THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI: A Century Of Influence, With A Twist
UFAAlmost exactly eight months ago, Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari celebrated its centenary. It is almost unimaginable to comprehend that already in 1920, when the medium of cinema was just about learning to walk and had yet to figure out how to speak, such singular gems of artistic genius were crafted. Already shortly after its initial release, the film’s potential was recognized as an early example of cinema being used as an outlet of high art, as opposed to a glorified carnival trick it initially originated as. And suffice it to say that The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari would grow to influence the art of filmmaking in more ways than one.
A lot has been said over the years about the most immediately recognisable way The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari has affected cinema and continued to inspire decades after its original release. This naturally pertains to its visual artistry which is taught as a textbook example of German expressionism. As such, the legacy of this era translated straightforwardly into film noir, partially because some of the most prominent expressionist voices, such as Fritz Lang, F.W. Murnau and Max Ophüls, emigrated to America from the increasingly hostile post-WWI Germany. However, the characteristic visual toolbox – including high-contrast cinematography, caricatural shadows, bizarrely warped sets and generally highly stylized production design for which Wiene’s seminal film is mostly remembered – continues to be appreciated today.
One does not have to think very long to immediately draw a line connecting German expressionism with the works of Tim Burton, who has consistently remained faithful to the stylised aesthetic pioneered by Lang, Wiene and others. The entire art direction of Beetlejuice is directly informed by the set designs found in The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari with their abstract shapes and sharply contrasting colours. What is more, Johnny Depp’s titular character in Edward Scissorhands is undoubtedly inspired by Cesare, the somnambulist played by Conrad Veidt. As a matter of fact, one can also find traces of Cesare’s DNA in the design of Brandon Lee’s Eric Draven, the titular character in Alex Proyas’s The Crow.
If one were to stretch out these parallels even more, it would be possible to connect Cesare’s visual design – at least partially – to Michelle Pfeiffer’s Catwoman in Burton’s Batman Returns, but it has to be acknowledged that her visual ancestry is more directly traced to Louis Feuillade’s Les Vampires, a serial from 1915 which Tim Burton also happened to be particularly fond of. In addition, elements of visual inspiration borrowed from Wiene’s film can be easily found in the works of Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) and David Lynch (Eraserhead, The Elephant Man) among others, thus cementing the magnitude of the film’s power to inspire.
However, what seems to be often omitted when discussing the lasting legacy of The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari is the construction of its narrative, more specifically its unforgettable twist ending. Although the opinion on this is not exactly clear due to the fact the vast majority of silent era films have been lost forever over the years, Wiene’s film is widely considered a pioneering example of use of an unreliable narrator. Granted, this was not particularly revolutionary due to its abundance in literature, but the film’s revolting ending was completely new in the sphere of filmmaking. And, notably, it originated as a way to bypass German censorship at the time.
It ought to be remembered this film was made immediately after World War I. Many millions had perished and the artistic zeitgeist naturally reflected a noticeable level of unease and open criticism towards authoritarian leadership which brought about this tragedy. In fact, The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari was written by two steadfast pacifists, Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz, whose anti-war sentiments spilled over into the script. Thus, it is easy to transcribe the notion of a devious magician – visually modelled after Arthur Schopenhauer – who holds a young man under his spell and uses him to unknowingly commit murders, into political terms. After all, the hard-line militaristic Imperial government analogously sent millions of young men into the meat grinder of the western front to fight their war for them. Unsurprisingly, German authorities were also able to interpret the story this way, which didn’t make the filmmakers any friends. To make sure the film would be released, the screenplay was altered so as to include a framing device re-contextualising what initially was a rather straightforward narrative distantly related to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
By introducing the concept of an unreliable narrator to hide their intentions deeper within the narrative, Wiene, Mayer and Janowitz successfully flew under the radar of censors. At the same time, perhaps completely incidentally, they pioneered the idea of a twist ending in the medium of cinema. Naturally, volumes have been written on the subject of twist endings alone – defining them, cataloging according to type, etc. Therefore, it is unwise to pin all the credit on this early expressionist gem, but this particular idea – re-framing a story as a delusion of a madman – easily traces back to The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari.
