The man Francis refers to as "Dr. Caligari" is the asylum director. "[43][116] As with the making of the film, several urban legends surround the film's premiere. [154], Francis expresses resentment of all forms of authority, particularly during the end of the frame story, when he feels he has been institutionalized because of the madness of the authorities, not because there is anything wrong with him. The asylum director announces that, now that he understands Francis's delusion, he is confident he can cure him. That music was later recorded for his 1982 album Das Kabinet (The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari).[226]. Afterward, the Cosmograph company bought the film's distribution rights and premiered it at the Ciné-Opéra on 2 March 1922. He said it was so well received that women in the audience screamed when Cesare opened his eyes during his first scene, and fainted during the scene in which Cesare abducts Jane. [68][207] Janowitz wrote a treatment for a remake, and in January 1945 was offered a minimum guarantee of $16,000 against a five-percent royalty for his rights to the original film for a sequel to be directed by Fritz Lang, but the project never came to fruition. [151] As a result, after the film's closing scene, it can be seen as ambiguous whether Francis or the asylum director is truly the insane one, or whether both are insane. [70] He is far more abusive in the scene as it was filmed, and is perched atop an exaggeratedly high bench that towers over Caligari. The actors inhabit a jagged landscape of sharp angles and tilted walls and windows, staircases climbing crazy diagonals, trees with spiky leaves, grass that looks like knives. [32] Through film director Fritz Lang, Janowitz and Mayer met with Erich Pommer, head of production at the Decla-Bioscop film studio, on 19 April 1919, to discuss selling the script. What makes for a truly outstanding horror movie? [106] Other elements of the film convey the same visual motifs as the sets, including the costumes and make-up design for Caligari and Cesare, both of which are highly exaggerated and grotesque. [3] At one stage, the film was just known as Caligari. Cabinet of Caligari Photos View All Photos (14) Movie Info. [9], Dexter says the film was a critical and financial failure. [130][143] Among the films to use these elements were Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) and The Last Laugh (1924),[95][127][162] G. W. Pabst's Secrets of a Soul (1926),[52] and Lang's Metropolis (1927) and M (1931). [40] Janowitz has said he and Mayer were not privy to discussions about adding the frame story and strongly opposed its inclusion, believing it had deprived the film of its revolutionary and political significance;[24][30] he wrote that it was "an illicit violation, a raping of our work" that turned the film "into a cliché ... in which the symbolism was to be lost". The film features a dark and twisted visual style, with sharp-pointed forms, oblique and curving lines, structures and landscapes that lean and twist in unusual angles, and shadows and streaks of light painted directly onto the sets. Abel Gance called it "superb" and wrote, "What a lesson to all directors! At night, Francis spies on Caligari and observes what appears to be Cesare sleeping in his box. "I don't want to sound presumptuous but I am trying to get the Pirandello approach that says nothing is what it appears to be. The asylum director screams, "I must become Caligari!" [176] Prior to the publication of From Caligari to Hitler, few critics had derived any symbolic political meaning from the film, but Kracauer's argument that it symbolized German obedience toward authority and a premonition of the rise of Adolf Hitler drastically changed attitudes about Caligari. [131], Another major theme of Caligari is, Stephen Brockmann writes, "the destabilized contrast between insanity and sanity and hence the destabilization of the very notion of sanity itself". [45] The predominant attitude at the time was that artistic achievement led to success in exports to foreign film markets. [31] The original script shows few traces of the Expressionist influence prevalent in the film's sets and costumes. [85] Mike Budd notes that, during the scene in which asylum doctors restrain Francis, his movements closely mimic those of Caligari from a similar scene during the main story. Chased by an angry mob, Cesare eventually drops Jane and flees; he soon collapses and dies. [83] Heavy lighting is typically absent from the film, heightening the sense of darkness prevalent in the story. "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" manages to emotionally engage the audience with images that are striking and characters that are - at least by the end - somewhat sympathetic. [61] Two major books have played a large part in shaping the perception