The film tells the story of the mysterious Dr. Caligari and his hypnotism and the connection and connection with the murder in the town. The story advances layer by layer until the dust settles. And the image of Dr. Caligari is considered by Sadur to be "the first typical tragedy created by the film." However, the film is definitely more than that to attract the audience.
Thanks to the sets and props, grotesque costumes and makeup made by the three Hurricane painters, in the 90-minute screening time, the film presents a bizarre world unprecedented in film history. The impact of this unconventional production method on the audience can be seen from the scale of the crowd demonstrating against the film when the film was released in Los Angeles in 1921. At that time, there were already 2,000 demonstrators outside the cinema alone. Lots of people.
The film was all shot in a studio, so the style of the town where the story takes place is entirely composed of plane paintings and artificial props, even including the light and shadow effects, which are painted directly on the set, rather than traditionally formed by lights-therefore, In order to pursue the correct perspective and light and shadow effects, the camera can only shoot at a fixed angle in the same scene; therefore, without the close-ups in the film, the whole film is more like a live broadcast of a stage play.
But even so, the abrupt Gothic silhouettes in the distant view, the perspective of Kandinsky-style lines in the mid-to-near view, and the Gaudí or Mendelssohn-style architectural shapes in the foreground are enough to make all these nightmare atmospheres change. It must be aggressive. Such as stools that are so high that you have to bend over to sit on them so that your head does not touch the ceiling, bizarre props with two legs standing on the floor for actors to lean on, and Munch-style portraits all strengthen this layer of mystery and weirdness. But it is the costumes and makeup of the characters that make this all the best-such as the black robe of a medieval warlock on Dr. Caligari, the flat eyebrows with wretched black-framed glasses, and the well-managed expressive hairstyle (to this point, You may not even imagine the actor Wiener Krauss in his 30s at this time), the black dress like the ballet costume of the hypnotized Cesar, the hollow and pale face, and the straight hair that shows a sense of powerlessness ( Edward is based on this in Tim Burton's Edward Scissorhands). In fact, the use of makeup techniques to express the psychological state of the characters has been slightly applied in the earlier Ernest Liu Bieqian's movies, such as the use of smoky dark circles under the eyes and messy hairstyles as a hint of the characters' loss of sanity; but subversion Sexual makeup effects can only be brought into full play in this film.
In addition, the film’s idea of character modeling is very rare, that is, the character modeling is only modeled according to the psychological characteristics of the characters and the author’s expressive intentions, instead of exaggerating the appearance of each character; and this will be in the future. Many expressionist films are not well controlled, so that exaggerated character modeling is trapped in a flood of performance for performance.
Similarly, the main actors of the film Wiener Krauss (as Dr. Carrigali), Conrad Verdi (as Cesar), and Fredrich Phil (as Francis) performed very well. , Did not see the very prevalent pretentiousness and rough exaggeration that seemed to have not deviated from the stage play's acting skills in the subsequent German films.
From the perspective of photography, the whole film is shot with a fixed lens, so it appears to be relatively plain and consistent; and there have been some preliminary practices of scene scheduling, such as the drawing of people out of the picture, and so on. There is also an interesting phenomenon (also a phenomenon in many movies at the time), that is, the day and night (or the brightness or darkness of the room) in the film are conveyed by the different dyeing effects of black and white film, such as warm colors representing daytime, The cool color represents the night; the more rigorous method of controlling the light ratio of the scene (such as the light ratio of the sky and the ground) to achieve a more realistic effect is only a few years later in some more mature productions, such as Mao Mao Nao’s "The Humblest Man"; from a technical perspective, this is also related to the increase in lens throughput and film sensitivity.
So far, "Dr. Caligari's Cabin" is beyond reproach as the "greatest technological achievement" of expressionism in Weimar; but this alone is not enough to make a great film. Therefore, when the Czech Hans Janowitz and the Austrian Karl Mayer incorporated their own personal experiences in "psychiatric hospitals, sexual crimes, and festival fairs" in their scripts, they criticized them. After a character mixed with "cruel, impatience, fantasy and madness", it is dedicated to a Germany that has been chaotic, dim, humiliated and traumatized by the war and the Treaty of Versailles. All its well-designed surreal craftsmanship With a vague but realistic catharsis, in the end a movie worthy of greatness was made. Siegfried Krakauer's interpretation of the film in the book "From Carrigari to Hitler" has greatly improved the historical status of the film. The metaphors of society and later Hitler and the Third Reich—though in a rigorous manner, Krakauer's views are somewhat misunderstood.
Before and after exile in the United States, the desire for integrity and the collective consciousness of the German people have always been Krakauer's concerns, and "From Caligari to Hitler" is a product of this concern. "(The social situation) has deteriorated inevitably, causing a large number of German people to rely on Hitler with no self-control. The content predicted by early German films is being staged in reality, and the typical images on the screen finally appear in reality...About the final The dark prophecy of doom has been fulfilled.” This passage is a summary of the views of the book "From Caligari to Hitler" by the researcher of Krakauer's works, Gatrud Koch. Although Koch had previously said that Krakauer had rarely seen the movies mentioned in his own book, and explained that "his (understanding) of the forty years of film history is only from his memory." The extremists accused Krakauer's remarks as "the revenge of refugees (exiles) against (home country)". But in fact, Krakauer associates film with reality more because of the coincidence of film and reality, which makes the plot of the film and reality similar, rather than the prophetic nature of the film. Therefore, whether "Dr. Caligari's Cabin" is really the author's obscure predictions about Nazi forces and the Third Reich is actually not so critical; the point is that the film "Ka" represents a group of film authors in the early Weimar Republic, and Because of their experience, current situation and state of existence, they jointly issued a Munch-like "scream"-and who ever cared whether Munch's "Scream" was a prediction of the Third Reich? !
In addition, the theme of "Dr. Caligari's Cabin" still contains many interesting elements, such as sleepwalking and hypnotism involved in the film. At the end of the 19th century, the German Wundt laid the foundation of psychology as a discipline. At the same time, psychoanalysis also began to spread through the painstaking efforts of Freud and his successors. Paris started and influenced psychoanalysis through Freud. The International Association of Psychoanalysis was established in Berlin in 1910, and psychoanalysis was officially introduced to Germany. So far, the psychology smoke pervading the German-speaking world at the turn of the centuries is hard to say. And through de-academicization and popularization, this tendency of psychological research has become a rather popular element that frequently appears on the screen, especially elements such as hypnosis and mind control, which is very consistent with the expressionism's creation of madness and mystery. The taste of the character image-such as this film and Fritz Lang's "Dr. Mabs the Gambler" a few years later. And Pipest's 1926 "The Secret of a Soul", according to Sadour, was engaged in psychoanalysis 20 years before Hollywood.
Finally, as for the editing of the film and the realistic scenes at the beginning and end, the intentions and context are still controversial, but no matter what the original version is, it will not affect the fact that this is an outstanding film. In addition to being a precedent for film expressionism, the film "Ka" also inspired the way the film industry made movies at that time. After Lumiere's locomotive and Merière's moon, people once again exclaimed that the original movie could be made like this; While people were surprised, it also became the originator of "horror/thriller" movies, and even because of some techniques in the film, it became the origin of "film noir" exaggeratedly. . But the most important thing is that a group of energetic and creative filmmakers began to rise with the feeling of this film, and the German film has since entered the era of fresh clothes and angry horses.
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