The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
by
Robert Wiene
Movie Seen: 23 October 2015
Note Written: 14 November 2015
I was mostly free that day at work and watched this 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' there. As a movie which is considered a landmark in world cinema and prelude to the genre of film noir, this movie was always there in my wish list. 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' starts on a grim note where two people are sitting in a garden contemplating on dead people's spirits and one of them begins narrating and ordeal/incident which he was a part of. A contemporary parallel to 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' could be 'Shutter Island', even though this movie is different in many aspects and stands a notch above the latter.
The mis-en-scene of the movie is its greatest asset, as unusually shaped backgrounds, rooms, settings, and buildings take you through a surrealistic world. Even though we now are used to various genres of horror movies and seen all kinds of suspenseful narration, this classic still succeeds in creating an impact and a small sense of fear in you. The movie perhaps has one of the first 'end-twists' in world cinema and I was shocked to see something like that used in a cinema from then.
Shadows and lights played a crucial part in bringing out the spookiness and horror intended, perfecting this masterpiece of German Expressionism. The inter-titles and readings from psychological texts describing Dr. Caligari's experiments builds intrigue in us and enhances the power of the plot and the movie as a whole. There's a reason classics are classics and I should watch more of them.
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