of the film and its effect on cinema as a whole: Siegfried Kracauer's From Caligari to Hitler (1947) and Lotte Eisner's The Haunted Screen (1974). [198] Although he does not think it possible to reduce the narrative or the film to the beliefs of its makers, Eisner claims Francis can be seen as embodying the politics of Expressionism's anti-naturalism, through which a protagonist does not see the world objectively, but has "visions" that are abstracted from individuality and psychology. [153][150][173] From Caligari to Hitler based its claims about the film largely on an unpublished typescript by Hans Janowitz called Caligari: The Story of a Famous Story,[22] which gave Janowitz and Carl Mayer principal credit for the making of Caligari. [77] By contrast, Dagover had little experience in Expressionist theatre, and Barlow argues her acting is less harmonious with the film's visual style. The film makes use of a frame story, with a prologue and epilogue which, in a twist ending, reveals the main narrative is actually the delusion of a madman. [39] The director, Robert Wiene, was supportive of the changes. [232][233] Though it shared the same story as the film, the setting was changed to Glasgow Green and Gartloch in Glasgow, Scotland. [222] Bertelsmann/BMG commissioned Timothy Brock to adapt his 1996 score for string orchestra for a 2014 restoration; Brock conducted the premiere in Brussels on 15 September 2014. 2, and said the film "gives dimensions and meaning to shape, making it an active part of the story, instead of merely the conventional and inert background", which was key to the film's "importance as a work of cinematography". [71] Likewise, the scene with the criminal in a prison cell features a set with long vertical painted shadows resembling arrowheads, pointing down at the squatting prisoner in an oppressive effect that symbolizes his broken-down state. [232], In 2020, Spanish post-rock band Toundra has released their own soundtrack to the movie. [43][116], Caligari was released at a time when foreign film industries had just started easing restrictions on the import of German films following World War I. [4][46] Critics widely agree that the discovery of the screenplay strongly undermines Kracauer's theory,[38][46] with some, like the German film historian Stephen Brockmann, even arguing it disproves his claims altogether. Caligari was adapted into an opera in 1997 by composer John Moran. [76] The actors in Caligari were conscious of the need to adapt their make-up, costumes and appearance to match the visual style of the film. In 1983, the German TV station ZDF commissioned composer Peter Michael Hamel to create a new score for a restoration of the film, based on a 1921 print. [173] Eisner's book, meanwhile, placed Caligari into historical context by identifying how it influenced Expressionist features in other films of the 1920s. [140][160], While few other purely Expressionistic films were made, Caligari still had a major influence over other German directors,[161] and many of the film's Expressionist elements – particularly the use of setting, light and shadow to represent the dark psychology of its characters – became prevalent in German cinema. He said a copy of his original cut was with the Museum of Modern Art.[10]. [26] Some critics felt it imitated a stage production too closely. [87] The landscape of Holstenwall is painted on canvas, as opposed to a constructed set, and shadows and streaks of light are painted directly onto the sets, further distorting the viewer's sense of perspective and three-dimensionality. [6][7] Mayer feigned madness to avoid military service during the war,[4][8] which led him to intense examinations from a military psychiatrist. Film historians Kristin Thompson and David B. Pratt separately studied trade publications from the time in an attempt to make a determination, but reached conflicting findings; Thompson concluded it was a box office success and Pratt concluded it was a failure. [51][83][92][99] Strange designs and figures are painted on the walls of corridors and rooms, and trees outside have twisted branches that sometimes resemble tentacles. [18][29] Pommer reportedly asked the writers to leave the script with him, but they refused, and instead Mayer read it aloud to him. A grief-stricken Francis investigates Alan's murder with help from Jane and her father, Dr. Olsen, who obtains police authorization to investigate the somnambulist. The bizarre style, which matches that of the film as a whole, mimics the lettering of Expressionistic posters at the time. [4][67] But Kracauer contended the frame story undermines that premise. [121] Capitol Theatre runner Samuel Roxy Rothafel commissioned conductor Ernö Rapée to compile a musical accompaniment that included portions of songs by composers Johann Strauss III, Arnold