A Critique of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari as a German Expressionist Film

Straight from the beginning, Robert Weine’s 1919 film, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is set to take on an expressionist form. This is made apparent by the jarring mise-en-scene and haunting performances by the actors in the film. These elements bring about an unrealistic and “obscure” (Eisner, 1973:10) quality to the film which has come to be associated with films of the expressionist era. The narrative structure set up by the framing of the film however does not support the expressionist style and thus undermines the critique of the film as an “acclaimed masterpiece of German expressionist cinema” (Andriopoulos 2009:13). This coincides with Andriopoulos’s assertion that “the conflict between [the] frame and narrative [...] mutually contradict each other” (2009:24) therefore “effac[ing] [the] structural uncertainty” (ibid) that would render the film to be expressionist. This essay will engage with Andriopoulos’s views on the film by exploring expressionism and the use of expressionistic style within The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, as well as narrative structure and the representation of madness and illusion within the film in order to determine whether or not Andriopoulos’s claim is sound.

While it may be impossible to fully define German Expressionism, certain characteristics may be highlighted as inherent to the creative movement. Oxford Dictionaries online defines expressionism as “a style of painting, music, or drama in which the artist or writer seeks to express the inner world of emotion rather than external reality” (2014). Expressionists use distortion and exaggeration in order to “set [themselves] against Naturalism” (Eisner 1973:10) thus purposefully creating a representation of the unreal. Expressionist artworks were often da...

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...The framing story turns most of the film into a flashback with the exception of the prologue (mentioned above) and the epilogue in which we realise that ‘Dr Caligari’ is in fact the sane one and thus undermines Mayor and Janowitz’s original intent

The addition of the framing scenes to the film changes the interpretations that arise in watching it in a number of ways. One of the most apparent differences that occur is the loss of the intended subversion of the film. In the script sans epilogue, the story ends with Caligari in a straight jacket, locked away and therefore represents the triumph of good (Francis) over evil (Caligari). The plot change that results from the framing swops this dynamic around, revelling Caligari and therefore the authority figure back into its position of power.

The expressionistic style of the film is not limited to the mise-en-scene alone