Characteristics

The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari

The synopsis of this story, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, (where we will use Caligari as the short form for the title in the later parts of this blogpost) a silent horror film in 1920, is about the unreality and reality in tumultuous times. This movie is about a psycho man, Dr.Caligari who hypnotizes and controls a sleepwalker, named Cesare, to murder people at night in their sleep. Dr. Caligari did this with the purpose as a scientific experiment on mind control and to satisfy his own desires. However, towards the end of the story, we find the twist where the one who is telling the story is actually the mad man who imagines the people in the asylum as the characters in the film including Dr Caligari who is actually the director and doctor of the asylum. This story has brought up the theme of madness and the theory of psychoanalysis which has been discovered by an Austrian neurologist, Sigmund Freud, which mainly focuses on the power of human’s inner mind. The tiers of story-telling are from the present to flashback.

The major theme of this film is to indicate ambivalent reactions to authority and express a so called “strong appetite for sadism and destruction” where this film is filled with acts of terror, panic and sinister portents. The themes concern the spiritual and moral tampering with man’s will. We can see this in the scene where Cesare sleep walks without a mind of his own and follows the path of Dr. Caligari. This film has demonstrated the duality of human’s inner and subconscious mind which often stands between the bright and the dark side. It has revealed the moral and physical breakdown of the Germans in Germany at the time. The frustrations of “white collar pretensions” or working class, ambivalent attitude towards powers are the example of psychological patterns that have been reflected during that time. There are several reasons which are related to the emergence of the German expressionism film movement. “Some have seen it as reflecting a German mentality on the brink of madness and some have seen these films as an attempt to escape into horror from the dreadful effects of the economic crisis and inflation due to the war.” (Hayward, 2006) This is what we can see in the film of ‘The Cabinet of Dr Caligari’ as well where it is a horror movie which has a theme of madness revolving it which can be seen through the perception of Francis who is actually the real lunatic or mad man.

German expressionism films are films with extreme stylization. This is the uniqueness of German expressionism films where they rely heavily on the mise-en-scene to dramatise, bring out, enhance and emphasize the theme and narrative. For instance, Caligari with the theme of madness, where the mise-en-scene is used to show a mad man’s distorted perception; which we will be exploring further. We see the world as how the mad man imagines it to be. According to Susan Hayward, this style is famous for the oblique camera angles, distorted bodies and shapes, bizarre and incongruous settings that look almost gothic in their look and framing which actually brings out the horror theme. Lighting is also highly stylized where high-contrast (between light and dark) lighting is used; specifically known as chiaroscuro lighting, creating dramatic shadows. We can see here how the syntax, mise-en-scene complements the semantics, theme of the film. This film movement features the dark and twisted style of film making. To make things clearer, we will explore further into these unique German expressionism characteristics based on the film of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari which is very famous for German expressionism films that sort of kick-started this film movement as many movies followed suit of this film style after Caligari. 

“Shapes are distorted and exaggerated unrealistically for expressive purposes.” (Bordwell and Thompson, 2009) The characteristic of distorted shapes and lines used to show the distorted perspective of the world especially through the perspective of the character of Francis, a mad man who is telling his story can be seen in Caligari. For example, in the film, a normal window has an abnormal shape. The whole film uses sharp and irregular shapes and shapes with oblique angles in the set which brings out the feeling of being in a world of fear and imbalance as it upsets our sense of equilibrium. It shows distorted shapes to show regular objects in abnormal shapes to convey the distorted vision of the mad man. For example, one of the legs of the chair appears to be longer than the others creating an imbalance and looking different and distorted from a normal chair. The shot in the film creates a visual composition, drawing audience attention to specific elements. This can be seen in the Figure 1.1, 1.2, and 1.3 below which are shown in this film.

Figure 1.1 Stairways showed in The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari

In the figure above, we can see how the lines run up the staircase obstructing our normal view of the set.

Figure 1.2 Distorted view of Cesare after kidnapping Jane in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

The roads do not look like normal, it is distorted and abstract.

Figure 1.3 Slanted room shows in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

In this figure, we can see how the window do not have a normal shape like a rectangle or square but it is slanted and distorted as well as the ceiling and the walls.

Figure 1.4 View of the town in The Cabinet of Dr Caligari

The figure above shows the oblique angle of the slanted set creating a sense of imbalance to the audience, distorting our view.

All of the figures shown illustrate the inconsistency with the view of the way things look like in the real world causing us to be thrown off balance and have the feeling of fear. They look distorted because this is how the mad man imagines them to be in his world.

Besides the distorted shapes, line and oblique angles, another characteristic is highly stylised lighting. Lighting is an important element to show how terrifying human may become under the shadow of unconsciousness, where this film uses the psychological theory.  Dramatic shadows are usually seen as an element for a horror story to give it an ominous feel. Chiaroscuro lighting and low key lighting, one of the major mise-en-scene strategies of German expressionist film had been used often throughout this film with the purpose to imply the presence of the dark aspects in human and nature and conjuring up a dark world by creating a dramatic contrast using the light and shadows. This film does this by having heavy contrast between light and dark to create interesting and dramatic shadows. 

Figure 1.5 Cesare murdering a person in bed

The picture above in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari film shows the shadow of Cesare murdering a person in bed.  Shadows play an important role in the narrative where it reveals the character’s action played with suspense and the audience’s psychology. This brings the creepy mood and hints on the dark intent of the antagonist to the fore. This can be seen in Figure 1.6.

