So there's this old movie called…
The Island of Dr. Calamari? The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
…which is arguably the first true horror movie (Ebert).
It’s about this insane old doctor who has a sleepwalker completely
under his spell. This crazy old loon! Can you imagine how horrifying that would be?
Hey hey, c’mon, let me tell it!
The movie takes place in a fictional town where a grizzly murder has taken place and
follows two pals as they go to a fair and see a side-show by the mysterious Dr. Caligari,
a hypnotist who uses a sleepwalker named Cesare to answer questions about the future.
One of the friends asks Cesare how long he will live and Cesare
replies that he will die at dawn. And sure enough,
the man is murdered in his bed, which sets his friend on a quest to find the killer.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari terrified audiences in 1920. But besides being the first psychological
horror movie, it kickstarted a film movement that brought Expressionism to the screen (Thompson).
But what exactly is Expressionism?
Expressionism was an avant-garde art movement that emphasized a subjective
perspective where the audience gets to experience what’s going on
in someone’s mind and despite being heavily associated with German cinema in the 1920s,
Expressionism is still often used in more modern movies (Expressionism Wiki).
Think of movies like, well… Mandy…
…The Cell…
…and of course, the movies of David Lynch.
Caligari famously used sets in a way they never had been before,
to express a state of mind rather than trying to convince you what you’re seeing is real life.
The important thing here, as I understand it, is the subjective view–while movies
like A Trip to the Moon or Star Wars have hyper-stylized fantasy settings,
they are still trying to get you to suspend your disbelief and accept their world as reality within
the confines of the story. Caligari’s setting is meant to convey a FEELING that there is something
strange or threatening about the location it takes place in. But as far as I can tell
from researching this video, expressionism gets harder to pin down the more you think about it.
Anyway, let’s move on before Diogenes gets involved.
Hello Cinephiles and Welcome to Cinema Stories— a show about what it takes to
make film history. My name is Tyler and today we are talking
about Nicolas Cage’s favorite horror movie–The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
A special thanks to Mubi for sponsoring this video. Get 30
days free by clicking the link in the description.
Although movies have had some scary shit in them since the beginning of motion pictures,
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was the first to “create a mindscape, a subjective
psychological fantasy,” a world in which “unspeakable horror becomes possible” (Ebert).
Clocking in at only 77 minutes, this short-ass movie changed
the course of cinema history and even if you’ve never heard of it,
I bet you’ve seen its influence in your favorite movies, whether you noticed it or not.
This is the story of how the first horror movie changed everything.
The year is 1920.
In the United States, the Eighteenth Amendment
comes into effect banning the drinking of alcoholic beverages.
In New Jersey, the first band-aid is invented by
a man whose klutz wife kept cutting and burning herself. Ah, true love.
And in Germany, a movie titled The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is
about to be released to a public fresh out of the first world war.
Germany at the end of World War One was a country at a fascinating crossroads in history.
This era (commonly known as the Weimar era because its constitution was drafted
in the city of Weimar) began at the end of World War One with Kaiser Wilhelm II,
we’ll say, stepping down as German Emperor. Damn,
check out that ‘stache! Guy looks like he should be fighting Sonic the Hedgehog.
The Weimar era, while politically unstable, saw a boom in art and culture (Suchsland). Willhelm’s
reign under the Imperial Reich had been culturally repressive and relied on
militaristic order (Weimar Republic Wiki). But now that it was over, new art movements like
Bauhaus emerged…and the cabaret scene entered the cultural landscape (Weimar Republic Wiki).
Although, there was a backlash to this new age with some fearing that Germany
“was betraying its traditional values by adopting popular styles from abroad,”
especially those brought from the U.S. by Hollywood movies (Weimar Republic Wiki).
This backlash reached the blossoming art culture as well,
with some artists even being fined for their work (Weimar Republic Wiki).
No, not the dog. Yeah, him. George Grosz.
I think it’s safe to say that the political movement that would soon become Nazism was
eager to put an end to this artistic ecosystem that glorified indulgence,
excess, and disrespect for authority.
The most famous art movement associated with this era was Expressionism.
Expressionism was more of an attitude or a way of thinking than it was a consistent style,
and it had a lot of crossover among different art forms (Suchsland). Whereas
Impressionism tries to depict the real world but only from a first glance (or
impression) instead of focusing on details, Expressionism tries to get at the “artist’s
inner feelings” rather than the actual appearance of the subject matter (artst).
