The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
About The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Francis sits with an older man and tells of Holstenwall. He and Alan go to a fair, where Dr. Caligari wakes Cesare, who has slept for years. Cesare says Alan will die before morning, and Alan is killed. Cesare then carries off Francis’s fiancée, Jane, and collapses. Francis finds a dummy in the cabinet and follows Caligari to an asylum, where the director is the man from the fair and the records show an obsession with an eighteenth-century mystic of that name. The frame turns: Francis is a patient, Jane and Cesare are inmates, and the director says he can cure him.
Cast & crew
More about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Robert Wiene directed the script by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. Rudolf Meinert produced, and Erich Pommer supervised. Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann, and Walter Röhrig designed the sets and argued for a painted graphic look instead of a realistic town. It opened at the Marmorhaus in Berlin on February 26, 1920. Willy Hameister was the cinematographer. Giuseppe Becce wrote the music.
Themes
Background
It was made in the early Weimar years. Later writers read Caligari as the wartime government and Cesare as the soldier trained to kill on command.
Making
Janowitz said the prologue, epilogue, and twist were forced on the writers by Wiene and Pommer. He and Mayer, both pacifists after military service in the First World War, had wanted the story to end with Caligari exposed.
Reviews
Variety in 1921 praised the direction, the tempo, and the sets. The New York Times that year compared the sets to modernist painting, including Marcel Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2.
Look
Willy Hameister shot the film against flats on which the light and the shadows were painted, so the streets lean and the rooms have almost no right angles.
Music
Silent, with German intertitles. Giuseppe Becce wrote music for the film.
Preservation
Prints circulate, including a copy on the Internet Archive and a WebM on Wikimedia Commons. A 2014 restoration of the score, adapted for string orchestra by Bertelsmann/BMG, was premiered in Brussels.
Notes
- Werner Krauss plays Caligari. Conrad Veidt plays Cesare. Friedrich Feher plays Francis. Lil Dagover plays Jane. Hans Heinrich von Twardowski plays Alan. Rudolf Lettinger plays Dr. Olsen.
- Rudolf Klein-Rogge is also in the cast.
- The line painted into the story is “Du musst Caligari werden.”
- A rediscovered manuscript shows an earlier frame, a story told at a party, which is not the asylum ending that was released.
- The German title is Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari.
Scenes
- Cesare, woken in the cabinet, tells Alan he will not live until dawn.
- Cesare carries Jane across the leaning rooftops.
- Francis finds that the asylum director is the man from the fair.
- The last courtyard shows Francis among the patients, and the director watching him.
Also available
- Internet Archive (DasKabinettdesDoktorCaligariTheCabinetofDrCaligari)
- Wikimedia Commons (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari.webm)
Quotes
Du musst Caligari werden!
