare manifested.

It is also at this carnival where Francis first encounters the mysterious travelling showman Dr Caligari and Cesare, his somnambulist – that is, a sleepwalking man who is under his master’s control. Inspired by the story of an 18th-century mystic who used a somnambulist to commit murders, the asylum director turned madman absorbs himself in his newfound power, and begins using Cesare to carry out his own homicides. 

Tim Burton would pick up on this terrifying character design and keep running with it many decades later.

Or at least, so it would seem, as in one final twist we discover that Francis’ first-person recount is not as reliable as we initially suspected, with him being an asylum inmate who has incorporated his fellow patients into his tale. His imagined lover, Jane, is a deluded patient, and Cesare, the murderous somnambulist, is a quiet, gentle man. As it turns out, Dr Caligari is indeed an asylum director, and yet even he is far from the evil villain Francis perceives him to be. On this final note of ambiguity, Wiene leaves us to ponder what sort of terrors Francis has experienced that have given birth to such distorted refractions of reality. 

In his structure of flashbacks within flashbacks, Wiene filters reality through the eyes of madness, letting the narrative grow a little more unhinged with each progressive jump until, at its deepest point, we reach Dr Caligari’s immersion into a European legend. The film is deeply concerned with the tales we tell ourselves to make sense of our environment, but on a broader scope it is looking into the grand narratives that cultures pass down to make sense of their own national identities. In repurposing the tradition of sharing legends, Wiene didactically frightens viewers away from the evil actions carried out by those wielding immense psychological power, rather than inspiring them with tales of heroism and bravery.

Werner Krauss is frighteningly unhinged as the madman Dr. Caligari, delivering one of the great performances of the silent era.

As a Jewish filmmaker who struggled with the oppression of a government looking to gag its boundary-pushing artists, and who would flee Nazi Germany little over a decade later, Wiene’s cinematic rebellion is evident, and yet there is also a reflection of his own nightmarish disorientation here. From the clerk who sits in an unusually high, Dr Seuss-like chair, to the heavy, dark makeup dabbed around Cesare’s tired eyes, everything about The Cabinet of Dr Caligari appears a few dream layers removed from reality. There are sick, twisted minds somewhere polluting the goodness of Francis’ world, but in Wiene’s delirious evocation of such invasive, omnipresent evil, he forces upon us the most unsettling horror of all: the uncertainty of where this evil truly comes from, and the disturbing consideration that it may come from within.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is in the public domain, and available to watch on many free video sharing sites including YouTube.

Nosferatu (1922)

F.W. Murnau | 1hr 34min

Nosferatu isn’t as loaded with disturbing expressionist images as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, but it’s the slow-burn narrative tension along with F.W. Murnau’s astounding silhouette and shadow work that puts it up among the best of the silent era. Max Schreck plays the titular vampire as a freakish rat-like creature, a true silent gothic monster to rival the madman Dr Caligari. Gaunt-faced, wide-eyed, hunched over, his mere profile strikes a terrifying image that has persisted in our collective consciousness for almost a century.

Shadows and dreams are woven through the narrative as a motif, both visually and as a device to describe the being himself.

“Beware that his shadow does not engulf you like a daemonic nightmare.”

Gaunt-faced, wide-eyed, hunched over. Max Schreck delivers a grotesque, physical performance, and Nosferatu is just as much an accomplishment for him as it is for Murnau.

Throughout the film we see people sleepwalking, having surreal visions, and going mad, painting Nosferatu out as a monster who doesn’t just threaten his victims physically but psychologically as well. He is the “daemonic nightmare” that they all fear, exerting control over the minds of others like a lurking threat finally rising from some repressed trauma. Though he sleeps his eyes remain open, constantly alert. He is not at the mercy of his subconscious like the rest of us – he is the subconscious. Shadows and nightmares are thus tied together, not just as places where Nosferatu dwells, but where the very fear of what he represents spreads.

Though he brings death in his wake like the traditional Dracula story, Nosferatu himself takes on more animalistic than corpse-like qualities. Heavy-handed metaphors abound in these comparisons, though the lack of subtlety only reinforces the overwhelmingly pervasive fear that seems to spread like an infectious sickness. Indeed, Nosferatu brings pestilence with him, both through the diseased rats which seem to materialise wherever he goes and through his penchant for blood-sucking.

We step outside the narrative at times to join scientists in their study of vampirism, drawing similarities to carnivorous predators like the Venus fly trap or microscopic organisms which are “transparent and ethereal, little more than a phantom.” Knock observes a spider at one point, wrapping an insect in its web to be devoured later, considering its own vampiristic qualities. Yet even as these comparisons to the plant and animal kingdoms are made, Nosferatu still isn’t accepted among them. At the mere mention of his name, hyenas and horses run for the hills. He is a depraved mutation of humanity, both part of the natural order and an abomination to it.

This then brings us back to his representation of the human subconscious – something that is entirely natural, yet widely feared for what disturbing terrors it may be hiding. The tension as his ship docks in the harbour is on another level, as this repressed “other” is nearing our main heroes. Upon discovering Ellen he is intent upon claiming her as his victim, his shadow creeping up staircases and around corners, eventually being cast across her own figure. His clawed hand leads in front of him, and upon reaching her chest it crushes her heart. The darkness, the repressed subconscious, the mental sickness, whatever it is, has finally come to claim our innocent heroine.

No discussion of Nosferatu is complete without mentioning this terrifying shot. The peak of German Expressionism, and an immortal image.

If the shadow is the subconscious, then light must be the conscious mind, and by shining it upon the shadow the threat disappears. Nosferatu is only powerful when hidden in the darkness, and by bringing him into the daylight where he can be seen for what he is, he is finally defeated.

“Obliterated by the triumphant rays of the living sun, the Great Death came to an end, and the shadow of the deathbird was gone…”

Much like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Nosferatu thus becomes a tale of repressed depravity and its bubbling to the surface of society, feeding off people’s fear and destroying them in the process. Only by confronting the fear directly and without inhibition can humanity stand some chance against their own hidden evils. Some sequences of Nosferatu appear somewhat goofy by modern standards, but those aren’t what stick in the end. It is the stark shadows, the warped, pale face, and the deformed shape of Nosferatu’s being that persists, planting itself in our own subconscious and growing like some mutated carnivorous plant.

Poetic archetypes and justice. Darkness personified, defeated by the light.

Nosferatu is in the public domain and available on many free video sharing sites including YouTube.