Just look at how bonkers the world of Caligari looks. The
stool this guy is sitting on isn’t supposed to make sense,
but it gives you this dream-like feeling of something being not quite right.
The founder of the art magazine Der Sturm, wrote in 1919 “Expressionism isn’t a fashion,
it is a worldview” (Suchsland). Meaning, Expressionism has more to do with what the
art was than about the look–it was represented by [quote/unquote] “excessive enthusiasm,”
a sense of being overwhelmed, and a world out of order (Suchsland).
Often, this art criticized the “confines” of modern middle-class society (idesign).
A good example of this uneasy state of mind is how Expressionist artist Alfred Kubin described
visiting a little tea shop where “everything seemed bizarre” (Eisner 18). “The waitresses were
like wax dolls moved by some strange mechanism. He had the feeling that his intrusion had disturbed
the few customers sitting at the tables; they were completely unreal, like phantoms hatching
satanic plots. The far end of the shop, with its barrel-organ, seemed suspicious,
a trap. Behind that barrel-organ there was surely a bloody lair wreathed in gloom” (Eisner 18).
Have you ever been out and everything just seemed a little… strange?
Even though Caligari is credited with bringing Expressionism to the screen,
it wasn’t a new art movement at the time (Thompson). Expressionism
first appeared around 1908 and was well-established in theater design,
literature, and painting by the time Caligari premiered (Thompson). The film industry was
slower to take up the style because of how expensive movies are (Thompson).
Before World War One, German movies weren’t seen much around the world because the German film
industry was tiny (Thompson). During World War One, in 1916, the German government banned nearly
all movies from other countries to help build up its own film industry (Thompson). As a result,
after World War One, Germany’s film industry had grown, but it could only survive if it could find
a way to share its movies with the rest of the world (Thompson). The problem was that
other countries didn’t seem to want German movies after fighting against Germany in World War One,
and a few had even banned German movies from their theaters (Thompson). Some countries
refused German movies simply because they didn’t want the competition (Thompson).
One way of getting other countries to accept German movies was to make movies that didn’t
have to be tied to distinctly German locations (Thompson). The main way of doing this was to
make historical epics, and by the time Caligari was being pitched to studios,
most German movies were big historical spectacles (Thompson, World Film News 204).
According to one of the writers of Caligari,
the industry’s focus on historical epics meant that spending a bunch of money on
something as experimental as Caligari was a big risk (World Film News 204).
It was in this landscape of cultural change, artistic experimentation,
and a commercially ambitious film industry that a pair of young writers named Carl
Mayer and Hans Janowitz met and began writing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
The script that Mayer and Janowitz wrote was highly unusual for its
time and was inspired by some pretty dark, unsettling events.
According to Siegfried Karcauer, author of the book ‘From Caligari to Hitler’,
the earliest seeds of the story were planted in Janowitz’s mind when he visited a fair in Hamburg
in 1913 (Kracauer 61). Apparently, he witnessed a young couple sneak off into some bushes to get
bizzay, and after the young man left, a second man who seemed to be watching from a different bush
emerged and disappeared into the bushes where the young woman seemingly still was (Kracauer 61). The
next day, the local papers reported that a young woman named Gertrude had been murdered at the
fair (Kracauer 61). Janowitz had the uneasy feeling that Gertrude had been the woman he
saw the night of the fair and felt compelled to go to her funeral (Kracauer 61). At the funeral,
he saw the same man who had been spying on the couple that night and sensed that
the man recognized him too (Kracauer 61). He felt certain this man was the murderer,
though of course there was no actual evidence of that (Kracauer 61).
This murder occurred near the Holstenwall, which is a section of a semi-circular wall
surrounding the inner city of Hamburg (Hamburg Wallring Wiki). But get this,
the fictional town that Caligari takes place in is also called Holstenwall (Kracauer 63).
Obviously, a decent amount of inspiration came from the war itself–there’s a much bigger story
there, which will be explored in another video–but allegedly, while Mayer was in the
German army during the war, he had been subjected to repeated psychiatric evaluations and grew to
hate the psychiatrist assigned to him (Kracauer 61-62). Could this be a potential Dr. Caligari?
