The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 German silent horror film, directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. It tells the story of an insane hypnotist who uses a somnambulist to commit murders. It is considered one of the most influential films of all time, along with The Godfather and The Great Gatsby.
About The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari in brief
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 German silent horror film, directed by Robert Wiene and written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. Considered the quintessential work of German Expressionist cinema, it tells the story of an insane hypnotist who uses a somnambulist to commit murders. The film makes use of a frame story, with a prologue and epilogue which, in a twist ending, reveals the main narrative is actually the delusion of a madman. It was released just as foreign film industries were easing restrictions on the import of German films following World War I, so it was screened internationally. It helped draw worldwide attention to the artistic merit of German cinema and had a major influence on American films, particularly in the genres of horror and film noir. Modern film critics and historians have largely praised it as a revolutionary film. Critic Roger Ebert called it arguably \”the first true horror film\”, and film reviewer Danny Peary called it cinema’s first cult film and a precursor for arthouse films. Some critics have interpreted Dr. Caligari as representing the German war government, with Cesare symbolic of the common man conditioned, like soldiers, to kill. Other themes of the film include the destabilized contrast between insanity and sanity, the subjective perception of reality, and the duality of human nature. It is considered one of the most influential films of all time, along with The Godfather and The Great Gatsby.
It has been described as “the most influential film of the 20th century, if not the 30th century” by many film critics, and is considered to be a classic of the Expressionist movement. It also has a dark and twisted visual style, with sharp-pointed forms, oblique and curving lines, structures and landscapes that lean and twist in unusual angles, and shadows and streaks of light painted directly onto the sets. In the film’s design, Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig, who recommended a fantastic, graphic style over a naturalistic one. The script was inspired by various experiences from the lives of the writers, both pacifists who were left distrustful of authority after their experiences with the military during World War 1. The movie was released as part of the German Film Week, which took place in May and June 1920, and was held in cinemas across the country until July 20, 1920. The opening credits were released on August 1, 1920, in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, London, Paris, Berlin, and London. The soundtrack was released on September 1, 1922, in London, and in Paris, France, in 1923, in Berlin, in Paris and in Vienna, Germany, in 1924, in 1926, and 1928. The score was composed by Thelonious Monk, who also wrote the score for the first two films in the series, “The Godfather” and “The Second World War”
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This page is based on the article The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 04, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
