The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

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. Most of the rest of the film is a flashback of Franzis' story, which takes place in Holstenwall, a shadowy town of twisted buildings and spiraling 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 asylum staff, Franzis studies the director's records and diary while the director is sleeping. 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 then attacks one of the staff. He is subdued, restrained in a straitjacket, and becomes an inmate in his own asylum. The narrative returns to the present, where Franzis concludes his story. 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 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 asylum director announces that he now understands Franzis's 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, 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. called "Man or Machine?", in which a man performed feats of great strength after becoming hypnotised. and, as he put it, a mistrust of "the authoritative power of an inhuman state gone mad" due to his military service. Holstenwall later became the name of the town setting in Caligari. 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 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. 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"). The story of Caligari is told abstractly, like a fairy tale, and includes little description about or attention toward the psychological motivations of the characters, which is more heavily emphasised in the film's visual style. The original script shows few traces of the Expressionist influence prevalent in the film's sets and costumes. Through film director Fritz Lang, Janowitz and Mayer met with Erich Pommer, head of production at the Decla-Film studio in Weissensee, on 19 April 1919, to discuss selling the script. The writers had originally sought no fewer than 10,000 marks, but were given 3,500, with the promise of another 2,000 once the film went into production and 500 if it was sold for foreign release, which the producers considered unlikely. Frame story The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari makes use of a , or frame story; a prologue and epilogue establish the main body of the film as a delusional flashback, Lang has said that, during early discussions about his possible involvement with the film, he suggested the addition of an opening scene with a "normal" style, which would lead the public into the rest of the film without confusion. It remains unclear whether Lang suggested the frame story structure or simply gave advice on how to write a frame story that was already agreed, Janowitz has said he and Mayer were not privy to discussions about adding the frame story and strongly opposed its inclusion, believing it had deprived the film of its revolutionary and political significance; Janowitz says the writers sought legal action to stop the change but failed. He also says they did not see the finished film with the frame story until a preview was shown to studio heads, after which the writers "expressed our dissatisfaction in a storm of thunderous remonstrances". They had to be persuaded not to publicly protest against the film. In his 1947 book From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer argued, based largely on an unpublished typescript written and provided by Janowitz, Kracauer argued that the frame story glorified authority and was added to turn a "revolutionary" film into a "conformistic" one. Production of the film was delayed about four or five months after the script was purchased. According to Janowitz, Wiene's father, a successful theatre actor, had "gone slightly mad when he could no longer appear on the stage", and Janowitz believed that experience helped Wiene bring an "intimate understanding" to the source material of Caligari. Decla producer Rudolf Meinert introduced Hermann Warm to Wiene and provided Warm with the Caligari script, asking him to come up with proposals for the design. Warm believed "films must be drawings brought to life", and felt a naturalistic set was wrong for the subject of the film, instead recommending a fantastic, graphic style, Warm brought to the project his two friends, painters and stage designers Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig, both of whom were associated with the Berlin art and literary magazine Der Sturm. The trio spent a full day and part of the night reading the script, a style often used in his own paintings. although Wiene has made claims that he conceived the film's Expressionist style. but Warm has claimed that, although Pommer was in charge of production at Decla when Caligari was made, he was not actually a producer on the film itself. Instead, he says Meinert was the film's true producer, and that it was he who gave Warm the manuscript. Warm claimed Meinert produced the film "despite the opposition of a part of the management of Decla". The dominance of Hollywood at the time, coupled with a period of inflation and currency devaluation, forced German film studios to seek projects that could be made inexpensively, with a combination of realistic and artistic elements so the films would be accessible to American audiences, yet also distinctive from Hollywood films. Pommer has claimed while Mayer and Janowitz expressed a desire for artistic experimentation in the film, his decision to use painted canvases as scenery was primarily a commercial one, as they would be a