The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari () is a 1920 German silent horror film directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. The quintessential work of early German Expressionist cinema, it tells the story of a hypnotist (Werner Krauss) who uses a somnambulist Cesare (Conrad Veidt) to commit murders. The film features a dark, twisted visual style, with sharp-pointed forms; oblique, curving lines; structures and landscapes that lean and twist in unusual angles; and shadows and streaks of light painted directly onto the sets. The set design is "anti-realistic, claustrophobic" and "harsh" which is "coupled with feverish anxiety [that] entered the vocabulary of filmmakers and film viewers" particularly during the Weimar Republic, when this film was made.
The script was inspired by various experiences from the lives of Janowitz and Mayer, both pacifists who were left distrustful of authority after their experiences with the military during World War I. The film makes use of a frame story, with a prologue and epilogue combined with a twist ending. Janowitz said this device was forced upon the writers against their will. The film's design was handled by Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig, who recommended a fantastic, graphic style over a naturalistic one.
The film thematises brutal and irrational authority. Writers and scholars have argued the film reflects a subconscious need in German society for a tyrant, and is an example of Germany's obedience to authority and unwillingness to rebel against deranged authority. Some critics have interpreted Caligari as representing the German war government, with Cesare symbolic of the common man conditioned, like soldiers, to kill. Other themes of the film include the destabilised contrast between insanity and sanity, the subjective perception of reality, and the duality of human nature.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was released when foreign film industries were easing restrictions on the import of German films after World War I, so it was screened internationally. Accounts differ as to its financial and critical success upon release, but modern film critics and historians have largely praised it as a revolutionary film. The film was voted number 12 on the prestigious Brussels 12 list at the 1958 World Expo. Critic Roger Ebert called it arguably "the first true horror film", and reviewer Danny Peary called it cinema's first cult film and a precursor for arthouse films. The film helped draw worldwide attention to the artistic merit of German cinema, and had a major influence on American films, particularly in the genres of horror and film noir.
Plot
In what appears to be a park, Franzis sits on a bench with an older man who complains that spirits have driven him away from his family and home. When a dazed woman passes them, Franzis explains she is his fiancée Jane and that they have suffered a great ordeal. The primary crux of the film is a flashback of Franzis' story, which takes place in Holstenwall, a shadowy town of twisted buildings and spiralling streets.
Franzis and his friend Alan, who are good-naturedly competing for Jane's affections, plan to visit the town fair. Meanwhile, a mysterious man named Dr. Caligari seeks a permit from the rude town clerk to present a spectacle at the fair, which features Cesare, a somnambulist. The clerk shouts at Caligari to wait, but ultimately approves the permit. That night, the clerk is stabbed to death in his bed.
The next morning, Franzis and Alan visit Caligari's sideshow attraction, where he opens a coffin-like box to reveal the sleeping Cesare. On Caligari's order, Cesare awakens and answers questions from the audience. Despite Franzis' protests, Alan asks, "How long shall I live?" To Alan's horror, Cesare answers, "Until dawn tomorrow." Later that night, a figure breaks into Alan's home and stabs him to death in his bed. A grief-stricken Franzis investigates Alan's murder with help from Jane and her father, Dr. Olsen, who obtains police authorisation to investigate the somnambulist. That night, the police apprehend a criminal in possession of a knife who is caught attempting to murder an elderly woman. When questioned by Franzis and Dr. Olsen, the criminal confesses he tried to kill the elderly woman, but denies any part in the two previous deaths; he was merely taking advantage of the situation to divert blame away from himself.
At night, Franzis spies on Caligari and observes what appears to be Cesare sleeping in his box. However, the real Cesare sneaks into Jane's home as she sleeps. He raises a knife to stab her, but instead abducts her after a struggle, dragging her through the window onto the street. Chased by an angry mob, Cesare eventually drops Jane and flees; he soon collapses and dies of exhaustion. Franzis confirms that the criminal who confessed to the elderly woman's murder is still locked away and could not have been Jane's attacker. Franzis and the police investigate Caligari's sideshow and discover that the "Cesare" sleeping in the box is only a dummy. Caligari escapes in the confusion. Franzis follows him and sees Caligari go into an insane asylum.
