This film, which was originally intended to be directed by Fritz Lang, was eventually made by Robert Wiene due to various factors—chief among them, the specific historical moment and sociopolitical atmosphere in which it was produced and screened. Emerging in the interwar period—after Germany’s defeat in World War I and under the weight of the Treaty of Versailles, widespread poverty, the rise of fascism, the German Revolution, the failure of the Weimar Republic, and ultimately, the ascendancy of fascism in the 1930s—it appeared at a time when paranoia and fear dominated German society. The film was released in the final years before fascist madness would begin to bury one of Europe’s most intellectually vibrant cultures—Germany—under the rubble of racism, Germanic nationalism, and antisemitism for decades to come.
A few years after the release of this film, the slogan “Blut und Boden” (“Blood and Soil”) became a dominant ideological motif in German culture. These two words, however, might more accurately be interpreted as “madness and terror”, as they increasingly transformed suppressed vengeance and human suffering into the flames of a collective psychosis. This is precisely what the film explores—a nightmarish story narrated by a madman. It is only at the very end that we realize the entire narrative has been shaped by the horrifying logic of insanity.
Nevertheless, the connection between Germany’s historical context and the story of the film—about a monstrous figure awakened in a deranged mind, and a terrifying savior who is himself insane—has not been accepted by many critics. Even the very elements that are often cited to classify The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari within interwar Expressionist cinema—its dark and unsettling visuals, exaggerated jagged set designs, heavily stylized makeup, theatrical acting, and grotesque characters and scenes—are, according to many scholars, less representative of Expressionism per se and more indicative of the birth of an entirely new cinematic style.
In fact, just as Georges Méliès’s A Trip to the Moon (1902) can be considered a prototype for the science fiction genre in cinema, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari may well be regarded as the first example of the horror film genre. However, the political reading of the film—and the perhaps unconscious comparison it invites with Germany’s political history between the two world wars—often seems inevitable.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) / Robert Wiene (1873–۱۹۳۸) / Silent / 71 minutes
This is a machine-assisted English translation of a note by Nasser Fakouhi. The original text is available at the following link:
