Inside Dr Caligari's cabinet

There is something about too-famous films that makes me wary of watching them. A fear of the well-known, maybe. It feels safer to avoid or at least delay meeting such “heroes” among movies. But I set aside these, frankly juvenile, reservations and stepped into The Cabinet of Dr Caligari recently — the respectful thing to do when this giant of German Expressionism has turned 100. 

Robert Wiene’s film, in which art, horror and political comment play out in six short acts, must be seen. Twice. Because once will not suffice to appreciate its non-linear format, where the characters’ sincere flashbacks mingle with ardent flights of fancy. As an early example of the Expressionistic style that rose directly after World War I, it breaks away from reality both in narrative and in visuals.

The exploits of Dr Caligari (Werner Krauss), a man who keeps the somnambulist Cesare (Conrad Veidt) in a coffin-esque “cabinet” and shows him off in town fairs, are related by the protagonist Francis (Friedrich Feher). Francis believes his best friend Alan was killed by the sleepwalker under Caligari’s spell. An alternative reality presented for our consideration later is that Francis is a schizophrenic patient and Caligari, the director of his asylum. 

Dr Caligari, variously as the witch doctor and the brain doctor, is a controlling figure whom the protagonist describes with distrust and paranoia. Even if Francis is ultimately not a narrator you can depend on, his disposition conveys the mental unrest of a time when people were fresh out of the claws of war. All the sleepwalking surely alludes to the hypnotic power which authoritarian men exercise over commoners.

Conrad Veidt in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari

 

The film is best remembered for its warped set design, with hand-drawn backdrops and wonky props that complement the twisted script by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. The town police and administrators are shown occupying comically tall chairs, for instance, in a comment on their oversized sense of dominion. The play of shadows with these distorted objects makes for much unease. 

There are at least two spine-chilling sequences that must have surely scared the living daylights out of the very first viewers a century ago. The main source of this horror is Conrad Veidt as the ghostly possessed Cesare. Veidt was later also cast as the disfigured “Gwynplaine” in Man Who Laughs (1928), directed by another German Expressionist Paul Leni, and his magnificent grin inspired the look of Batman’s nemesis Joker. In fact, Dr Caligari’s thinning hair and scheming air were also a reference for the evil Penguin played by Danny DeVito in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns in 1992.

What is also great about silents is you cannot watch them without commitment, say while favourite-ing tweets or folding the laundry. Paying attention to words thoughtfully chosen for the intertitles, and observing the actors’ purposefully exaggerated moods, is really a high form of meditation. Ideal for our glorious Age of Distraction, and cheaper than the Headspace app. Many recent restorations float freely around YouTube. 

Wiene’s masterpiece reminds one of how the 1920s were generally a fantastic decade for horror (Nosferatu, The Phantom of the Opera). And that first year in particular delivered two more triumphs of the genre. There was the other famous doctor in Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a timeless exploration of man’s struggle with good and evil impulses. Then came Paul Wegener’s eerie classic The Golem: How He Came Into the world. Dr Caligari’s cabinet opened up several hours of beautiful onscreen dread for me.

ranjita.ganesan@bsmail.in