significant financial saving over building sets. Janowitz claims he attempted to commission the sets from designer and engraver Alfred Kubin, known for his heavy use of light and shadow to create a sense of chaos, but Kubin declined to participate in the project because he was too busy. Warm worked primarily on the sets, while Röhrig handled the painting and Reimann was responsible for the costumes. The collaborative nature of the film's production highlights the importance that both screenwriters and set designers held in German cinema of the 1920s, Budd notes the film's themes of insanity and the outcry against authority are common among German Romanticism in literature, theatre and the visual arts. Casting , who portrayed Caligari, suggested changes to his own make-up and costumes so they would match the film's Expressionist style.|alt=A man wearing round-framed glasses, wearing a black coat and shirt, and white gloves with black lines along the knuckle lines. The man is looking off camera with a concerned look on his face. Janowitz originally intended the part of Cesare to go to his friend, actor Ernst Deutsch. Janowitz claimed he wrote the part of Caligari specifically for Werner Krauss, whom Deutsch had brought to his attention during rehearsals for a Max Reinhardt play; Janowitz said only Krauss or Paul Wegener could have played the part. The actors in Caligari were conscious of the need to adapt their make-up, costumes and appearance to match the visual style of the film. Much of the acting in German silent films at the time was already Expressionistic, mimicking the pantomimic aspects of Expressionist theatre. The performances of Krauss and Veidt in Caligari were typical of this style, as they both had experience in Expressionist-influenced theatre, and as a result, John D. Barlow said they appear more comfortable in their surroundings in the film than the other actors. Barlow notes that "Veidt moves along the wall as if it had 'exuded' him ... more a part of a material world of objects than a human one", and Krauss "moves with angular viciousness, his gestures seem broken or cracked by the obsessive force within him, a force that seems to emerge from a constant toxic state, a twisted authoritarianism of no human scruple and total insensibility". It was shot entirely in a studio without any exterior shots, which was unusual for films of the time, but dictated by the decision to give the film an Expressionist visual style. The extent to which Mayer and Janowitz participated during filming is disputed: Janowitz claims the duo repeatedly refused to allow any script changes during production, and Pommer claimed Mayer was on the set for every day of filming. Caligari was filmed in the Lixie-Film studio (formerly owned by Continental-Kunstfilm) at 9 Franz Joseph-Strasse (now Max Liebermannstraße), Weißensee, a north-eastern suburb of Berlin. The relatively small size of the studio (built some five years earlier in 1914) meant most of the sets used in the film did not exceed in width and depth. The original title cards for Caligari featured stylised, misshapen lettering with excessive underlinings, exclamation points and occasionally archaic spellings. The bizarre style, which matches that of the film as a whole, mimics the lettering of Expressionistic posters at the time. The original title cards were tinted in green, steely-blue and brown. Many modern prints of the film do not preserve the original lettering. mostly alternating between medium shots and straight-on angles, with occasionally abrupt close-ups to create a sense of shock. There are few long shots or panning movement within the cinematography. Likewise, there is very little interscene editing. Most scenes follow the other without intercutting, which gives Caligari more of a theatrical feel than a cinematic one. Additionally, lighting is used in a then-innovative way to cast a shadow against the wall during the scene in which Cesare kills Alan, so the viewer sees only the shadow and not the figures themselves. Lighting techniques like this became frequently used in later German films. ==Visual style==

The visual style of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is dark, twisted and bizarre; radical and deliberate distortions in perspective, form, dimension and scale create a chaotic and unhinged appearance. The sets are characterised by strokes of bold, black paint. Lotte H. Eisner, author of The Haunted Screen, writes that objects in the film appear as if they are coming alive and "seem to vibrate with an extraordinary spirituality". The rooms have radically offset windows with distorted frames, doors that are not squared, and chairs that are too tall. Strange designs and figures are painted on the walls of corridors and rooms, and trees outside have twisted branches that sometimes resemble tentacles. The visual style of Caligari conveys a sense of anxiety and terror to the viewer, The majority of the film's story and scenes are memories recalled by an insane narrator, and as a result the distorted visual style takes on the quality of his mental breakdown, giving the viewers the impression that they are inside the mind of a madman. As with contemporary Expressionist paintings, the visual style of Caligari reflects an emotional reaction to the world, Stephen Brockmann argues the fact that Caligari was filmed entirely in a studio enhances the madness portrayed by the film's visuals because "there is no access to a natural world beyond the realm of the tortured human psyche". Other