The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, a silent German film from 1920, was completely innovative for its time and continues to influence filmmakers to this day. Emerging out of German Expressionism, a modernist movement in which reality was distorted for emotional effect, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari utilizes a set made of painted canvases positioned at improbable angles. Every element was crafted to bring about a feeling of threat and impending doom. It was the first movie to create a mindscape, a subjective psychological fantasy.
Many artists, such as horror movie pioneer Alfred Hitchcock and master of weird Tim Burton, have since been influenced by director Robert Wiene’s masterpiece. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari told the story of Francis, Dr. Caligari, and Dr. Caligari’s servant, Cesare. Dr. Caligari set up shop at a town fair with his somnambulist servant Cesare, who had been asleep for twenty-three years and yet could predict the future. A series of grisly murders occurred, and Dr. Caligari and Cesare were blamed. What followed was an unusual plot twist that left the viewer wondering whether the events actually happened or if they were the product of a madman’s mind, similar to Martin Scorsese’s twisty Shutter Island.
Why The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari Is So Influential
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was so innovative because it used imagery and techniques that had never been seen before. In Tyler Knudsen’s Cinema Stories video, “Dr. Caligari Did More Than Just Invent Horror Movies,” he discussed Wiene’s manipulation of light and shadow and how the sets of the movie greatly contribute to the unease. In post-World War I Germany, raw materials were hard to come by, which led to creativity by necessity on the part of the designers.
The effect of the painted canvases was unsettling and created deliberate distortions of perspective and scale. The focus on the actors’ faces, paired with the surreal backdrops, made this 77-minute film striking and memorable. As with Alfred Hitchcock’s black-and-white classic Psycho, the look and feel of it had been copied and re-imagined since it first premiered.
How Tim Burton Channeled Dr. Caligari’s Imagery
Tim Burton has spoken about formative it was to grow up seeing pictures of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. This was reflected in his filmmaking, as is the Expressionist movement as a whole. Burton has a unique cinematic vision, and his films often have dark, gothic, and macabre visuals with low-key lighting. Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street was a great example of this, but perhaps The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari‘s clearest influence was seen in the figure of Edward Scissorhands.
Edward’s pale face, darkened mournful eyes, and lean, black-clad physique was the very image of Cesare. Both films shared DNA, as Sweeney Todd fulfilled Tim Burton’s original Edward Scissorhands plan. Burton’s aesthetic was immediately recognizable and inspired by the imagery of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari’s Influence On David Lynch
David Lynch’s style coined the term “Lynchian,” which refers to his highly stylized set design and anti-realism. The influence of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was felt in Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me, Lost Highway, and Mulholland Drive. These films had a duality of tone and disturbing plot twists that are straight out of Caligari.
Lynch also utilized the unreliable narrator concept, in which the audience can’t trust what is being presented because the narrator is not a stable, consistent voice. In Blue Velvet and Eraserhead, David Lynch flips the psychological thriller on its head. Both films create a sense of surreality open to interpretation, including inspiring a theory that Blue Velvet is about Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. The character of Frank Booth, played to deranged perfection by Dennis Hopper, had all the demented menace of Dr. Caligari, although the latter lacks Frank’s sexual sadism.
Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island Borrows Heavily From Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari
Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, based on the novel by Dennis Lehane, was full of Expressionistic imagery. The setting of a mental institution echoed The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The movie also used the twist ending, the unstable narration, and the shadowy psychiatrist, just as the film that inspired it did.
The Ward C scenes, as well as the cliff scene, showed that Teddy’s search for the truth had pushed him to the edge, much like Francis’s obsession with finding the killer of his friend Alan in Caligari. Scorsese has stated that The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was one of his chief influences and that he wanted to adapt Shutter Island the book into an Expressionistic movie.
Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining Draws On Dr. Caligari
As with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Stanley Kubrick used jarring angles to depict deeply fractured psyches in The Shining. Jack Torrance’s deteriorating mental state was reflected in the setting as the Overlook Hotel slowly claimed him. Danny’s endless wanderings in the hotel also showed impossible twists and turns. There seemed to be no sense to the Overlook’s layout. Like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Shining told its own story via spatial impossibilities and the sense that the drama, set anywhere else, wouldn’t be so effective. The film made the minds of the audience race with dread and apprehension, not through jump scares and gore, but through the unsettling details in The Shining‘s Overlook Hotel.
Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho Shower Scene Was Influenced By Dr. Caligari
The influence of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was strongly felt in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho. Shot in black and white and utilizing tilted camera angles, the film took the viewer inside the mind of a madman. True terror came not from knife-wielding maniacs (though Psycho had one of those) but from within one’s self. As Norman Bates said, “We all go a little mad sometimes.” In both Caligari and Hitchcock’s Psycho, the killer was in shadow, hiding the identity from the audience, who knew something awful was going to happen before the character onscreen did. The iconic imagery of a shadowed arm, the hand holding a knife, present in Psycho’s shower scene, recalled the moment in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari when Francis’ friend Alan is murdered.
No moviegoer is new to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, even if they’ve never seen it. It had cast its shadowy influence over all that followed. Art, music, literature, and film, the far-reaching legacy of this 100-year-old film can still be seen and felt everywhere. It inspired directors like Hitchcock, Lynch, Scorsese, Kubrick, and Burton. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari pioneered the horror genre and accomplished this with no sound and a budget of less than $13,000. A century later, the movie still captivates.
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