The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari This is part of my German films class for my masters degree in English.


After their defeat in World War I, the nationalism that affected Germany was seen in its films. While the authors of Caligari wrote an entirely progressive and artistic film, the director inserted a frame to the story to convict the antagonist of madness, thereby conforming the story to then-current political ideas. “There could be no better configuration of symbols for that uprising against the authoritarian dispositions which apparently occurred under the cover of a behavior rejecting uprising” (Kracauer 67).


Wiene’s frame subverted the aim of the story by glorifying authority. “A revolutionary film was thus turned into a conformist one” (67). This reflected the current nationalism of Germans “retreat[ing] into a shell” (67). The less educated and submissive to authority again submitted to a show that helped them internally to justify what they were submitting to politically.

One wonders what would have happened with this film at a different time. The authors intended to point out the folly of being hypnotized by a leader and always being in a submissive sleep, only waking to do the bidding of the authority. This manifests itself in the “manipulation of the soul which Hitler was the first to practice on a gigantic scale” (73).

In a way, this movie also helps the character of the nation positively by showcasing the dangers of sleeping through life and following the will of others. I believe if the movie did not have the frame of madness that the German character may have understood these dangers. Since the movie had the frame, it seemed to negate any message that was sent. Hake also said that “Kracauer saw the vacillation between anxiety and aggression, and revolt and submission, as an expression of the German national character and its foundation in authoritarian social structures” (Hake 27).

The stylistic advances of Caligari were far advanced for the 1920s. The claustrophobic interiors and the high-backed chairs said a lot about the characters.

The interiors built for this movie were paintings brought to life for the screen. This seemed to mimic what the characters’ wandering minds were feeling. These images made the mind of the characters shape their own world. The strange contours and lack of straight lines made the mind not want to fit inside the box. At one point, the famous image that is the cover of the Kracauer book, the character seems to exude from the darkness into the light. This says a lot about the character, as his soul is also supposedly brought out into the open at this time.
The uses of light in this movie were dramatically breathtaking. The murder that was shown in shadow was disturbing yet the image was only a shadow. It was this shadow that kept the action lit yet in the dark. “It was their expressionist nature which impelled many a German director of photography to breed shadows as rampant as weeds and associate ethereal phantoms with strangely lit arabesques or faces” (Kracauer 75).

Wiene strangely disavows this expressionism style with the framing of the story that he introduced. When the insane asylum comes back at the end, the images do not revert back to the normal perpendiculars and right angles. In fact, they may even be more increased here. I see here the “staging of tyranny” in that the area of authority, the doctors and setting of the asylum, are still part of the madness around them. If this is the madness of the asylum, why does it exude into the real world? Is the asylum all around us? By staging the asylum as the authority over the character’s madness, is the asylum framed around our reality?