Schoenberg, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev. [221] The Dutch psychedelic band Monomyth composed a new score and performed it during a screening of Caligari at the Imagine Film Festival in the Netherlands in April 2016. [145] Film historian and critic Paul Rotha wrote of it, "For the first time in the history of the cinema, the director has worked through the camera and broken with realism on the screen; that a film could be effective dramatically when not photographic and finally, of the greatest possible importance, that the mind of the audience was brought into play psychologically". The cast included John de Lancie, Kaitlin Hopkins, and Robertson Dean. However, the real Cesare sneaks into Jane's home as she sleeps. [117] Another suggested the theatre pulled the film after only two performances because audiences demanded refunds and demonstrated against it so strongly. [24][25] Film historian David Robinson noted Janowitz did not refer to anti-authority intentions in the script until many decades after Caligari was released, and he suggested Janowitz's recollection may have changed in response to later interpretations to the film. [130] Barlow said it was often the subject of critical disapproval, which he believes is because early film reviewers attempted to assign fixed definitions to the young art of cinema, and thus had trouble accepting the bizarre and unusual elements of Caligari. To Alan's horror, Cesare answers, "The time is short. [8][14], Although neither had any associations with the film industry,[15] Janowitz and Mayer wrote a script over six weeks during the winter of 1918–19. He went through the script and allocated a color representing the emotion the audience was to feel. [92] Rudolf Kurtz, screenwriter and author of Expressionismus und Film, likewise wrote "the dynamic force of objects howls their desire to be created". [113] Lotte Eisner has said it was in Expressionism, as epitomized in Caligari, that "the German cinema found its true nature". Considered by many to be the first true horror film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) not only holds that title, but exists as the quintessential definitive piece of German expressionist cinema. [20][174][175] Mike Budd wrote of Kracauer's book: "Perhaps no film or period has been so thoroughly understood through a particular interpretation as has Caligari, and Weimar cinema generally, through Kracauer's social-psychological approach". [114] The filmmakers were so nervous about the release that Erich Pommer, on his way to the theatre, reportedly exclaimed, "It will be a horrible failure for all of us! [109] Similarly, Budd has called the film a conventional, classical narrative, resembling a detective story in Francis's search to expose Alan's killer, and said it is only the film's Expressionist settings that make the film transgressive. That night, the police apprehend a criminal in possession of a knife who is caught attempting to murder an elderly woman. Upon further investigation, Francis is shocked to learn that Caligari is the asylum's director. Early examples include The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), The Last Moment (1928) and The Life and Death of 9413: a Hollywood Extra (1928). Likewise, unnamed characters in the final film have names in the script, including the town clerk ("Dr. Lüders") and the house-breaker ("Jakob Straat"). Francis and the doctors call the police to Caligari's office, where they show him Cesare's corpse. [76] Vincent LoBrutto said of the acting in the film:[83]. [19] Janowitz also believed he had witnessed a murder in 1913 near an amusement park on Hamburg's Reeperbahn, beside the Holstenwall, which served as another inspiration for the script. Watching The Cabinet of Dr Caligari the audience, confined in the world of someone classified as insane, sees what the madman sees: distorted perspectives, eerie lights and shadows, an angular world of fears and apprehension. Many posters and newspaper advertisements included the enigmatic phrase featured in the film, "Du musst Caligari werden! [47] Robinson noted the costumes in Caligari seem to resemble a wide variety of time periods. [47] Krauss suggested changes to his own make-up and costumes, including the elements of a top hat, cape and walking stick with an ivory handle for his character. [146] Caligari influenced the style and content of Hollywood films in the 1920s and early 1930s,[161][166] particularly in films such as The Bells (1926), The Man Who Laughs (1928) and Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932),[100][165] and had a major influence on American horror films of the 1930s, some of which featured an antagonist using Caligari-like supernatural abilities to control others, such as Dracula (1931), Svengali (1931) and The Mad Genius (1931). [70] The collaborative nature