elements of the film convey the same visual motifs as the sets, including the costumes and make-up design for Caligari and Cesare, both of which are highly exaggerated and grotesque. Even the hair of the characters is an Expressionistic design element, especially Cesare's black, spiky, jagged locks. A select few scenes disrupt the Expressionistic style of the film, such as in Jane's and Alan's home, which include normal backgrounds and bourgeois furniture that convey a sense of security and tranquility otherwise absent from the film. but John D. Barlow disagrees, arguing it is a common characteristic for dream narratives to have some normal elements in them, and that the normalcy of Jane's house in particular could represent the feeling of comfort and refuge Franzis feels in her presence. Robinson suggested Caligari is not a true example of Expressionism at all, but simply a conventional story with some elements of the art form applied to it. He argues the story itself is not Expressionistic, and the film could have easily been produced in a traditional style, but that Expressionist-inspired visuals were applied to it as decoration. Similarly, Budd has called the film a conventional, classical narrative, resembling a detective story in Franzis's search to expose Alan's killer, and said it is only the film's Expressionist settings that make the film transgressive. Hans Janowitz has entertained similar thoughts as well: "Was this particular style of painting only a garment in which to dress the drama? Was it only an accident? Would it not have been possible to change this garment, without injury to the deep effect of the drama? I do not know." ==Release==

) is revealed|alt=A sepia-tinted close-up of a man looking directly forward with wide eyes. He has short black hair and pale white skin, and is wearing a black shirt with a high collar. Though often considered an art film by some modern critics and scholars, Caligari was produced and marketed the same way as a normal commercial production of its time period, able to target both the elite artistic market as well as a more commercial horror genre audience. The film was marketed extensively leading up to the release, and advertisements ran even before the film was finished. Many posters and newspaper advertisements included the enigmatic phrase featured in the film, ", or "You must become Caligari!" Caligari premiered at the Marmorhaus theatre in Berlin on 26 February 1920, less than one month after it was completed. As with the making of the film, several urban legends surround the film's premiere. Another suggested the theatre pulled the film after only two performances because audiences demanded refunds and demonstrated against it so strongly. This story was told by Pommer, who claimed the Marmorhaus picked Caligari back up and ran it successfully for three months after he spent six months working on a publicity campaign for the film. David Robinson wrote that neither of these urban legends were true, and that the latter was fabricated by Pommer to increase his own reputation. It was given a live theatrical prologue and epilogue, which was not unusual for film premieres at major theatres at the time. In the prologue, the film is introduced by a character called "Cranford", who identifies himself as the man Franzis speaks with in the opening scene. In the epilogue, Cranford returns and exclaims that Franzis has fully recovered from his madness. though Robinson argued it was simply a normal theatrical novelty for the time. Capitol Theatre manager Samuel Roxy Rothafel commissioned conductor Ernö Rapée to compile a musical accompaniment that included portions of songs by composers Johann Strauss III, Arnold Schoenberg, Claude Debussy, Igor Stravinsky and Sergei Prokofiev. Rotafel wanted the score to match the dark mood of the film, saying: "The music had, as it were, to be made eligible for citizenship in a nightmare country". Caligari had its Los Angeles premiere at Miller's Theater on 7 May 1921, but the theatre was forced to pull it due to demonstrations by protestors. However, the protest was organised by the Hollywood branch of the American Legion due to fears of unemployment stemming from the import of German films into America, not over objections to the content of Caligari itself. After running in large commercial theatres, Caligari began to be shown in smaller theatres and film societies in major cities. Box office figures were not regularly published in the 1920s, so it has been difficult to assess the commercial success or failure of Caligari in the United States. Film historians Kristin Thompson and David B. Pratt separately studied trade publications from the time in an attempt to make a determination, but reached conflicting findings; Thompson concluded it was a box office success and Pratt concluded it was a failure. However, both agreed it was more commercially successful in major cities than in theatres in smaller communities, where tastes were considered more conservative. Caligari did not immediately receive a wide distribution in France due to fears over the import of German films, but film director Louis Delluc organised a single screening of it on 14 November 1921, at the Colisée cinema in Paris as part of a benefit performance for the Spanish Red Cross. Afterward, the Cosmograph company bought the film's distribution rights and premiered it at the Ciné-Opéra on 2 March 1922. ==Reception==

