The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, dir by Robert Wiene, DP: Willy Hameister)

Sitting on a bench, a man named Franzis (Friedrich Feher) tells a story of how he and his fiancée Jane (Lil Dagover) suffered at the hands of Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss), the owner of a traveling carnival who used an apparent sleepwalker named Cesare (Conrad Veidt) to commit murders for him.  Franzis’s story takes place in an odd village, one that is full of crooked streets, ominous buildings, and dark shadows.  It’s a bizarre story that gets even stranger as we start to suspect that Franzis himself is not quite who he claims to be.

Released in 1920, the silent German film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of those films that we’ve all heard about but far too few of us have actually seen.  Like most silent films, it requires some patience and a willingness to adapt to the narrative convictions of an earlier time.  However, for those of us who love horror cinema, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari remains required viewing.  Not only did it introduce the concept of the twist ending but it also helped to introduce German expressionism to the cinematic world.  The film’s images of twisted roads and ominous structures that seem to be reaching out to capture the people walking past them would go on to influence a countless number of directors and other artists.  The film captures not only the logic and intensity of a nightmare but the look of one as well.

It also captures something very true about human nature.  Running through the story is a theme of authoritarianism.  Before Caligari can bring his carnival to the show, he has to deal with a rude town clerk who seems to take a certain delight in making even the simplest of request difficult.  Caligari keeps Cesare in a coffin-like box and only brings him out when he’s needed to do something.  The sleepwalking Cesare does whatever he is ordered to do, without protest.  Even the film’s twist ending leaves you wondering how much you can trust the people in charge.  When the film was released, Germany was still struggling to recover from World War I, a war that was fought by people who had been trained not to question the orders of those who were sending them to die.  Caligari, like a general, sends Cesare into danger and Cesare, being asleep, never questions a thing.

(Of course, thirteen years after The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was released, Germany would once again embrace authoritarianism.  Director Robert Wiene left Germany after the rise of Hitler and died in France in 1938.  Co-writer Carl Mayer and star Conrad Veidt also fled Germany, with Veidt landing in Hollywood and playing the villainous Nazi in Casablanca.  Meanwhile, Werner Krauss was reportedly a virulent anti-Semite who supported the Nazi Party and who became one of Joseph Goebbels’s favorite actors.  Lil Dagover also remained in Germany and continued to make films.  She was known to be Hitler’s favorite actress though Dagover always claimed that she didn’t share Hitler’s views.)

Needless to say, it takes some adjustment to watch a silent film.  That’s certainly true in the case of a The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, though the twisted sets and the bizarre story actually help the mind to make the adjustment.  Dr. Caligari takes place in a world so strange that it actually seems appropriate that the dialogue is not heard but only read on title cards.  (If I could imagine a soundtrack to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, it would probably involve a lot of industrial noise in the background, in the manner of David Lynch’s Eraserhead.  Lynch, incidentally, is a filmmaker who was clearly influenced by Caligari.)  For modern audiences, watching The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari also means accepting that there was a time when CGI was not a thing and films had to make due with practical effects.  But Conard Veidt’s performance is all the more impressive when you realize that it was one that he performed without any of the filmmaking tricks that we now take for granted.

Ever since I first watched it on a dark and rainy night, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has stayed with me.  The night after I watched it, I even had a nightmare in which Dr. Caligari was trying to break into my apartment.  Yes, Dr. Caligari looked a little bit silly staring through my bedroom window but it still caused me to wake up with my heart about to explode out of my chest.

In short, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari passes the most important test that a horror film can pass and one that most modern film fail.  It sticks with you even after it’s over.