AndrewBloom
CONTAINS SPOILERS8/10 3 years ago
[8.0/10] There’s plenty of reasons to watch *The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari*. Maybe you have an interest in film history. Maybe you want to see one of the jewels of the silent era. Maybe you’d like to watch one of the pioneering works of the horror genre. My reason, though, makes me a little sheepish. It’s because the movie’s supposed to be a veritable Rosetta Stone for the films of Tim Burton.
And it is! Fans of Burton’s filmography can see the roots of his interpretation of The Penguin from *Batman Returns* in the visage of Dr. Caligari himself. The pale, floppy-haired young Alan calls to mind any number of Johnny Depp characters in Burton’s catalogue. Jane, the ingenue, feels of a piece with Sally from *The Nightmare Before Christmas* and various guises of Helena Bonham Carter. Cesare the Somnambulist, with his pallor, halting gait, and severe features, lays the groundwork for not just Edward Scissorhands, but pop culture icons as varied as David Bowie and The Crow.
This is all to say nothing for the production design of the film. The German expressionism more than seeped its way into Burton’s favorite aesthetic. But it also gives *The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari* a certain timelessness. Efforts to make something look real inevitably end up feeling dated, as time and era-specific looks march on. And yet the stylization of this film not only give it a dream-like quality that befits the plot, and a distinctive look that makes it visually memorable from the jump, but create a sort of impressionism with the setting and imagery that exempts it from any time or place but the one the film makes for itself.
In truth, *Caligari* retains a certain stagey quality which reflects cinema’s theater roots. But that aesthetic only helps the cast and crew to forge images that grab the eye. Forced perspective makes the realm our players occupy seem more fanciful and imaginative than a more realistic set. Long, jagged stretches of black running down sightlines or doors and buildings that seem off-kilter also suck you into the unreality of this locale. The different color treatments fill in the black and white filming, adding mood and texture to this storybook world. In short, the film is a visual feast, showing the medium’s potential for artistry in such an early outing.
But the art serves the story. The plot of *Caligari* is elemental in its horror. A man recounts the events that have all but lost him his love. A mysterious, almost grotesque figure comes to town. A murder mystery unfolds. The loss of friends, suspicions of a killer who’s seemed to evade detection, and a deranged villain imitating a folktale of old all still resonate in the present day. There’s a limit to the complexity that can be conveyed given the need to convey dialogue separately from action, but while the narrative is often a gating point for older films, *Caligari*’s still draws you in, more than a century later.
Maybe it’s because the film has enough twists and turns to surprise the audience and hold the tension until the grand reveals. It’s fairly obvious that the sinister-looking Dr. Caligari and his living corpse-like “somnambulist” have something to do with the path of murders of people who, suspiciously, have crossed paths with Caligari himself. But the murder the audience sees is tastefully depicted in shadow, concealing the perpetrator and raising some questions.
There’s a red herring in the middle of the film, as a ruddy scoundrel is caught trying to kill an old lady with the sort of murder weapon used in the prior slaying. In another point, Francis, our hero, is spying on Dr. Caligari’s home after suspecting him of being the architect of his best friend’s death, only to find both the doctor and his sleepwalker safe in their home when the last attack is perpetrated. The truth behind the slayings isn’t hard to guess, but the film holds enough in suspense to raise eyebrows.
Of course, it turns out that the caught killer is a mere copycat, and the sleepwalker ensconced safely in Caligari’s makeshift coffin is, in fact, a dummy. Both are solid misdirects. Caligari, it turns out, is the director of the local insane asylum, and *has* been commanding one of his patients in an unhinged, obsessive bid to imitate a historical Dr. Caligari who did the same. The sequence where the villain sees commands, plastered in the scenery and on the screen, that he must become his mystical antecedent, illustrates another excellent and memorable use of the medium itself to convey the antagonist’s madness.
The final twist, though, is that this entire story is the delusion of a madman. Our protagonist, and the narrator we meet in the frame story, is a patient at the very asylum where the tale meets its climax. And he’s dreamed up the whole tale, transposing the director who tends to him as his tormentor, and other random souls in the ward as lovers or threats. It’s a sharp way to pull the rug out from under the audience, providing leverage to the more fantastical elements of the narrative the viewer saw up to that point.
And yet, *Caligari* is less about story than it is about mood. More than a hundred years later, the emotions undergirding these scenes are palpable. At times, there’s an overly theatrical performance by the actors, with grand sweeping gestures and paroxysms of sentiment which come off overblown. But accepting that as a convention of the time, the music still carries your heart through the loss, fear, anger, and pity that are the film’s block and tackle. The sense of macabre which runs through everything lures you into this mad reverie. Even as the pacing and mode of exaggeration hit differently in the present day than they did a century before, the feel of this movie persists, drawing us into these scenes and to these people.
None more so than Cesare himself. The most striking moment in the film comes when Dr. Caligari opens his famed cabinet for the first time. Inside is a man, with the ashen face and darkened eyes that characterize so many monsters in our pantheon. But rather than recoil, the camera cuts to a close-up of his visage. The field closes in around it until all you can see is the ghastly creature, lids sealed but somehow looking back at you, sending a chill through your chest.
And then he opens his eyes. The music swells. He looks on in confusion. He twitches and comes to. He becomes something human, recognizable, sympathetic. You connect with him on an elemental level, seeing the person beneath the horror. The film carries this pathos and redemption forward, as Cesare can’t bring himself to murder Jane even when ordered. Even in reality, he is a harmless man smelling posies in the corner. His looks breed fear, but his soul, seen through small gestures, breeds pity and understanding.
Therein lies the grandest legacy *The Cabinet of Caligari* left for Burton, and all the others influenced by the film. In Francis, we see the seemingly normal individual, hiding something dark, something vengeful, despite his societally-accepted exterior. And in Cesare, we see something dark and forbidding, but are steadily shown the pitiable being, the recognizable humanity, that rests within that scary shell.
Those who can pass as normal can harbor something dark, and those who chill our blood on sight can unwittingly be hiding a more sympathetic human soul. Beyond the look, beyond even the feel of this silent wonder, no message or moral has directed Burton and those like him more.
