With a month of horror movies ahead, I decided to start the
month off right with a classic, one that is often considered the first horror
movie ever made.
Think back to any of the mesmerizing and lucid worlds crafted
by David Lynch or a psychological thriller from David Fincher, and it is
certain that these two great directors watched, or more likely, scrutinized The
Cabinet of Dr. Caligari before making any one of their own. For Lynch, the obvious influence comes from
the bizarre setting and backdrop of this early German expressionistic film. Taking place in the fictional quaint mountain
village of Holstenwall Germany, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is not set in some
far off, distant land or even the future, as it may appear. Though the director has placed the film into a
seemingly normal German town, the subjectivity of its “realness” is certainly
called into question. Tilted walls,
slanted rooftops appear as if a strong wind just came through the town and
almost, just almost blew everything over.
The townspeople are real people inhabitating a real town, yet there is
something just not right with how it all looks.
Holstenwall is surreal in every sense of the word. With one glance, any avid David Lynch fan can
recognize the obvious influence this movie has on the surreal and decrepit
world of Eraserhead or even Inland Empire.
These movies deal with real people, yet the existence seems to take
place somewhere far off from our thinking of reality.
Inside the realm of a David Fincher thriller like Se7en or
Fight Club, the characters of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari are hardly molded caricatures. This is really something considering the fact
that we are dealing with a somnambulist and a mad scientist. Short in stature, hunched back and always
wearing a lab coat, Dr. Caligari looks like nothing else. His counterpart, the stiff Frankenstein-like
looking somnambulist named Cesare has been sleeping in a coffin for twenty
three years and can tell the future. At
the arrival of the town fair, Caligari decides to display Ceasre as an exhibit. Along with herds of people fascinated by the
premise of the somnambulist, two friends arrive, Francis and Allen. Upon learning his powers, Allen quickly shouts
out to Ceasre asking how long he has to live.
The response: until dawn tomorrow.
Early the next morning Allen is dead, murdered in his own room. Francis instantly puts the blame on Caligari
and Ceasre. But after an entire night
perched outside their window, Francis finds nothing, expect that his has been
abducted, all while the pair were sleeping.
