When "Dr. Caligari" began filming in 1919, Germany was in the throes of post-war misery. There was widespread dissatisfaction with the political authority and popular obedience to authority that had dragged Germany into a terrible war. This is the important ideological background that prompted Carl Mayo to write the screenplay "Dr. Caligari". Mei Yu was the most individualistic film playwright in the German silent film period. He was born into a fallen merchant family, worked as a merchant, a wandering painter, an actor, and a soldier during the war. Due to his abnormal actions, he was sent to Go to a mental hospital for treatment. He was so intrigued by his friend, the Prague poet Hans Janowitz, that he saw authority as a criminal lunatic, and he turned it into a screenplay and gave it to the producer Eric · Pang Mao.
In Mayo and Janowitz's screenplay, Dr. Caligari is a total lunatic. Using his hypnotism (the magic of authority), he drives innocent youth to kill. But after Pang Mao bought the script, he made major changes to the script. He teamed up with Fritz Lange, who was scheduled to direct the film, to add a head and tail to future films, changing Dr. Caligari's criminal madness into a madman's madness, and authority from criminal madman to rationality protector. Mei Yu was furious, but there was nothing he could do.
Pang Mao prescribed an expressionist narrative style for future films. The so-called expressionism is an art school popular in Germany, Austria and northern Europe in the early 20th century. Expressionist paintings are full of exaggerated, distorted shapes and peculiarly distorted, over-exaggerated colors. In Germany in 1919, expressionist works exuding chaotic thoughts and emotions were everywhere in theaters, galleries, streets, and shop windows.
According to Pangmao, he decided to make "Dr. Caligari" an expressionist, "stylized" film in order to make money: "As the First World War drew to a close, Hollywood was gradually taking over the world. Denmark People had their own film business. The French had a very dynamic film business that was eclipsed at the end of the war. How could Germany be a defeated country and make a film that could compete with others? Trying to imitate Hollywood or France There is absolutely no future for man. So we tried to find a new way: to make expressionist or 'stylized' films. This is possible because Germany has a large number of excellent artists and writers, a strong literary tradition and great Theatrical traditions. This gave us the basis for good actors. The First World War destroyed the French film industry; Germany's problem was competing with Hollywood."
To this end, Pangmao hired expressionist painters Hermann Valm, Walter Roerich and Walter Lehmann to design and paint sets and props for future films. Because Fritz Lange had another film contract, he declined Pang Mao's invitation, and Pang Mao had to temporarily switch to the prolific commercial film director Robert Venet. So, as George Sadur pointed out, "The real director of this card is not Venet, but the three 'Hurricane Society' expressionist painters". At the same time, it is also generally accepted that the film's great success should also be attributed to three outstanding actors: Klaus, Vadet and Daguffer. After the film was released, it was very popular, and it created an unprecedented record of seven consecutive years in Paris. In 1958, when 117 film historians and critics from various countries selected the "Twelve Best Films in the World" in Brussels, "Dr. Caligari" was on the list.
However, in the first month of the film's release, public opinion was not uniform. Lewis Jobs said in The Rise of American Cinema, "No film, not even 'The Birth of a Nation', has ever evoked in a month like 'Dr Caligari'. So many comments, debates and reflections, that's a record." The comments are by no means all praise. The most famous "Caligari opposition" included Panofsky, Azila Pound and later Bazin, who slammed "Dr. "Playing tricks", "playing smart", believing it was a complete failure in using special lenses and unusual camera angles to create bizarre effects, deeply dissatisfied with its stage quality, etc. Eisenstein called the film a "carnival of savages", saying that it destroyed the healthy infancy of film art, "silent hysteria, motley canvases, scribbled scenes, smeared paints". An intolerable combination of the face and the artificial expressions of a group of diabolical monsters". Siegfried Kracauer's famous argument in "From Caligari to Hitler" is even more well known. From the film, he saw an ideological tendency to lead Germany to Hitler's regime, and believed that the film strongly expressed the inner tension of the German collective psychology at that time-the fear that individual freedom would lead to uncontrollable chaos, so he could only resort to the authority of the tyrant . Kracauer pointed out, "If the original screenplay depicted absolute authority with the potential danger of abuse of power, the addition of the head and tail is a submission to this authority and implies that authority is good for the public."
Much of the praise for "Dr. Caligari" was focused on the enormously innovative significance of the film's narrative style. Paul Rosa called it "an important attempt to express creative thought in the new medium of film" and "it always feels fresh". Lottie Eisner said: "The overall design of the film creates a feeling of anxiety and fear that penetrates the skin. It is characterized by extreme contrasts of light and dark, distorted angles, exaggerated and distorted depth and vector relationships within the set. , painted sets and shadows. This tone of art design extends to clothing and makeup.”
Hermann Valm, an expressionist painter, once declared that "movies should be living pictures". This sentence became the aesthetic basis of Dr. Caligari. According to the modeling principles of expressionism, all the objects in the film are severely distorted, and in order to maintain a harmonious relationship with this deformed world, all the characters also wear strange-shaped costumes, and their faces are exaggerated. Perform unnatural expressions, gestures, and gait. George Sadur has given some stunning shots: prisoners crouching on top of a sharp-pointed stake; robbers lingering on chimney-lined roofs; lanky figures of sleepwalkers resting on the shape of a gloomy high wall And the blurred vista in the middle of the white circle.
At the center of the film is Caligari, played by Werner Krauss. He shuffled, squinted at people behind thick lenses, his eccentric outfit, the three black stripes on his gloves that matched the hair that fell on his forehead...all made an unforgettable impression. Werner Krauss went on to become a well-known actor specializing in eerie characters, such as the murderer Jack in Paul Laney's "Wax Mansion" and Walter Hallland's "The Jew". Jewish conspirators, etc. Conrad Vadet, who played Schezar, also rose to fame, starring in famous films such as "The University of Prague", and later went to Hollywood, where he lived his life. It is even more necessary to mention that he played Shezar, the archetypal figure of a frightening demon but a sympathetic underdog who later became an indispensable genre figure in Western horror films.
However, Venet's name is rarely associated with his most famous film. The vast majority of critics and historians refuse to acknowledge that Venet made any contribution to the film. This is not necessarily unfair. Because Venet had never made a film that would make a name for itself in film history until his death in 1938, despite having worked with such brilliant screenwriters as Carl Mayo.
View more about The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari reviews
