The film "Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari" is an extremely creative work of art. Since it was created in the 1920's they were very limited in the effects and camera work they could use. In order to get around this they used full theater sets to film on. Some of which seemed to be massive (the chase scene over the bridge had impressive scale to be done on an indoor set). Another thing they did very well was use color filters over the camera lenses. Of course, this would just turn the entire scene that certain color. However, they did it in a way that seemed as natural as it could. Such as, showing a differential between day and night or instill emotion into a scene.
On the surface the acting in the movie seems somewhat cheesy. But the reason it seemed this way to me at first was because I was comparing it to modern acting. This was a time without any sound or dialog to film. All the characters had to directly relay their messages to viewers were brief pop-up dialog slides. So, to avoid using these breaks in the film, the actors would be over dramatic to convey their characters feelings and foreshadow their actions. I think that they did this very well because I found it relatively easy to follow the plot even when on a long stretch without a dialog slide.
The last part of the film I'd like to cover is the plot. I think that the story the movie tells is a fairly decent one. I like how the story is told from the memory of the main character. Even though this is not completely consistent since they're scenes of which he is not in. The story also jumps from being focused on his best friend to then him, after the friend dies early on. The storyline is kind of predictable for a "murder mystery/thriller" but as mentioned before the vehicles of which a story could be told were very limited. So, adding too much smoke and mirrors to the storyline would just derail the film entirely due to not being able to follow it at all. The only real let down to the story was how easily the doctors at the mental hospital believed our protagonist. I felt like there was potential for a larger conflict there.
Overall, I enjoyed the film a lot more than I thought I would. Especially for it both being in a different language and vastly different era.
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| Cesare via The Irish Post |
I didn't really like the movie because I'm all about the more modern stuff, however you bring up many good points about the filters over the camera, the bridge chase scene, and how the acting was over-exaggerated to communicate emotion and meaning without the use of dialogue and music. You help me to appreciate it more!
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