(Dir. Robert Wiene 1920)
I have no clue what the rating for this film is, I don't even know if ratings were even a thing when this came out. My personal rating: W for weird. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a 1920 silent German Expressionist film and boy howdy was this movie a ride. The first thing my mom said when we started this movie was, "What the heck." and I think that is a pretty good summary. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was a person, it would be a moody emo pre-teen. It features insane lighting, KISS levels of eyeliner, ridiculously tall chairs, lots of crazy people, and a ton of dramatic swooning. I didn't hate it though, it's so over the top that it becomes a little charming, the movie embraces its emo-ness. I know this entire paragraph has been about how weird this movie is, but I cannot stress this enough. "What exactly is in the cabinet of Dr. Caligari?" you may ask. See that guy in the photo above? He's in the cabinet, and if I opened a cabinet only to be met with that I'd close that thing right back up. The guy in the cabinet is named Cesare and he is a Somnambulist, which basically means he has been sleeping for his entire life and will do anything he's told. He really gives off movie Frankenstein vibes. He lumbers around a lot killing people and kidnapping beautiful women. Classic horror monster. Cesare is directed by the villainous director of the insane asylum, Dr Caligari, who is using Cesare to murder people FOR SCIENCE. By the end, the evil Dr. Caligari is caught by the heroic fiancee of the previously mentioned beautiful woman, and put in a straitjacket. However this wouldn't be German expressionism without some mind-boggling insight into the human mind, **SPOILERS AHEAD** it turns out that the hero is actually a patient in the insane asylum and made all this up in his own head. The movie ends with the crazy hero struggling in a straitjacket, a parallel to the scene in which Dr. Caligari is locked up. **END SPOILERS** Overall, I liked this movie, but I really hated the musical backing. It sounds like they threw some jazz musicians and an 80's synth band into a room together and told them to have at it. The music itself wasn't bad exactly, but it did not match the time period in the film. So basically it bugged me the entire time. I eventually had to just mute the sound. tl;dr this is a perfect movie to have playing in the background of a Halloween party, but add your own music to it.
1 Comment
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Aubrey KirchhoffI'm just screaming into the void and somehow getting graded on it. Archives
April 2018
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