The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Franzis suspects who is committing the murders, driven by Dr. Caligari’s hypnotic power. He tracks down Caligari, but when he finds him at the city’s psychiatric hospital, he makes a gruesome discovery: the mad Dr. Caligari is the director!

This Expressionist silent film is considered a milestone in film history. Wiene consistently visualizes psychological states using the medium of film.

The backdrops are painted, the houses are crooked, streets vanish into a completely unreal sky, but the actors move through this bizarre world as if it were perfectly normal—not painted, but simply real—a world of madness to which one must simply adapt. Even the intertitles are distorted and bathed in blazing, luminous colors, just like the entire film. As if the audience, too, were meant to be drawn into the madness.

Robert Wiene, Germany 1922, 72’, German with subtitles

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