THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (Wiene, 1920)

in

(rewatched: fri/20220902 via Kino Lorber Blu-ray; directed by Robert Wiene from a screenplay by Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz; starring Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Fehér, and Lil Dagover. Released 26 February 1920 )

First time watching CALIGARI in at least 20 years, and it's even better than I remember: madness, manipulation, and murder wrapped in a sublime and unsettling package – save the frame story, see below –, one of the first and finest horror films made even more stunning through Kino's 4K Blu release (now I'm excited to watch the latest Blu versions of NOSFERATU and METROPOLIS), from the intertitles – I don't recall having seen the original German ones in the version I saw years ago – to each brushstroke of the beautifully warped set design to the grit and filth between Caligari's teeth.

While I adore CALIGARI, I agree, fully, with the vituperation of the films' writers over the frame story and twist ending to a twist ending: it does subvert CALIGARI's anti-authoritarian message, a message made even more potent when considering the context and time of the film's making and release in post-WWI Weimar Germany, a message that remains all-too-relevant 102 years after its release, not only across Europe, but on this side of the pond as well: we are nothing if not a land populated by easily-manipulated sleepwalkers at the beck and call of a madman, history's penchant for repeating itself (or rhyming) the great horror of the day.

(Definitely read the whole Wikipedia page: fascinating stuff.)

Random aside: I wonder how much of an influence CALIGARI played on Tim Burton's look for Danny DeVito's Penguin in BATMAN RETURNS: once I saw the similarities, unseeing them was next to impossible – though maybe I'm seeing things. Wouldn't be the first time.