Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr, Caligari)
1920
Robert Wiene, director
FILM TERMS Movement
Camera terms
Editing Terms
Be careful to distinguish "pan" from "tracking" and "zoom" shots from "dolly in" and "dolly out" shots. You should know what the differences are and be able to recognize them.
Proxemics:
Original meaning is to discuss the different distances between people – intimate, conversational etc. and how these vary from culture to culture as well as what happens if the rules for distancing are violated.
It is not unlike the relationship of the audience to the subject in the film. How close or how distant is the object (extreme close up to extreme long shot – check “terms”.
Before the film
Some terms
Mise en scene
A rather loose phrase from theater meaning “everything in the set. In film tends to refer to everything in the frame – sets, props, costumes, arrangements of people and so on. Different writers define the term somewhat differently.
Does not include editing and camera positions and movements
Horror is a genre which is typified by:
Although it often crosses with science fiction, the latter films are generally more involved with world catastrophy than individual problems. Alfred Hitchock's Psycho is often considered a classic horror film in these respects. What kinds of sub-genres are there in horror?
Are monster movies "horror" films?
Psycho is a kind of psychological horror.
Are there are supernatural horror films? Consider films like The Exorcist. How Would you classify films such as Curse of the Demon or Cat People where there is some question as to whether the events are real or imagined?
Are the three films we are about to see similar? How similar are they?
Consider the structure of the film. How is it put together? Would a different structure alter the film's meaning - that is would we read it differently?
I. Variables in film:
III. Style
1. tells you something about where, when or who made the object. “In the style of the people of the Pacific” in the style of the 1800’s”, “in the style of Shakespere”.
2. Some styles are named: modernism, postmodernism, impressionism, expressionism. This last is awkward since almost all art expresses something, but in this case it is an internal state of the artist (often) that is being expressed. The result in film is that expressionist films do not look like the real world.
3. Germany in the 1920’s experimented with an expressionist style which we see in the two short films today “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” and “Nosferatu”. Since many German film makers fled Germany for the US shortly after this, the style has some impact on American on American film in a somewhat diluted version. Americans by and large have been growing away from this style of film making, looking for more and more reality in the films. No matter how fantastical the film, it should LOOK real. These films do not.
4. Expressionism can not use the real world to film in. All the scenes are shot in doors where directors have complete control over all aspects of the film making process.
5. Expressionism is important for films which lie outside the “real world” in some way. The are usable for fantasy, supernatural and supernatural horror and other films of that sort.
Cabinet of Caligari:
After the film
What is the structure of the film?
Who is mad? If the scenes with the mad man in them are equally distorted who is the narrator?
In the end section (the second half of the frame story) do the sets appear naturalistic or expressionistic?
Are there times when the film appears to link Caligari and Mr. Francis, the narrator.
There are moments when both are positioned in the same way in the frame relative to others.
When goes and sits behind Dr. Caligari's desk.
When he is put in the strait jacket
Are there people in the asylum who resemble (or are) those in the enclosed narrative?
What does the film says about "control"?
Caligari is interested having people commit acts they normally would not, but that someone could get them to do that. This questions the nature of how people could have ben misled by a government in WW I, hence the film has strong overtones about war, and WWI in particular.
Some questions to ponder
The basic text is about a man who tells a story to another about the appearance of a traveling fair where a sleepwalker is exhibitde. The exhibitor is able to control the acts of the sleeper and gets him to commit murders while in a trance like state. The narrator pursues the exhibitor only to find he is the director of a mental institution and has been doing experiments with a sleep walking patient and getting him to kill people. It appears at the end that the man telling the story is himself an inmate.
On a subtextual level, the film deals with the question of the control of people by governments in leading them into wars.
There has been a great deal of argument about the structure of this film. The original writers maintain that the "frame story" was added later against their wishes. Actual ecidence shows a frame story from the start. It would appear however that the original frame story is different and implies the narrator is not insane. The addition of an unreliable narrator makes one suspect that the idea of control by another is in fact a mad idea since it is told by a madman. That is to say the framing story completely stands the internal story on its head.