Critical response There are differing accounts as to how Caligari was first received by audiences and critics immediately after its release. Stephen Brockmann, Anton Kaes and film theorist Kristin Thompson say it was popular with both the general public and well-respected by critics. Robinson wrote, "The German critics, almost without exception, ranged from favourable to ecstatic". Barlow said it was often the subject of critical disapproval, which he believes is because early film reviewers attempted to assign fixed definitions to the young art of cinema, and thus had trouble accepting the bizarre and unusual elements of Caligari. Several reviewers, like Kurt Tucholsky and Blaise Cendrars, criticised the use of real actors in front of artificially-painted sets, saying it created an inconsistent level of stylisation. Critic Herbert Ihering echoed this point in a 1920 review: "If actors are acting without energy and are playing within landscapes and rooms which are formally 'excessive', the continuity of the principle is missing". While Robinson said the response from American critics was largely positive and enthusiastic, Kaes said American critics and audiences were divided: some praised its artistic value and others, particularly those distrustful of Germany following World War I, wished to ban it altogether. Albert Lewin, a critic who eventually became a film director and screenwriter, called Caligari "the only serious picture, exhibited in America so far, that in anything like the same degree has the authentic thrills and shock of art". Caligari was a critical success in France, but French filmmakers were divided in their opinions after its release. Abel Gance called it "superb" and wrote, "What a lesson to all directors!" and René Clair said it "overthrew the realist dogma" of filmmaking. Film critic and director Louis Delluc said the film has a compelling rhythm: "At first slow, deliberately laborious, it attempts to irritate. Then when the zigzag motifs of the fairground start turning, the pace leaps forward, agitato, accelerando, and leaves off only at the word 'End', as abruptly as a slap in the face." Jean Epstein, however, called it "a prize example of the abuse of décor in the cinema" and said it "represents a grave sickness of cinema". French critic Frédéric-Philippe Amiguet wrote of the film: "It has the odor of tainted food. It leaves a taste of cinders in the mouth." The Russian director Sergei Eisenstein especially disliked Caligari, calling it a "combination of silent hysteria, partially coloured canvases, daubed flats, painted faces, and the unnatural broken gestures and action of monstrous chimaeras". While early reviews were more divided, modern film critics and historians have largely praised Caligari as a revolutionary film. Film reviewer Roger Ebert called it arguably "the first true horror film", American film historian Lewis Jacobs said "its stylized rendition, brooding quality, lack of explanation, and distorted settings were new to the film world". Film historian and critic Paul Rotha wrote of it, "For the first time in the history of the cinema, the director has worked through the camera and broken with realism on the screen; that a film could be effective dramatically when not photographic and finally, of the greatest possible importance, that the mind of the audience was brought into play psychologically". Likewise, Arthur Knight wrote in Rogue: "More than any other film, (Caligari) convinced artists, critics and audiences that the movie was a medium for artistic expression". The film holds an approval rating of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes based on 80 reviews, with a weighted average of 9.30/10. The site's critics' consensus states: "Arguably the first true horror film, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari set a brilliantly high bar for the genre – and remains terrifying nearly a century after it first stalked the screen." Akira Kurosawa, the Japanese director, named this movie as one of his 100 favourite films. Legacy Caligari is the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema, and by far the most famous example of it. It is considered a classic film, often shown in introductory film courses, film societies and museums, such well-known writers as Kasimir Edschmid, René Schickele, and Yvan Goll had already pronounced the Expressionist movement dead by the time Caligari arrived in theatres. Among the few films to fully embrace the Expressionist style were Genuine (1920) and Raskolnikow (1923), both directed by Wiene, as well as From Morn to Midnight (1920), Torgus (1921), Das Haus zum Mond (1921), Haus ohne Tür und ohne Fenster (1921) and Waxworks. While few other purely Expressionistic films were made, Caligari still had a major influence over other German directors, and many of the film's Expressionist elements – particularly the use of setting, light and shadow to represent the specific psychology of its characters – became prevalent in German cinema. G. W. Pabst's Secrets of a Soul (1926), Both Rotha and film historian William K. Everson wrote that the film probably had as much of a long-term effect on Hollywood directors as Battleship Potemkin (1925). In his book The Film Til Now, Rotha wrote that Caligari and Potemkin were the "two most momentous advances in the development of the cinema", and said Caligari "served to attract to the cinema audience many people who had hitherto regarded the film as the low watermark of intelligence". particularly in films such as The Bells (1926), The Man Who Laughs (1928) and Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), Kaes