The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)

 by: Carter Vance

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a surprisingly complex story of gentleman retelling a story of love and horror throughout the majority of the time with a last minute plot twist where the viewer realizes the gentleman is actually in an insane asylum and his perceived bad guy, is actually the doctor and care giver. The story is told through the gentleman narrating to a friend the events as he saw them happening.  He told of his lost love, Jane, the murder of his friend and the dangerous Somnambulist, Cesare, who is controlled by an evil looking doctor, Dr. Caligari. As the event unfold, the story is told through pictures that are introduced each time following the words describing the events.  

As far as the conventions used to paint the picture of a dangerous villain preying on an innocent town, one of the first notable conventions was the sharp, jagged edges used on the houses and throughout all of the back drops.  The entire town was portrayed with very angular shapes which made it appear more intimidating.  There was also the use of color to tell the story depending on the scene.  They used greenish-blue color to show darkness and danger and yellow lighting was used to depict daytime and change in days. One way to know this is intended to be a scary film is the appearance of the characters.  The faces were heavily painted with dark lines and the hair was dark and greasy looking.  Even the movements of the characters were sharp and precise during the first part of the movie.  At the end of the movie, the faces were soften and the overall backdrop was depicted with rounder shapes. 

The plot twist happens at the end of the movie when as a viewer it is clear that the villain is in fact the doctor caring for the gentleman in an asylum. As discussed earlier the set design played a big part in the telling the story and painting a picture of danger.  While the sets were
clearly basic in nature and looked like simple boards, the way they were cut and positioned told a story in itself.  The sets and background were just important as the characters and the lighting because without them you wouldn't have had the same sense of where the characters were and how the suspense was building.  For example, when they are in the streets at night, the set added another level of darkness to create the suspense of a murder about to happen. 

This German movie was created at a critical point interest following World War I.  The idea of a monster preying on a town was symbolic in nature to what was happening in the world at the time.  The biggest take away from this movie is that a viewer can be swayed to take at face value a narrators perspective as there is a level of trust that the narrator is accurately telling the events and in this movie, he is the one that appears the most normal in appearance. I suppose this is what made the twist so surprising and the movie interesting.