In 1919, while they were working on the Caligari script, Mayer dragged Janowitz to a sideshow
attraction called "Man and Machine" (Kracauer 62). The show involved a man performing feats
of strength while apparently hypnotized, and in his trance, he would give ominous premonitions
to the audience (Kracauer 62). According to Mayer, the strong man was advertised as an
“‘electrical’ man whose actions could be controlled” (World Film News 204).
The mysterious strong man seemed to be the missing piece needed to set the story in
motion. After seeing this side-show, they wrote the script together over the next six
weeks (Kracauer 63). Finally, Janowitz came across the name “Caligari” in a book called
“Unknown Letters of Stendhal.” The character in the book had no particular significance,
but the name “clicked” with the both of them (Kracauer 63).
What’s funny is, according to Janowitz, Dr. Caligari’s physical appearance was modeled
after portraits of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (Robinson 14). Yeah, I can see it…
But one of the weirdest things about the Caligari script was how detailed it was. At
the time, filmmakers would usually work from a broad outline of the story and
leave most of the creative process for the production (Robinson 31). Mayer and
Janowitz went so far as to write camera fades into the script (Robinson 31).
But there is another mystery here. How did they settle on the look of the movie with
its stretched, warped, and imposing sets? And who would be responsible for this influential style?
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Now, there are several conflicting accounts of who exactly came up with the look of the movie.
Apparently, everyone wants the credit for creating a film movement that would continue to influence
cinema a hundred years later. We’re going to look at the two most interesting versions of events.
According to a manuscript by Caligari writer Hans Janowitz from 1941,
he and Mayer told Head of the production company, Erich Pommer, early on that the movie had to be
done in a “distinctive style” and suggested visionary designer Alfred Kubin–remember,
the guy who was tripping balls in the teahouse? (Eisner 18, Robinson 17). Apparently, Kubin,
like Janowitz, got his freaky personality from living in Prague, “a mysterious town whose ghetto,
with its tortuous back-alleys, was a survival from the Middle Ages” (Eisner 18). Kubin’s Caligari
would have perhaps been even more nightmarish. Wouldn’t that have been cool?
Pommer wasn’t on board with the writers at first saying, “They wanted to experiment…and I wanted
to keep the costs down” (Eisner 19). During such a stressful time in German history, it was important
to be resourceful and save money (Eisner 19). Ultimately Pommer came around because the set
designers convinced him that it would actually be cheaper (Quarterly 378). They were like, “bro,
this is gonna save a ton of money, you don't even have to light everything.” It was agreed that the
sets would mainly consist of painted sheets of canvas considering raw materials were hard to
come by following the war, but if there was ever a time to experiment… it was now (Eisner 19).
Our next account comes from Hermann Warm, one of the three set designers of Caligari.
In the 1960s Warm wrote about his experiences working on the movie,
and Caligari researcher David Robinson claims this account is likely the most
accurate (Robinson 27-28). Warm claims that during the production, Pommer was replaced
as head of the production company by Rudolf Meinert who gave him the script and told him
to come back the next day with ideas for the design of the movie (Robinson 28-29).
Warm then consulted with painters Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig,
whom he had recently worked with on another movie (Robinson 28-29). The
two Walters would ultimately be hired along with Warm to design the sets.
Warm said that the script was very unusual and its strange atmosphere made him feel that the look of
the movie had to be “removed from reality, had to have a fantastic, graphic style” (Robinson 28-29).
Warm wrote, “We spent a whole day and part of the night reading through this very curious script…We
realized that a subject like this needed something out of the ordinary in the way of sets. Reimann,
whose painting in those days had Expressionist tendencies, suggested doing the sets
Expressionistically. We immediately set to work roughing up designs in that style” (Eisner 19).
When Warm presented their ideas the next day, director Robert Wiene signed off,
but Meinert was unsure, saying he needed a day to think about it (Eisner 19).
Meinert must have taken a trip to Kubin’s freaky teahouse because the
next day he told Warm, “Do these sets as eccentrically as you can!” (Eisner 19).
Kubin’s Freaky Teahouse–sounds like a goth band from the 80s.
Regardless of which version is true, of course, the sets did end up being painted on canvas.
Check it out.
And the bizarre town of Holstenwall itself is simply painted on a canvas backdrop.