said both Caligari's stylistic elements, and the Cesare character in particular, influenced the Universal Studios horror films of the 1930s, which often prominently featured some sort of monster, such as Frankenstein (1931), The Mummy (1932), The Black Cat (1934), and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). LoBrutto wrote, "Few films throughout motion picture history have had more influence on the avant-garde, art, and student cinema than Caligari". Noir films tended to portray everyone, even the innocent, as the object of suspicion, a common thread in Caligari. The genre also employs several Expressionistic elements in its dark and shadowy visual style, stylised and abstract photography, and distorted and expressive make-up and acting. Observers have noted the black and white films of Ingmar Bergman bear a resemblance to the German films of the 1920s, and film historian Roy Armes has called him "the true heir" of Caligari. Bergman himself, however, has downplayed the influence of German Expressionism on his work. Caligari has also affected stage theatre. Siegfried Kracauer wrote that the film's use of the iris shot has been mimicked in theatrical productions, with lighting used to single out a lone actor. From Caligari to Hitler based its claims about the film largely on an unpublished typescript by Hans Janowitz called Caligari: The Story of a Famous Story, Mike Budd wrote of Kracauer's book: "Perhaps no film or period has been so thoroughly understood through a particular interpretation as has Caligari, and Weimar cinema generally, through Kracauer's social-psychological approach". Prior to the publication of From Caligari to Hitler, few critics had derived any symbolic political meaning from the film, but Kracauer's argument that it symbolised German obedience toward authority and a premonition of the rise of Adolf Hitler drastically changed attitudes about Caligari. Many of his interpretations of the film are still embraced, ==Themes and interpretations==

Authority and conformity Caligari, like a number of Weimar films that followed it, thematises brutal and irrational authority by making a violent and possibly insane authority figure its antagonist. Kracauer said Caligari was symbolic of the German war government and fatal tendencies inherent in the German system, saying the character "stands for an unlimited authority that idolizes power as such, and, to satisfy its lust for domination, ruthlessly violates all human rights and values". Likewise, John D. Barlow described Caligari as an example of the tyrannical power and authority that had long plagued Germany, while Cesare represents the "common man of unconditional obedience". Janowitz has claimed Cesare represents the common citizen who is conditioned to kill or be killed, just as soldiers are trained during their military service, and that Caligari is symbolic of the German government sending those soldiers off to die in the war. The control Caligari wields over the minds and actions of others results in chaos and both moral and social perversion. Cesare lacks any individuality and is simply a tool of his master; Barlow writes that he is so dependent on Caligari that he falls dead when he strays too far from the source of his sustenance, "like a machine that has run out of fuel". In his book From Caligari to Hitler, Kracauer argues the Caligari character is symptomatic of a subconscious need in German society for a tyrant, which he calls the German "collective soul". Kracauer argues Caligari and Cesare are premonitions of Adolf Hitler and his rule over Germany, and that his control over the weak-willed, puppet-like somnambulist prefigures aspects of the mentality that allowed the Nazi Party to rise. Kracauer described the film as an example of Germany's obedience to authority and failure or unwillingness to rebel against deranged authority, and reflects a "general retreat" into a shell that occurred in post-war Germany. Barlow rejects Kracauer's claims that the film glorifies authority "just because it has not made a preachy statement against it", and said the connection between Caligari and Hitler lies in the mood the film conveys, not an endorsement of such tyrant on the film's part. Everyday reality in Caligari is dominated by tyrannical aspects. Authorities sit atop high perches above the people they deal with and hold offices out of sight at the end of long, forbidding stairways. Most of the film's characters are caricatures who fit neatly into prescribed social roles, such as the outraged citizens chasing a public enemy, the authoritarian police who are deferential to their superiors, the oft-harassed bureaucratic town clerk, and the asylum attendants who act like stereotypical "little men in white suits". Kracauer wrote the film demonstrates a contrast between the rigid control, represented by such characters as Caligari and the town clerk, and chaos, represented by the crowds of people at the fair and the seemingly never-ending spinning of the merry-go-rounds. He said the film leaves no room for middle ground between these two extremes, and that viewers are forced to embrace either insanity or authoritarian rigidity, leaving little space for human freedom. Kracauer writes: "Caligari exposes the soul wavering between tyranny and chaos, and facing a desperate situation: any escape from tyranny seems to throw it into a state of utter confusion". Caligari is not the only symbol of arrogant authority in the film. In fact, he is a victim of harsh authority