BIG HOUSE FILM REVIEWS ~Roger Westcombe
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THE CABINET OF DR CALIGARI (1919)
Starring Werner Krauss, Conrad Viedt, Lil Dagover; dir: Robert Wiene
This wild, Gothic-futurist dreamscape, though undeniably of a certain age, nevertheless seems comfortable and familiar to our modern sensibilities. And why not, since it shaped so many of them? To experience Caligari now is like wandering through a gallery of peak filmic images: scenes from Nosferatu (1922), Metropolis (1927), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Spellbound (1945) and many other classics are foreshadowed here.
Nor is this convergence across decades static (which might’ve suggested a lucky accident predictive of future aesthetics) but rather a dynamic one, as the film’s extraordinary, Brothers Grimm-meets Surrealism look, once established, continually evolves and develops before our eyes to match the plot movements. It’s purest Expressionism: as the characters’ interior states crumble we are led into ever more byzantine, skewed and threatening passages and bleak outlooks.
On a lighter note, I have to confess pleasure in reading that poverty and producer Erich Pommer’s stringency drove the design decisions to the classic stylistic ends we now enjoy, as this same virtue-from-necessity rationale is often one of the major explanations for the insanely Expressionist dark shadows and minimalist lighting we’ve similarly come to love of 40s noir !Roger Westcombe's own website is at: http://www.bighousefilm.com/
For additional material on 'The Cabinet of Dr Caligari' and Expressionist cinema you might want to look at:
Bouton Jones, ‘Expressionism and Caligarisme,’ quite a detailed student essay, at: http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Studio/1689/expr_act.html
Jonathan L. Bowen, ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)’, on the JLBMovies site, at http://www.jlbmovies.com/CabinetOfCaligari.shtml
Brief but helpful online discussions of Expressionism at: http://icg.harvard.edu/~fc76/handouts/3__Expressionist_Cinema.html,
http://www.german-waycom/german/noir.html
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