Heading into World War I, the artists and bohemians of Germany were dealing with a narrow-minded, ideologically restrictive government that celebrated its traditional art history, yet gagged the ambitions of those attempting to push boundaries. The reaction against this stark oppression was an equally stark art movement that used paintings, sculptures, dance, architecture, and cinema to sort through Germany’s national trauma, exploring themes of madness, betrayal, and distorted visions of humanity. At the peak of this German Expressionist movement was Robert Wiene’s 1920 film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, which uses a striking visual style that has seeped into the work of filmmakers such as David Lynch, Martin Scorsese, Ridley Scott, Alfred Hitchcock, David Fincher, Stanley Kubrick, and Tim Burton.
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari tells the story of Francis, a young man who encounters the mysterious travelling showman Dr Caligari and his somnambulist – that is, a sleepwalking man who is under his control. A series of murders in the village all point to Dr Caligari as the culprit, but the truth is much darker than anyone might suspect. If you don’t want spoilers for this 100-year-old film then turn back now, because in the last few minutes it turns everything you think you know on its head.
When Francis’ investigations lead him to the local asylum, he discovers that Dr Caligari is, in fact, the crazed director of the institution who is obsessed with the story of an 18th-century mystic, who also used a somnambulist to commit murders. But in one final twist, we discover that Francis’ first-person recount is not as reliable as we initially suspected – he is actually an asylum inmate who uses the people around him as characters in his story. His imagined lover is a deluded patient; Cesare, the murderous somnambulist, is a quiet, harmless man; Dr Caligari is still the asylum director, but he is far from the evil villain Francis perceives him to be.
Wiene realised that by probing the depths of human dreams we approach a truth about ourselves that more accurately captures our desires and perceptions of the world than a realistic style would be able to accomplish. This ethos isn’t far from David Lynch’s, who uses surrealism in a similar way to explore distortions of reality in an effort to understand reality itself.
With the context of the final reveal, a rewatch of the film allows new subtexts to arise. The asylum director may not be an evil, scheming mastermind, but why does Francis see him that way? His friend, Alan, who he claims was murdered by Dr Caligari may have been a fellow patient who had to be put down, and perhaps Cesare the somnambulist was an unwitting accomplice in this.
But maybe what is real doesn’t really matter, because this isn’t the story we are being told. Instead what we are getting is a heightened narrative that filters reality through the eyes of madness, creating a world that is recognisable yet utterly alien. The structure of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari employs the use of flashbacks within flashbacks, each time growing a little more unhinged, and at its deepest point showing us Dr Caligari’s immersion into a European legend. The film is profoundly concerned with the tales we tell ourselves to make sense of our environment, but on a broader scope it is about the grand narratives that cultures pass onto their descendants to make sense of their own national identities. Wiene repurposes the tradition of sharing legends so that instead of inspiring heroism and bravery, he scares listeners away from the evil actions carried out by those wielding immense power.
Horrified by the atrocities committed by their own nation, as well as the suppression of artistic expression within their culture, the key figures of German Expressionism used high contrast lighting, sharp angles, disorientating sets, and warped geometric shapes to evoke the sick, twisted minds that tainted the worlds their characters inhabited. From the start of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, this entirely unrealistic visual style is used to suggest that not everything is as it seems. In one setting, a man sits in an unusually high chair that looks as if it is straight out of a Dr Seuss book (another artist influenced by the movement), and in a scene taking place at a fair, a bird sits still, weirdly the only natural piece of an entirely artificial space. Everything about the film is designed to seem off, so it is no real surprise to discover that these are simply demented visions of a world polluted with sickness.
Every time we see Tim Burton dab black makeup around an actor’s eyes or witness any number of horror directors create sharp points of light in dark environments, we are witnessing the impact of a film that has had such a wide-ranging influence on cinema that we barely even realise it anymore. The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is one of the most iconic German Expressionist films alongside Nosferatu and Metropolis, yet it is unique in the way it uses fabricated narratives to construct the identities of each main character. One hundred years on from its release we are still using moving pictures to examine the ways in which we become the stories we tell, from fantasy franchises like Harry Potter to television shows like Community and Doctor Who. But it is only when we view the film in its original form that we are allowed such a unique, enlightening glimpse into the social and political turmoil of an entirely different era.
