The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of the most important films in cinema history by the German filmmaker Robert Wiene (1873 - 1938). In the film, the hypnotist Dr. Caligari arrives in town as a tarot reader and his assistant, the somnambulist Cesare, guesses people's futures. Soon after setting foot in town, a series of crimes start in the city and everyone starts suspecting the assistant because of his carelessness and unprofessionalism. But, the brave young Francis, while trying to save his girlfriend, discovers that the mastermind of the crimes is the doctor himself, whose powers of manipulation lead Cesare to kill people without being aware of what he does.
The Making of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"
The poet and playwright Mayer Janowitz began working on his screenplay in the winter of 1918-19, during the last weeks of the German revolution. According to Janowitz recount years later, the specific contributions to the conception of the work were fourfold: first, the mystique inspired by the city of Prague, where Janowitz was born, second, the murder of a girl witnessed by Janowitz in Hamburg, third, distrust on the authoritarian military power and the fourth, a sleep walking to show that the author had attended in Berlin some time back.
Film critic Einstein had assumed that no copy of the script had survived after the German war, but in the early 1950s, the actor Werner Krauss (who plays Caligari) told Einstein that he still had a copy. As Krauss flatly refused to let such a relic out of his hands, it was not until 1978, long after his death, the Stiftung Deutsche Kinamathek (the German Cinematheque) was able to buy the script from his widow.
From the original script, it was possible to demystify a lot of legends about the making of the film, particularly with regards to the participation of the director and its set designers, Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig. The original movie had a "foggy" look and this was the idea of the director and the set designers; this was nowhere mentioned in the original script.
Conflict with the Real Script
Moreover, Mayer Janowitz had set the plot in the modern world, with telephones, telegrams, and electric light. Wiene and his assistants had anticipated problems in matching old technology with modern ones and did not hesitate to delete a couple of sequences without compromising the story line. The film runs over the precise details of the time: the city is a medieval fantasy, the costumes are romantic looking and not even close to something what modern people wear, and the performances range from stylized to naturalistic. What is not known for sure is if the director just did not bother about time or wanted to deliberately create an aura of timelessness - characteristic of Expressionist Theater that later on were imitated by several German films after Caligari.
The original script didn't even have the character of Francis. This character was introduced by the director to render "completeness" to the story. Francis has been shown as a mental patient admitted to a sanitarium run by Dr. Caligari and ends up becoming the protagonist after unmasking the truth about the doctor.
The Author is a movie critic and she is a guest writer for several Movie Websites. Read her movie reviews and the latest movie news at her website.
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