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| The Cabinet of Dr Caligari |
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| Originally released: 1919 |
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Caligari is the archetypal German Expressionist film. As such, it
evokes internal emotions by distorting external reality, especially
through strikingly stylised set design. The result is a hallucinatory
world, as unstable and unsettling as the characters who inhabit it.
Veidt is Cesare, a circus somnambulist who commits murders at the
orders of his hypnotist, Dr Caligari (Krauss). The original script
took a strong anti-authoritarian stance, suggesting that government
could force people to commit murder (i.e. in the recently-ended First
World War) without question. The director "framed" it with
a surrounding story, giving it a conformist, almost comforting
conclusion. Within the frame, though, Caligari remains remarkable
and still unsettling.
Simon Eaton
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