Upon further investigation, Franzis is shocked to learn that Caligari is the asylum's director. With help from the staff, Franzis studies the director's records and diary while the director sleeps. The writings reveal his obsession with the story of an 18th-century mystic named Caligari, who used a somnambulist named Cesare to commit murders in northern Italian towns. The director, attempting to understand the earlier Caligari, experiments on a somnambulist admitted to the asylum, who becomes his Cesare. The asylum director screams, "I must become Caligari!" After the flashback, Franzis and the doctors call the police to Caligari's office, where they show him Cesare's corpse. Caligari attacks one of the staff before he is subdued, restrained in a straitjacket, and becomes committed in his own asylum.
The narrative returns to the present, where Franzis' story concludes. In a twist ending, Franzis is depicted as an asylum inmate. Jane and Cesare are patients as well; Jane believes that she is a queen, while Cesare is not a somnambulist but awake, quiet, and not visibly dangerous. The man Franzis refers to as "Dr. Caligari" is the kind, benevolent asylum director. Franzis attacks him and is restrained in a straitjacket, then placed in the same cell where Caligari was confined in Franzis' story. The director announces that he now understands Franzis' delusion, and that he is confident he can cure him.
Cast Conrad Veidt as Cesare Werner Krauss as Dr. Caligari Friedrich Feher as Franzis Lil Dagover as Jane Olsen Hans Heinrich von Twardowski as Alan Rudolf Lettinger as Dr. Olsen
Production Writing The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, both of whom were pacifists by the time they met following World War I. Janowitz served as an officer during the war, but the experience left him embittered with the military, which affected his writing. Mayer feigned madness to avoid military service during the war, which led him to intense examinations from a military psychiatrist. The experience left him distrustful of authority, and the psychiatrist served as a model for the Caligari character. Janowitz and Mayer were introduced in June 1918 by a mutual friend, actor Ernst Deutsch. Both writers were penniless at the time. Gilda Langer, an actress with whom Mayer was in love, encouraged Janowitz and Mayer to write a film together. She later became the basis for the Jane character. Langer also encouraged Janowitz to visit a fortune teller, who predicted that Janowitz would survive his military service during the war, but Langer would die. This prediction proved true, as Langer died unexpectedly in 1920 at the age of 23, and Janowitz said it inspired the scene in which Cesare predicts Alan's death at the fair.
Although neither had any associations with the film industry, Janowitz and Mayer wrote a script over six weeks during the winter of 1918–19. In describing their roles, Janowitz called himself "the father who planted the seed, and Mayer the mother who conceived and ripened it". The Expressionist filmmaker Paul Wegener was among their influences. The story was partially inspired by a circus sideshow the two visited on Kantstrasse in Berlin, called "Man or Machine?", in which a man performed feats of great strength after becoming hypnotised. They first visualised the story of Caligari the night of that show. Several of Janowitz's past experiences influenced his writing, including memories of his hometown of Prague, and, as he put it, a mistrust of "the authoritative power of an inhuman state gone mad" due to his military service. Janowitz also believed he had witnessed a murder in 1913 near an amusement park on Hamburg's Reeperbahn, beside the Holstenwall, which served as another inspiration for the script. According to Janowitz, he observed a woman disappear into some bushes, from which a respectable-looking man emerged a few moments later, and the next day Janowitz learned the girl was murdered. Holstenwall later became the name of the town setting in Caligari.
Janowitz and Mayer are said to have set out to write a story denouncing arbitrary authority as brutal and insane. Janowitz said it was only years after the film was released that he realised exposing the "authoritative power of an inhuman state" was the "subconscious intention" of the writers. Hermann Warm, who designed the film's sets, said Mayer had no political intentions when he wrote the film. Film historian David Robinson noted that Janowitz did not refer to anti-authority intentions in the script until many decades after Caligari was released, and he suggested Janowitz's recollection may have changed in response to later interpretations of the film.
The film they wrote was entitled Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, using the English spelling Cabinet rather than the German . The completed script contained 141 scenes. Janowitz has claimed the name Caligari, which was not settled upon until after the script was finished, was inspired by a rare book called Unknown Letters of Stendhal, which featured a letter from the French novelist Stendhal referring to a French officer named Caligari he met at the La Scala theatre in Milan. However, no record of any such letter exists, and film historian John D. Barlow suggested Janowitz may have fabricated the story. The physical appearance of Caligari was inspired by portraits of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. The character's name is spelled Calligaris in the only known surviving script, although in some instances the final s is removed. Other character names are also spelled differently from the final film: Cesare appears as Caesare, Alan is Allan or sometimes Alland and Dr. Olsen is Dr. Olfens. Likewise, unnamed characters in the final film have names in the script, including the town clerk ("Dr. Lüders") and the house-breaker ("Jakob Straat").