A lot of people are like me,in love with terror movies,but though cinema has become an item in our everyday life,not a lot of people know its history ,i followed the history of terror movies till i got to One of the more memorable and influential of the early films which was Germany's silent expressionistic landmark classic, Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (1919) (aka The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari).Dr Caligari exhibits clairvoyant sleepwalker Cesare at a fair and challenges his audience to ask him anything about the future. When Alan a little hastily enquires after the date of his own death he learns that he has until dawn. Murderous mayhem and pursuit ensues in a cock-eyed artificial landscape of over-sized furniture and ill-formed spiky trees where everything tends towards spirals and spider webs. Alan's friend Francis narrates the story, giving it a dislocated and disorientating point of view.
Melodrama was the norm in silent cinema where the relationship between characters had to be communicated with gesture. "Caligari" creates a charcoal-drawn world that accommodates these extravagant mannerisms with heavy make-up and dark costumes intensifying the attitudes of the players. The shadowy symbolism that resulted is at odds with the movies being made across the Atlantic then and now, showing that cinema was well suited to fabulous psychotic dramas. It is such an apt use of the medium as it existed in the first quarter of the 20th century that it is difficult to imagine the film done better with the benefit of sound, colour, or any innovation since.
The historical significance of the film is as interesting as the film itself. In fact, knowing the former greatly informs and enriches the experience of the latter. The German impressionism movement started to make noise around this time, and by subverting the traditional narrative and story with the structure of the film, Dr. Caligrari scored on two fronts. It brought visual art to the forefront of the cinematic progress, and expanded cinema as an artform. It also seeked to rebel - with its art form - against what was going on in Germany at the time: a yearning for a father figure / rigid authoritative institution, the same historical environment that precipitated in the rise of the Nazi party. This is one of those pictures in which form informs content, and the twist ending changes what comes before and after it.
i was very taken by the movie from the very 1st scene actually the oddity of filming,acting ,the plot made me wanted to watch it till the end,the movie is just GREAT considering the fact that it had been produced more than 80 years ago,i wasnt surprised that the movie is very popular and it had high rating in almost all sites and positive criticism everywhere which it sure worth it!Maybe America is the leader of cinema industry now but we can never forget such film which was one of the cornerstones in terror movies industry along with the other German terror movie:Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens(1922)Nosferatu, A Symphony of Terror.
i just watched that movie and wanted to share it with people here who may probably don't have a lot of knowledge about classic cinema and here is a site where you can watch the movie at:
http://www.archive.org/details/DasKabinettdesDoktorCaligari