Six years later, Faust would have its own Expressionist town–though
it probably had a bigger budget because this one was a model. Thanks, Caligari.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari premiered at the Marmorhaus in Berlin, on February 26th,
1920 (Robinson 54). The movie’s clever marketing campaign included posters and
handbills with the simple, cryptic message “You must become Caligari!” (Robinson 54-55).
Caligari was a critical and popular success (Thompson). The movie started
a trend of expressionist films––about two dozen were made over seven years,
and several became classics (Thompson).
Fritz Lang, though he may have never actually been involved with Caligari at all,
obviously had his mind blown (Suchsland). Two years later, Lang would direct Dr. Mabuse,
The Gambler. Even ignoring the whole ‘doctor’ part, the movie still follows a criminal
mastermind who hypnotizes his victims into performing crimes. It’s no wonder he claimed
to have been attached to direct Caligari as the movie’s Expressionist style seemed
to inspire much of Lang’s work even after he fled to the United States (Suchsland).
Remember the bans on German movies following World War One? Well, Caligari’s popularity
was crucial in breaking down those bans after the war (Thompson). Caligari was
only the second German film to be acquired for the USA post-World War One (Thompson).
France was especially determined to keep German films out, but Caligari’s reputation
led to filmmakers pushing for it to be shown (Thompson). A film theorist and critic took
action by arranging a one-time screening for charity (Thompson). The film was a sensation
and the ban was quietly lifted (Thompson). Two weeks later the film was purchased for
distribution in France, and became a cultural reference in French films and plays (Thompson).
Caligari was the first German film to play in Belgium after the war and the
movies that followed in its wake led to a glowing reputation for German
cinema that helped end the ban in Britain in early 1922 (Thompson).
The Expressionist movement on film ended with the twin blows of Murnau's Faust in
1926 and Lang's Metropolis in 1927, both of which went far over their budgets and
schedules (Thompson). But its legacy lives on in its impact on future generations of filmmakers,
and the influence of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is arguably one of the most
far-reaching in cinema history (Thompson). It had a profound impact on some of the
great auteurs such as Aflred Hitchcock and Orson Welles (Krohn 7, Taste of Cinema).
But most notably, the expressionist movement started by Caligari was a major influence on
film noir (Hirsch 71). Expressionist films like Caligari influenced both the style and
subject matter of the American film noir, because it offered an appropriately dark
vision of the world and because a number of German directors fled to the US from
the Nazis and carried that history over into their Hollywood work (Hirsch 71).
On top of that, as arguably the first horror movie,
Caligari may have started the tradition of the horror movie genre usually tapping
into our anxieties about issues surrounding our society (Vognar).
References to Caligari can be found in music…
…As well as movies…
You’re looking awfully pale there, Doctor Caligari.
…And the fashion choices of millions of goths.
The most famous modern-day descendant of Expressionism is Tim Burton (Thompson). And
it's pretty easy to spot the echoes of Caligari in Burton’s work.
There have also been comparisons between Caligari and the work of David Lynch (25yearslater). It’s
interesting that both Caligari and Lynch have inspired new words to describe dreamlike
movies: “Caligarisme,” the term the French coined for Expressionist movies following
Caligari’s popularity, could be used almost interchangeably with “Lynchian” (Thompson).
Interviewer: “How would David Lynch define something ‘Lynchian?’”
David Lynch: “I will answer that my doctor has told me not to think about this.”
But beyond these obvious examples, the legacy of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari can be felt any
time a filmmaker strives to––as Kracuaer would say––show “the soul at work” (Kracauer 72).
What’s your favorite use of Expressionist sets? Let me know in the comments down below. For me,
I would have to say Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which does a great job of convincing you
through sets that you’re on the same drugs as the characters. But also, there’s this
really interesting dream sequence that kind of reminds of the warped sets of Caligari.
If you were confused about what makes a movie Expressionist and want to be even more confused,
check out our After Show where we are going to argue about that and get into some of the
weird stories that didn’t make it into this video. Like how the actress this part was
written for died suddenly before production began, and how the actor who played Cesare
both starred in the first-ever pro-gay movie and inspired the creation of The Joker. Check
it out on Patreon right now for just one dollar, and it will go into the five-dollar archive when
my next video goes up. Or check out this video on how Fritz Lang trolled the Nazis.