Ok, I’ve been on a German silent-era film kick for a couple of weeks and just got through this one finally and I’m delighted. What a kick in the pants! This out-expressionisms them all. This was the DVD version with the intertitles based on the original ones that lots of people seem to think look like Hell but I love them (are there any images of the German ones floating around?). What sets! What costumes! Nice tint job on the film, too-- I liked the blue effect for nighttime. I like my films stylized to a fare-thee-well, obviously. And I was very very pleased with the ending. . .
I think this is the earliest example of the “implied unreliable narrator” in film that I can think of. How cool is that?
Other things I’ve watched lately-- the earlier Dr Mabuse films (Der Spieler and Das Testament des D M), M, Faust (also very cool sets), How the Golem came into the World. Next up will be The Spiders and the Student of Prague (already seen Metropolis a few times). Any other suggestions?
MODERATOR COMMENT: Please note this thread is from 2006, until revived in Post #9 in November 2013. – CKDH
I just saw M (brilliant and disturbing) for the first time a couple weeks ago, and Caligari (I saw a model of the set at the film museum in Berlin) is near the top of my Netflix queue. But nothing new to add to the thread.
When you get on a French, 60’s, prison-break film kick, I’ve got just the movie for you.
The odd thing is that was not how the director, Robert Wiene, wanted to end the movie. The plot-twist where the whole story turns out to be the delusion of a paranoid schizophrenic was forced on the filmmakers by German censors.
But why would that be (re: the ending and censors and all)? I’ve heard this as well. Is it a sort of urban myth or is there some sort of documentation for it?
The Wikepedia article on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari states it was the producers who forced the ending on the director. Supposedly the reason for the change was the original story was seen as a thinly-veiled attack on the German government for leading the nation into WWI.
I love Caligari, and Das Testament, and Faust. For me, the masterpiece of the whole lot is Murnau’s Sunrise. It’s often left off lists of German Expressionist films, but watch it and see if you can figure out why; I can’t. Further afield, the best of the Noirs, and Val Lewton’s collaborations with Jacques Tourneur, Robert Wise, and Mark Robson–tell me if Cat People ever could have happened without the German Expressionist stuff coming first. And Douglas Sirk’s use of surface and lighting came strictly from those older German films. He was a stage director in Berlin in those days, doing Expressionist stagings of Brecht plays, and the angles and shadows he brought to those Hollywood weepers of the fifties is a big part of what elevated them above their source material.
My favorite German film of the pre-war era is The Blue Angel. Emil Jannings, Marlene Dietrich. Very haunting film. Especially the background clown character early on and what that turns out to imply later.
Saw it again in the past year or so. Still holds me.
Although this thread is from 2006, a discussion of German expressionism is always interesting. the impact can be felt on such diverse films as 1931 FRANKENSTEIN (the Boris Karloff original) and 1940s film noir.