of the film's production highlights the importance that both screenwriters and set designers held in German cinema of the 1920s,[47][58] although film critic Lotte H. Eisner said sets held more importance than anything else in German films at that time. [71][153] Kracauer said Caligari was symbolic of the German war government and fatal tendencies inherent in the German system, saying the character "stands for an unlimited authority that idolizes power as such, and, to satisfy its lust for domination, ruthlessly violates all human rights and values". [70], Several scenes from the script were cut during filming, most of which were brief time lapses or transitioning scenes, or title screens deemed unnecessary. Caligari then attacks one of the staff. [147], The film holds an approval rating of 98% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 62 reviews, with a weighted average of 9.30/10. [26] Expressionism was late in coming to cinema, and by the time Caligari was released, many German critics felt the art form had become commercialized and trivialized;[155][156][157][158] such well-known writers as Kasimir Edschmid, René Schickele, and Yvan Goll had already pronounced the Expressionist movement dead by the time Caligari arrived in theatres. Caligari escapes in the confusion. Caligari arrives at a small town fair, with a mysterious cabinet. [9][16][18] They first visualized the story of Caligari the night of that show. Inside is Cesare, a somnambulist who has been asleep for 23 years, and is totally controlled by Caligari. 98%: King Kong (1933) 65: 6. [165] In his book The Film Til Now, Rotha wrote that Caligari and Potemkin were the "two most momentous advances in the development of the cinema", and said Caligari "served to attract to the cinema audience many people who had hitherto regarded the film as the low watermark of intelligence". Was it only an accident? [9], In 1963, Kay said he "disowns" the film, blaming Fox for turning it into a "lurid, sex charged picture" and claiming the version released was "considerably different" from his version. [26] Several American reviewers compared it to an Edgar Allan Poe story,[134] including in a 1921 review in Variety magazine, which praised the direction and "perfect tempo" of the film, as well as the sets that "squeeze and turn and adjust the eye, and through the eye the mentality". "[111], Though often considered an art film by some modern critics and scholars, Caligari was produced and marketed the same way as a normal commercial production of its time period, able to target both the elite artistic market as well as a more commercial horror genre audience. [112][113] The film was marketed extensively leading up to the release, and advertisements ran even before the film was finished. Staging and movement of the actors respond to the hysteria of Caligari's machinations and to the fun-house labyrinth that appears to be the reflection of a crazy mirror, not an orderly village. [33] The contract, today preserved at Berlin's Bundesfilmarchiv, gave Pommer the right to make any changes to the script deemed appropriate. [52][159] Among the few films to fully embrace the Expressionist style were Genuine (1920) and Raskolnikow (1923), both directed by Wiene, as well as From Morn to Midnight (1920), Torgus (1921), Das Haus zum Mond (1921), Haus ohne Tür und ohne Fenster (1921) and Waxworks. Langer also encouraged Janowitz to visit a fortune teller, who predicted that Janowitz would survive his military service during the war, but Langer would die. Although the film's title is very similar to the German silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), it shares very few similarities except for the main plot twist. [201] Francis also takes on a double life of sorts, serving as the heroic protagonist in the main narrative and a patient in a mental institution in the frame story. [207], A quasi-sequel, called Dr. Caligari, was released in 1989,[212] directed by Stephen Sayadian and starring Madeleine Reynal as the granddaughter of the original Caligari, now running an asylum and performing bizarre hormonal experiments on its patients. The thesis behind the damsel in distress, behind the little thrills and shocks is, What is reality? [112] The film was acquired for American distribution by the Goldwyn Distributing Company, and had its American premiere at the Capitol Theatre in New York City on 3 April 1921. She finds only three possible candidates the older Paul, the younger Mark (Dick Davalos), for whom she has romantic desires, and a lively elderly woman named Ruth (Estelle Winwood). [63] Janowitz has claimed that he and Mayer conceived the idea of painting the sets on canvas, and that the shooting script included written directions that the scenery be designed in Kubin's style. 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