What’s Inside That Cabinet? by Tyler Smith

THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1920)
Directed by: Robert Wiene
Written by: Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz
Starring: Conrad Veidt, Werner Krauss

My senior year of college, I took a critical studies class on German Expressionism. For those that don’t know, Expressionism refers to the themes of a film being expressed in the visuals. For example, Gotham City is a cauldron of sin, violence, and corruption. We don’t need to be told this by the characters, because we already know this, because the city itself looks like no other city in the world. The buildings, the darkness, it’s not meant to reflect reality; it’s meant to let us see what can’t be seen.

One of the staples of early German Expressionism is Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. It’s a silent film about a crazy doctor and his slave, Cesare, terrorizing a small town. It’s told in flashback by a man in a park.

The story itself is only so-so, until the end, but we’ll get to that later. The primary reason to see the film is its astounding visuals. The art direction, lighting design, and costumes all convey a threatening atmosphere. But, it’s not just theatening; it’s bizarre. The best way to describe it is to imagine the images from a Dr. Suess book, but through the eyes of a paranoid schizophrenic.

The sets are clearly fake- wooden cutouts, in fact- but that does little to change the effect they have. It feels as though the buildings themselves are looking over the characters’ shoulders. One wonders, even if the fiendish Dr. Caligari hadn’t come to town, why would anybody choose to live here? Even on a good day, it’s still a claustrophobic nightmare.

In regards to the character of Caligari himself, you can tell just by looking at him that he is up to no good. Such is the nature of German Expressionism. His demented soul has announced itself in what he chooses to wear and the crazy expressions on his face. Well-played by Werner Krauss, Caligari’s motives are never clear. One wonders what he has to gain by his reign of terror. It leads to the inescapable- and very chilling- conclusion that Caligari has no clear motive; he’s just a crazy bastard. Evil for the sake of evil.

The costume design for Caligari is notable. We look at the short, runty doctor, with his long, stringy hair and his cloak and top hat, and we feel like we’ve seen him before. Then we realize we have, many years later, in Tim Burton’s Batman Returns. Burton, who is the modern champion of German Expressionism, was clearly influenced by Caligari when it came time to design The Penguin. The similarities are stunning.

Almost as stunning as the design for Cesare, Caligari’s slave. Dressed in tight black clothes, with a pale white face, and a mop of jet black hair, we think that the only thing that Cesare is missing is a pair of scissorhands. Once again, Tim Burton looking to the classics to tell his story.

The story, as I stated, is interesting, but nothing to remarkable. Then, in a twist on par with The Usual Suspects, the ending hits us like a freight train, making us question everything that we have just seen. And, as insane as the revelation is, everything falls into place. All of a sudden, the paranoid atmosphere, the sheer evil of Caligari, the gloom and doom, it all makes sense. As much as it can, anyway.

And we, the audience, sit there, shaking our heads, trying to wrap our minds around what we’ve just seen.

It’s a wonderful film that, no matter how much I try, I cannot do justice to with mere words. It is a visual film that needs to be seen to be believed.