Exactly a century later, this narrative notion – now a certified archetype – continues to be deployed as a measure to pull the rug from under the viewers and force them to rethink the entire film in accordance with the new perspective offered by the twist. An abundance of examples sprouted over the years and it really doesn’t take a genius to see such beloved classics as Rashomon or Detour as distantly inspired by this film. Even The Wizard Of Oz could be potentially pulled as evidence in this regard, though its legacy is firmly tethered to its own source material. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see how the idea of a story taking place almost entirely in the character’s mind – after all, it can be argued that Dorothy did not leave Kansas and the trip to Oz was merely a hallucination of a concussed brain – has evolved over time and how a good chunk of this legacy is owed to Wiene’s film.
Even though it might be hard to imagine at this point in time, quite a few relatively recent titles are indirectly influenced by The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari in the way they handle their respective plot twists. For example, while M. Night Shyamalan’s auspicious debut The Sixth Sense drew mercilessly from Spielberg and Hitchcock, the fundamental idea of re-contextualising the entire story by way of explaining who the character played by Bruce Willis really is, is easily traced to Wiene. This isn’t necessarily because of what the twist entails but rather how it makes the viewer feel. “The Caligari gene” lies in the effect of leaving the audience unsettled and unsure of what they just witnessed. Just as Wiene’s film turns a simple murder mystery upside down with its final exposé, The Sixth Sense does the same with a prototypical ghost story.
The same can be said about Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, an adaptation of Dennis Lehane’s novel, which lures the viewer into what promises an eerie mystery with a supernatural element before flipping the table over and sending them home grappling with a fundamental human tragedy instead. Make no mistake, this is not an accident that Scorsese – a self-avowed film zealot – gravitated towards this film in the first place, even though the idea of directing a stylised gothic mystery seemed at least a bit odd in the context of his entire preceding catalogue. Literary and formal as the narrative was in its own right, Scorsese must have seen Shutter Island as a vehicle to express his own appreciation towards film noir and, by extension, German expressionism and The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari, to which the film’s twist ending panders unceremoniously.
Even the highly divisive Joker owes a lot to Robert Wiene’s seminal classic, though probably more indirectly. Ironically enough, this is yet another thread connecting Phillips’s film to Scorsese. In addition to Joker being a distillate of themes lifted from Taxi Driver and The King Of Comedy, one could equally see its twist ending as an ode to The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari relayed through Shutter Island. The film’s final scene in a psychiatric ward suggests ambiguously that it is possible for Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) to have imagined everything the audience thought was the primary narrative of the film. In a way, this is a clever way for the film’s own legacy to dodge any and all attacks suggesting the film’s alleged glorification of violent and antisocial attitudes, which in no uncertain terms mimics the way Mayer and Janowitz hid their thematic aspirations from the sniffing dogs of German censorship.
In truth, it is impossible to find the tangible limit of the influence The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari has had and continues to exert on cinema. It is a veritable cultural touchstone for a multitude of filmmakers, some of whom might not even be aware their work is proudly carrying “the Caligari gene”. For instance, though he is celebrated as a uniquely idiosyncratic voice with a penchant for setting his narratives within the confines of the human mind, Charlie Kaufman owes a lot in this regard to this 1920 classic. In fact, both Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and this year’s I’m Thinking Of Ending Things rely on using the same tools Wiene and collaborators had at their disposal a century ago. With a little bit of head-scratching, an astute viewer will be able to connect The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari to many more films as well. It is simply fascinating to see just how many seemingly unrelated titles owe their existence to a seventy-seven-minute-long prototypical horror film, which was originally intended as a veiled anti-war critique but incidentally turned out to be a bottomless well for others to draw from.
