The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

The town of Holstenwall is already an unsettling place full of perspective-distorting angles, spirals and shadow throughout its streets, houses and even furniture. That’s nothing compared to the nightmare it becomes on the arrival of hypnotist Dr. Caligari and his somnambulist Cesare who he keeps in the titular cabinet. Francis tells his tale of fear, madness, and murder in flashback and draws us in with him.

Even as a carnival act, somnambulist Cesare is deeply disconcerting. Dr. Caligari switches from hate-gnome mode to carnival barker mode to draw a crowd to his tent, beckoning them to come and see a somnambulist who has been sleeping all his years. Upon his awakening the simple effect of the glaring eyes in those blackened eye sockets deep set in that pale face send a gasp through the crowd, supposedly provoked screams from the audience at the premiere, and still send a shiver through the viewer today. Befitting his morbid appearance, Cesare’s first prediction is of death for Francis’s friend, Alan. And if you thought he was creepy as a carnival act, wait til you see him stalking through the night. Moving with a liquid grace and menace, Cesare is the forerunner of dozens of supernatural movie slashers. His slow pace just makes the inexorable fall of his shadow over your sleeping figure all the more terrifying.

Francis tells in flashback of his attempts to find the murderer loose in his town and how he tracks it all back to Cesare and Dr. Caligari. Or does he? The dreamlike state of the movie makes it all unclear.

Cesare is played by Conrad Veidt, who you will likely not recognize under the makeup as Casablanca’s Major Strasser. Veidt in reality, fled the Nazi regime with his beloved Jewish wife, and when he began his Hollywood career (before the US entry into the war) stipulated that if he must play a Nazi role, it must be a villain. One of the scarier aspects of the movie is how, despite it predating Nazism, it seems an incredibly on point allegory for how an authoritarian figure can hypnotize sleepwalking people into horrifying crimes. It’s hard not to make that connection to the thoughts of a sane man in a crazy society at the scream of one of the characters of ‘You all think I’m insane, it’s the Director who’s insane!’ Just another level on which this is a thoroughly disconcerting picture.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is streaming on Netflix. Lady Picture Show recommends watching on a dark and foggy night.