Figure 1.6 Bigger proportion of shadow represents the challenge to the reality of the character’s world in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

As mentioned in the caption, this shows how Francis, the storyteller in the film looks at Dr Caligari as a big threat to him.

Sharpened shadows, for example, often screened on the antagonist faces such as Dr. Caligari and Cesare may represent the malicious inner mind of a man. For example, in Figure 1.6, the shadow is much more exaggerated than the character, Dr. Caligari. It is painted on with a bigger proportion than the character. The character has arthritic hands which could not do what his mind wants.

In addition, another evident characteristic of the German expressionist film is in the heavy make-up coupled with the movement of the characters which are usually jerky, slow and sinous. Dark eyes, pale complexions and high-contrast lipstick are used on the actors of this film to create the gothic, dark and scary feel which invokes fear as well as reflect the illness of the mind in its psychological and emotional state. Figure 1.7 and Figure 1.8 is shown as an example.

Figure 1.7 Dark huge eyes, pale complexion and high-contrast lipstick on Cesare’s face.

For example, Cesare, the somnambulist, the sleepwalker has dark and horrifying enlarged eyes, with a tall, thin and angular figure moves in a jerky manner which further illustrates the point above. 

Figure 1.8 Jane’s face make-up with pale complexions and high-contrast lipstick.

Make-up is used to make some of the characters look sympathetic and others look detestable. The costume and make-up is also important to show the different roles played although the use of make-up for this purpose is not really the highlight of a German expressionist film. For example, although Dr. Caligari and the director of mental hospital are the roles performed by the same character in this film; the make-up and costume on each of these roles are not similar. 

Figure 1.9 Dr. Caligari and Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari

 Figure 2.0 Director of mental hospital (another role played by Dr. Caligari

Figure 1.9 and Figure 2.0 shows the different make-up and costume between Dr. Caligari and the director of the mental hospital. Dr. Caligari in figure 2.0 wears a medical black gown, has a flat-eye-brow and wears a pair of dreadful glasses. While Figure 2.1 shows another role of Dr. Caligari, a director of a mental hospital. He has a simple one-piece, dressed in black, a pale complexion and long hair. 

Mad man has been intentionally placed by the director in this film with the purpose of inventing a distorted world, so that all the characters are designed with distorted behaviors through their acting, unrealistic and irrational ways of insane minds in general. From Figure 1.7, we can know that the mad man character is played by Dr. Caligari. However, we find out that the real mad man is not Dr Caligari but Francis the storyteller which kind of reflects the German mentality on the brink of madness. 

Every character movement is done with a purpose to blend in and express an art. Most important, all these elements like the expressionistic sets, chiaroscuro lighting and the existence of the characters with their body shapes and movement interact together as they merge to form an overall composition. This can be seen in Figure 2.1.

Figure 2.1 Cesare in the forest

In the figure above, we can see when Cesare collapses in the forest which is stylized to be an expressionistic set, his body and outstretched arms actually echoes the shapes of the tree trunks and branches as they look similar. In this we can see that, as his movement of collapsing and his body shape actually blends in and merges with the setting (trees in the forest) creating an overall composition. His tall thin body resembles the tree trunk and the way his hands are positioned makes them look as though they’re the tree branches. This is rather abstract and primarily two dimensional, making this scene looking like a German expressionist painting.

Unlike the French Impressionism which concentrates on cinematography and editing as its style, German expressionist film do not focus much on editing but more on the design of the sets and taking the shots in oblique angles for the camera angle. The camera is usually placed in static motion at an angle to capture and portray the distortedness of the set or the audience vision of the set. German expressionist films focus more on the narrative, for instance using all these expressionistic sets which consist of sets or objects with distorted shapes, lines and angles as well as the heavy make-up and weird (jerky, mechanical, robotic), exaggerated actor movement unlike the usual to show the narrative point of view of mad characters such as Francis our storyteller in this Caligari film. What is interesting and unique is the contrast of the use of intensity and interiority of the angle with the limited camera action and basic editing.

This film is in linear-form where the story telling starts from the present where two men were sitting on a bench which anchors the nightmare-like narrative at the beginning of the scene, to the flashback of the point of view of a young lunatic man. With the purpose of plunging the viewer into a deeper nightmare and fear, another generation of flashback is used in this particular film.

Figure 2.2 Silent film and flashback scene showed in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

A side element not exactly a unique characteristic of German exoressionist film is the music as it plays an important role in creating suspense in a silent film with no verbal dialogues. When the plot starts to rise, the music also increases a bit at the same time, to catch the viewer’s attention and invoke emotion. For example, the music starts bit by bit when Cesare appears in Jane’s room. While Cesare is walking near towards Jane and standing beside her, the Bethoven Ode To Joy’s music plays which represents that Jane is sleeping calmly and at the same time, it is mixed with the sound effect which brings up the viewers’ emotion when Cesare is going to touch Jane. When Jane wakes up in shock and struggles to avoid Cesare, the music starts to increase and escalate. This can be seen in Figure 2.3.

Figure 2.3 Music used in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

The themes and visual style of the German expressionism are used and incorporated into movies to create stylised situations for horror stories like Waxworks and even contemporary ones like The Batman Returns and Edward Scissorshands.