The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1919)

Here's another from my German film class.  This comes to us from the Weimar period, just after the tremendous rout Germany suffered in World War I.  It was written by two former soldiers, disgusted by the excesses of authority that they witnessed, and also informed by one writer's brush with what may have been a serial killer.  According to one source (Siegfried Kracauer), the pair intended the story to be a damning indictment of totalitarianism, but it was changed by the director to include a normalizing frame story (the bit at the beginning and end where it's revealed that the narrator is untrustworthy).  This has raised debate throughout the decades in film and history circles, as you can imagine.  Kracauer isn't exactly objective, seeing as he was a German Jew who fled the Nazis and then wrote a book called From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film.  The parallels are certainly interesting, and the sensationalism is good reading, but other scholars tend to dismiss Kracauer's claims as half-baked.

You don't really need any of that to enjoy the film, which is still one of the most original ever produced.  I certainly didn't know anything about it when I saw it on Netflix.  But it does add a little bit more heft to consider the timeframe in which it was made and the insights it provides as to the mindsets of the common people of that time.  German films in this time tended to rely exclusively on studio works, which could be tightly controlled and further innovations in camera work, editing, and lighting effects which wouldn't have been available even five years beforehand with The Student of Prague.  Comparing the two films highlights the stability and openness of the Student versus the insecurity and inward-looking Caligari, created after the breakup of the German Empire and the largest war of nations they had ever known.  It's easy to extrapolate a national feeling from both films, but of course, it's not a complete one.  Originally posted 05 Feb 12.    This is a silent film from Germany that was one of the very first horror movies.  It was restored in 1996 by the Film Preservation Association and given a brand new score.  It's more notable for use of art direction than anything else.  Everything is crooked and sinister-looking.

The town of Holstenwall is having its annual fair when a creepy old dude shows up, announcing himself as Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) and presenting as his exhibition Cesare (Conrad Veidt), a somnambulist.  Francis (Fritz Feher), the narrator, and his friend Alan (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski)go to see the sleepwalker who can answer any question.  Alan asks how long he has to live, which is never a good question to ask just in case you don't hear an answer you like.  Cesare says until dawn the next day.  Sure enough, Alan is murdered in his bed, the second of a string of mysterious murders since Dr. Caligari came to town.  Francis decides he will not rest until he finds the murderer.  It's not long before he comes to suspect the creepy doctor and his live-action puppet especially after his fiancee, Jane (Lil Dagover), is kidnapped.

This is one of the very first movies to use a flashback as a narrative and the first to have a "twist ending", which confused the fuck out of me because I wasn't expecting it at all.  I thought it was going to be a take on Frankenstein, not M. Night Shyamalan.  It is an interesting movie, and if you like old films, you should probably check it out.