Director: Robert Wiene
Cast: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Fehér, Lil Dagover
Have I Seen it Before: Never. I know, I was a little surprised, too. I did see it in a supremely delightful manner, with a full musical accompaniment from the band Invincible Czars. With months behind me now of watching Silent films with very similar organ scores, this was a delightful and lively change of pace.
What’s more, they take a unique stance on audience participation, encouraging the crowd to scream, cackle, and mutter along with the quickly unraveling sanity of the characters. It certainly diminished the frequent possibility of someone saying something stupid, and it all but eliminated the risk of me hearing someone’s phone going off.
If you should get the opportunity to see a silent movie with them playing, I highly recommend it.
Did I Like It: It’s impossible to deny the degree to which the Germans were innovating the artistic design of film before it even occurred to an American filmmaker to try. Not just the makeup of characters, and not even the arch angles of every set, more theatrical design than cinematic set building, but Wiene and company even managed to make every single intertitle is worth of being featured in the Pergamonmuseum.
Story-wise, there’s a bit to be desired, although I admit I might be making that assertion from my myopic position well into the 21st century, but to spoil a bit: Caligari (Krauss) has a sleepwalker (Veidt) under his thrall. Murders ensue.
And then it wasn’t all a dream, but a psychotic delusion. And not one of either the Doctor or the sleepwalker, but yet another character altogether (Fehér). Honest to God, I can’t imagine an audience going along with all of that even back then, but then again, I’m the guy that’s been saying that the “It was all a dream” bit had already gone out of style by the time The Wizard of Oz (1939) came around, it had already run of steam. Maybe at the time it did work, but the problems of point of view persist. The story is only tangentially about the dreamer, but even more so, how does one account for sequences in which he doesn’t appear?