himself during the scene with the dismissive town clerk, who brushes him off and ignores him to focus on his paperwork. The Expressionistic set design in this scene further amplifies the power of the official and the weakness of his supplicant; the clerk towers in an excessively high chair over the small and humiliated Caligari. The scene represents class and status differences, and conveys the psychological experience of being simultaneously outraged and powerless in the face of a petty bureaucracy. Another common visual motif is the use of stairways to illustrate the hierarchy of authority figures, such as the multiple stairs leading up to police headquarters, and three staircases ascending to Caligari in the asylum. Franzis can be seen, at least within the main narrative, as a symbol of reason and enlightenment triumphing over the irrational tyrant and unmasking the absurdity of social authority. Point of view and perception of reality Another major theme of Caligari is, Stephen Brockmann writes, "the destabilized contrast between insanity and sanity and hence the destabilization of the very notion of sanity itself". Similarly, the film has been described as portraying the story as a nightmare and the frame story as the real world. The film serves as a reminder that any story told through a flashback subjectivises the story from the perspective of the narrator. For example, the frame story scenes still have trees with tentacle-like branches and a high, foreboding wall in the background. Strange leaf and line patterns are seen on the bench Franzis sits upon, flame-like geometric designs can be seen on the walls, and his asylum cell has the same distorted shape as in the main narrative. If the primary story were strictly the delusions of a madman, the frame story would be completely devoid of those elements, but the fact they are present makes it unclear whether that perspective can be taken as reliable either. As a result, after the film's closing scene, it can be seen as ambiguous whether Franzis or the asylum director is truly the insane one, or whether both are insane. Likewise, the final shot of the film, with an iris that fades to a close-up on the asylum director's face, further creates doubt over whether the character is actually sane and trustworthy. In Brockman's words, "In the end, the film is not just about one unfortunate madman; it is about an entire world that is possibly out of balance". Although he does not think it possible to reduce the narrative or the film to the beliefs of its makers, Eisner claims Franzis can be seen as embodying the politics of Expressionism's anti-naturalism, through which a protagonist does not see the world objectively, but has "visions" that are abstracted from individuality and psychology. The framing device of an insane asylum, for Eisner, has a broader connotation as a statement on social reality in the context of the "state of exception". Here, Eisner claims, the militarist and imperialist tendency of monopoly capitalism is combined with what Sigmund Freud would later refer to as the longing for protection by a tyrannical father figure, or what Kracauer characterised as "asocial authority". Additionally, the character is actually a double of the "real" Caligari, an 18th-century mystic whom the film character becomes so obsessed with that he desires to penetrate his innermost secrets and "become Caligari". Franzis also takes on a double life of sorts, serving as the heroic protagonist in the main narrative and a patient in a mental institution in the frame story. Anton Kaes described the story Franzis tells as an act of transference with his psychiatrist, as well as a projection of his feelings that he is a victim under the spell of the all-powerful asylum director, just as Cesare is the hypnotised victim of Caligari. This, Barlow writes, "reveals a contrast between external calm and internal chaos". particularly in the shadow of World War I, at a time when extremism was rampant, reactionaries still controlled German institutions, and citizens feared the harm the Treaty of Versailles would have on the economy. Thomas Elsaesser called Caligari an "outstanding example of how 'fantastic' representations in German films from the early 1920s seem to bear the imprint of pressures from external events, to which they refer only through the violence with which they disguise and disfigure them". ==Sequels, remakes and musical works==

Film Several unsuccessful attempts were made to produce sequels and remakes in the decades following Caligari release. Robert Wiene bought the rights to Caligari from Universum Film AG in 1934 with the intention of filming a sound remake, which never materialised before Wiene's death in 1938. He intended to cast Jean Cocteau as Cesare, and a script, believed to be written by Wiene, indicated the Expressionist style would have been replaced with a French surrealist style. In 1944, Erich Pommer and Hans Janowitz each separately attempted to obtain the legal rights to the film, with hopes of a Hollywood remake. Pommer attempted to argue he had a better claim to the rights because the primary value of the original film came not from the writing, but "in the revolutionary way the picture was produced". However, both Janowitz and Pommer ran into complications related to the invalidity of Nazi law in the United States, and uncertainty over the legal rights of sound and silent films. Later, Janowitz planned a sequel called Caligari II, and unsuccessfully attempted to sell the property to