Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (1919)

Grade: 84

"The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari", a silent film from Germany, may be the best feature made prior to 1920. Certainly it is better than the over-ripe "Birth of a Nation", and nearly as influential. Perhaps the first great horror film, "Caligari" is also a psychodrama, turning the tables on the audience by changing its perspective.

Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) has a booth at a county fair, where he promotes his sleepwalking zombie Cesare (Conrad Veidt, better known for his role in "Casablanca" two decades later). Patrons at the fair include protagonist Francis (Friedrich Feher) and his friend Alan (Hans Heinz von Twardowski), who are rivals for the love of Jane (Lil Dagover).

Cesare, under the direction of Caligari, murders Alan and tries to kidnap Jane. Francis suspects Caligari, and after some difficulty convinces the authorities. But in a wild plot twist, Francis, Cesare, and Jane are all inmates in a lunatic asylum run by the benevolent Dr. Caligari.

"The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" is a very impressionistic film. The sets appear to be painted cardboard, but they give a psychedelic effect. With its zombies, mad scientists and lunatics, the film was both unsettling and inspirational, with its ingredients used in any number of Universal horror pictures from the 1920s and 1930s.

Perhaps too much has been read into the film over the years. The subplot of a zombie controlled by an evil man has been called an allegory of World War I, while the revelation of Francis as a lunatic has been called the result of censorship, to prevent the repudiation of authority. But perhaps the film should be taken at face value: as an innovative and important horror film, and not as social commentary about troubled postwar Germany.