Cinema
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari
Robert Wiene · 1920
Synopsis
Sitting on a garden bench, a young man, Francis, tells a stranger what he lived through in his home town, Holstenwall. An old man, Doctor Caligari, obtains permission from the town hall to show a somnambulist, Cesare, at the fair, whom he keeps asleep in a coffin-like cabinet. The following night, the town clerk is stabbed in his bed. Having come to the fair with his friend Alan, who loves the young Jane as he does, Francis hears Cesare predict to Alan that he will live until dawn; in the morning, Alan is dead, and Francis begins to spy on the showman.
Context
The film was shot for the Decla company in the Lixie studio in Berlin-Weißensee, from a screenplay by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, and was released on 26 February 1920 at the Marmorhaus in Berlin. Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig painted on canvas sets with oblique lines, shadows and streaks of light included. Janowitz later claimed that the framing story had been imposed on them against their intentions, and Siegfried Kracauer built his political reading of the film on this testimony; but the original screenplay, found since, already included a frame.
Who it is for
A silent film of a little over an hour, in six acts, whose entire space is drawn and painted; it asks the viewer to accept this world of convention.
Prizes and reception
Restored in 4K in 2014 by the Murnau Foundation from the original negative, and presented at the Berlinale the same year.