a Hollywood producer for $30,000. The film had few similarities to the original Caligari except for its title and a plot twist at the end, in which it is revealed the story was simply the delusion of the protagonist, who believed she was being held captive by a character named Caligari. Instead, he was her psychiatrist, and he cures her at the end of the film. A quasi-sequel, called Dr. Caligari, was released in 1989, directed by Stephen Sayadian and starring Madeleine Reynal as the granddaughter of the original Caligari, now running an asylum and performing bizarre hormonal experiments on its patients. The sex-driven story ultimately had little in common with the original film. In 1992, theatre director Peter Sellars released his only feature film, The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez, an experimental film loosely based on Caligari. However, the storyline was created as the film was being made, so it has few similarities with the original film. The film was screened only at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival and never theatrically released. Music and stage Numerous musicians have composed scores to accompany the film. • The Club Foot Orchestra premiered a score penned by ensemble founder and artistic director Richard Marriott in 1987. • The Israeli Electronica group TaaPet composed a soundtrack for the film and performed it several times through Israel in 2000. • The British composer and musician Geoff Smith composed a new soundtrack for the film in 2003. • In 2013, the Dallas Chamber Symphony commissioned composer Brian Satterwhite to write an original musical score for the film, which was premiered during a concert screening at Moody Performance Hall on February 26, 2013 with Richard McKay conducting. • The Dutch psychedelic band Monomyth composed a new score and performed it during a screening of Caligari at the Imagine Film Festival in the Netherlands in April 2016. Bertelsmann/BMG commissioned Timothy Brock to adapt his 1996 score for string orchestra for a 2014 restoration; Brock conducted the premiere in Brussels on 15 September 2014. • In 2012, the Chatterbox Audio Theatre recorded a live soundtrack, including dialogue, sound effects, and music for Caligari, which was released on YouTube on 30 October 2013. • Two new scores were recorded for a 2016 DVD release of Caligari: a traditional score by Timothy Brock performed by the Brussels Philharmonic, and an electroacoustic score by Edison Studio, a collective of composers. • In 1981, Bill Nelson was asked by the Yorkshire Actors Company to create a soundtrack for a stage adaptation of the film. That music was later recorded for his 1982 album Das Kabinet (The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari). • In 1983, the German TV station ZDF commissioned composer Peter Michael Hamel to create a new score for a restoration of the film, based on a 1921 print. The version with Hamel's music premiered on ZDF in May 1983, and was subsequently broadcast during the 1980s and 1990s on TV stations in a number of European countries, including Spain and Poland. • Caligari was adapted into an opera in 1997 by composer John Moran. It premiered at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a production by Robert McGrath. • A two-act musical adaptation premiered at the 2001 Midtown International Theatre Festival. Music and lyrics were by Douglas Hicton, with the book by Richard Lawton and Hicton. The production was directed by David Leidholdt. • Joseph Kahn and Rob Zombie directed a music video for the 1999 single "Living Dead Girl" with imagery directly inspired by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, with Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie playing the Cesare part as the titular character. • In 2015, Indian scenographer and director Deepan Sivaraman adapted the film into an hour-long mixed-media piece with the performance studies students at Ambedkar University Delhi as part of a course entitled "Space and Spectatorship". • Scottish Opera's Connect Company commissioned composer Karen MacIver and librettist Allan Dunn to produce an opera based on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which was first performed in 2016. It was released exactly 100 years after the original film premiere. The album consists of 7 songs, which match the film structure - opening title sequence, plus six film acts. The songs are also the same length as the acts, so the music can be synchronised to the film. • In 2024, German musician and Ex-Kraftwerk member Karl Bartos released a new soundtrack for the movie. It premiered on February 17 at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt am Main. • In 1998, an audio adaptation of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari written and directed by Yuri Rasovsky was released by Tangled Web Audio on audio cassette. The cast included John de Lancie, Kaitlin Hopkins, and Robertson Dean. The dramatisation won the Independent Publisher Book Award for Best Direct-to-Audio Production in 1998. In 2008, BBC Radio 3 broadcast an audio adaptation by Amanda Dalton entitled Caligari, starring Luke Treadaway, Tom Ferguson, Sarah McDonald Hughes, Terence Mann, and countertenor Robin Blaze as Cesare. Caligari was an entirely silent character in this adaptation. • In 2024, film and television composer Jeff Beal composed a new score for the film, which premiered live-to-picture at Carnegie Hall, and is presented on the Kino-Lorber 4K UHD release of the movie. ==See also==