"Dr. Caligari's Cabin" tells the story of a German town where Dr. Caligari performed hypnotism, causing multiple murders. The common evidence points to Dr. Caligari's control of sleepwalkers. The truth of the murder, through the protagonist's multi-party pursuit, the truth is slowly revealed. 1. Cultural background This film, as the first work that started German expressionism, focused on showing the grotesque and dramatic style. The expressionist movement was originally a style of dramatic painting, and it opened up a new way in the film. Express the inner emotional truth rather than the outer surface with extreme distortion. 2. Narrative Most of the narratives of this film are nested narratives. For example, the main story is drawn from the conversation between the male protagonist and the male protagonist's father, and the secret of Dr. Caligari is also through his diary. When all these stories come to an end, they return to the time and space at the beginning, and the second layer of truth is revealed, that is, the previous stories were fantasized by the male protagonist as a mental patient. This complex narrative structure enhances the dramatic tension, combining fantasy and reality to create a double ending that is indistinguishable. It is reminiscent of films such as "Shutter Island" and "Inception". At the same time, several assassinations and pursuits, including the episodes in which the sleepwalker Caesar answered questions, were delayed to a certain extent. Overall, they were quite exciting. 3. Audio-visual (1) The use of a large number of circular and vertical masks highlights the strong emotions expressed by the characters, which is also in line with the main characteristics of German Expressionism. , the narrative expressed by language is not so important. Therefore, in this film, there are actually fewer lines explained with subtitles. At the same time, concealing the surrounding environment makes the space narrow and greatly enhances the suspenseful atmosphere. For example, when the murderer is caught, the citizens shout at the window. (2) The setting is mainly to draw weird and distorted buildings on canvas curtains and planes, and the subtitles also use a more animated way, which is weird and in line with the fantasy theme of the film story. It can be seen that this film should draw lessons from painting to a large extent. In the scenes where the heroine is sleeping and carrying the sleepwalker Caesar away, the composition and light and shadow features commonly used in painting are used. The backgrounds blend together to form a visual element. (3) Continuing the characteristics of European films in the 1910s, this film pays great attention to the sense of depth in the scene. Almost every picture is carefully considered in the front, middle and background, and the characters entering and leaving are almost always vertical. Even in the chase scene, it is expressed through the vertical movement of face + back + face, which makes in many shots, when the main actor moves to the foreground, there is a kind of impact that rushes out of the picture, which enhances the horror Elements. In the theater, a very three-dimensional space is also constructed through the shaping of light and shadow. 4. Kernel (I didn't see it at all, it was copied in the book, so please remember it as a reference) Dr. Caligari has become a symbol of authority and autocracy, and this film has also become a propaganda film to maintain authority. The subconscious of the lunatics also secretly condemned Caligari's "tyrant image". In fact, the film is negative, with a negative attitude towards authority and autocracy, but its camouflage guarantees the film's popularity at that time. The historical background of Germany just shows the birth of the film and the art form of the film. Therefore, some people say that this is a film describing the psychological state, especially the psychological state of the German people at that time. 5. Influenced the most famous expressionist film, and since then, a large part of the German expressionist film has continued many of the main features of this film, such as the strange painting style pictures and the use of masks. 6. Personal evaluation Although there are too many fixed shots and the editing is relatively basic, it seems relatively monotonous, but overall the style is very distinct and the story is very strange, which is considered good in silent movies. The dissatisfaction is as follows: due to the use of masks a lot, and the close-ups that highlight the emotions of the characters are mostly frontal shots, regardless of the angle of the previous shot and the actions of the actors, it feels a bit separated from the previous picture, although it is enhanced. Emotions, but slightly broke the sense of continuity of the space, and at the same time, the overemphasis on the depth of the scene also caused this perception, because most of the shots are longitudinally front and rear, so it is broken in two spaces, and people in one space rush to the other. In a space, the impact is not enough, it just feels like a screen is switched, which is a bit flat. Because it pays too much attention to performance, the narrative of the relationship between the characters is relatively weak. I only noticed the existence of the heroine after seeing half of it.
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