Kracauer criticises Caligari for its place in a period of German “studio constructivism”, where a false world would be created to preserve the collective “German soul” from true, incalculable reality. This assertion, however, suggests that the intention of the film’s production was akin to wartime propaganda and a deliberate, sinister choice.
The reality may instead have been that a studio production suited the style of the film far better, and as can plainly be seen by any viewer of the final film, the goal appears not to have been a false, comforting reality but a narrative that has very little to do with any representation of reality whatsoever. The staging creates an unusual and confusing world; the two dimensionality of the town, the confusing and contradictory lighting amongst other factors. It is far from obvious how it is the framing device alone that would lead a viewership Das Cabinet das Dr Caligari’ is an undisputed landmark in film history, with an assured place in the mainstream film canon of the early 20th century. Despite critical acclaim on its initial release, (give examples) the influence of Siegfried Kracauer’s book ‘From Caligari to Hitler’ has become so inextricably linked to the critical and scholarly response that is it almost impossible to discuss Caligari without Kracauer, whether or not his conclusions are deemed significant by the critic.
Emerging almost immediately after the end of the First World War and the shocking German defeat, whether the film can be treated as a purely artistic endeavour or a historically significant document that conveys cultural attitudes and prophesies is also far from a settled matter. Without an understanding of the circumstances that led to the creation of Caligari, a conclusion as to the film’s significance and message cannot be satisfactorily be reached.
The framing device of Franzis’ story in the asylum was, far from the derailment of anti-authoritarian sentiment as Kracauer insists, but instead an incredibly timely and relevant addition to the script. In the years immediately following the First World War, a young man in a sanatorium garden would not have been at all uncommon or unusual. The impact of ‘war neurosis’, later referred to as shell shock, was prominent in the cultural psyche of a society shaped for nearly half a decade by war. Anton Kaes rticulates this post war period as ‘the experience of trauma [becoming] Weimar’s historical unconscious’. (Kaes, 2) In the opening scene of the film, Franzis’ wide eyed, slightly panicked appearance is unmistakably that of the traumatised and untrusting. The inclusion of this scene, then, does not as Kracauer writes ‘transform [the story] into a chimera’ but instead connects it further to the German experience of this time period. The visual stylisation of the film itself reinforces this reading of the opening.
In Film Art, Bordwell and Thompson describe the mise-en-scene as working ‘to show us the distorted outlook of a madman’s subjective vision’. The two dimensionality, bizarre angular walls and impossibly lighting do suggest subjectivity, but do not necessitate Franzis’ madness. Freud was highly influential at the time of the film’s creation, and as described in Shell Shock Cinema, he believed ‘it is primarily in dreams that neurotics revisit their trauma’. Kaes, 51) The break away from realism can be attributed not to any inherent madness or unreliability but a dreaming, unconscious state where Franzis’ trauma is literally ‘restaged’ (51), leading to the transplantation of real human figures into unreal surroundings. Other aspects of the film feed into this reading of an allegory for war and post war psychological trauma. Cesare is of particular interest to Elizabeth Otto in her essay ‘Sexuality and Trauma in Veidt’s Masculine Masquerades’.
She notes his similarities to soldiers returned from the front and unable to abandon a violent pattern of behaviours, in submission to a superior figure of authority. His very physical appearance, decorated with painted facial shadows that disfigure and dehumanise him, he embodies ‘imagery of a ghostly shadow of a man who lives among normal humans but is himself barely alive’. His appearance in the asylum at the end of the film is then not a surprise but an inevitability. Franzis and Cesare are not enemies or opposed to one another – they are two representations of an identical trauma.
Cesare’s twitching mouth and trembling eyelids as he is called to consciousness for the first time displays this unspoken mental anguish and as a result of this impact, the sequence is mentioned specifically by David Robinson as one of the few in the film to ‘preserve [its] magic’ (29) even if in his opinion the majority has ‘faded’ in cinematic impact over time. The dynamics of the controlled and the controller suggests the regimented military structure only recently left behind at the time of production.
The powerlessness of Cesare to prevent harm to the innocent culminates in his failed murder of Jane and subsequent death. Since he did not do as he was commanded, he pays with his life, echoing the reality of soldiers executed for disobedience and failure to follow orders. (Source? ) During the war itself, Professor of Neurology Alois Alzheimer linked somnambulism to shell shock as a consequence of intense psychological trauma in a 1915 talk, strengthening links between Cesare’s mental state and that of an institutionalised former soldier. Kaes, 12-3) The fragmentary, brief and intermittent nature of his consciousness can be likened to the trauma induced ‘cataleptic state’, a ‘numbed, dreamlike state of consciousness’ (12). The description continues to be apt for Franzis also, with the condition inducing ‘disorientation about place and time’ (12), going further to explain the disordered manner of his recollection that forms the main part of the narrative. Kracauer makes several assumptions regarding the film as a whole and Robert Weine’s contribution to it.
A large proportion of the criticism is directed at the inclusion of narrative frame, the story of Caligari being told by Franzis from the grounds of a psychiatric institution and then accusing the director of the asylum of being the murderer Caligari himself. Kracauer claims that this inclusion ‘perverted’ the intentions of the scriptwriters, but the degree to which this is true is questionable. (Kracauer, 66) If the frame sequence added nothing of value to the impact and narrative of the film then it would indeed be superfluous and indicative of a director at odds with other members of the creative team.
However, due to the social state of Germany in the immediate post war years, portrayal of mental instability was highly relevant and enriches the depth of the story told by providing an unexpected ending with the revelation of Franzis’ potential unreliability as a narrator. While Kracauer believes that the framed narrative is conformist and dismisses all accusations made in Franzis’ tale, it is also possible to read the film in a more ambiguous manner.
The end sequence, significantly, portrays the asylum in the same visual style as in the previous recollection, using the identical patterned floor and ominous, looming staircases. As Jung and Schatzberg believe, this not only ‘problematizes the entire plot’ of the main film as the viewer questions Franzis’ perspective, but there is also ambiguity in the ending. It is unclear if the asylum director/Caligari’s benevolence can be truly believed in or trusted, as this repetition of sets draws no clear divide between what is trustworthy information and what is not.
Furthermore, Kracauer himself mentions the practice of sending a ‘normal but troublesome individual’ to an asylum to prevent them threatening authority. This explanation does not undermine the story told, and only strengthens Caligari’s menace and power as the authoritarian figure Kracauer repeatedly states him to be. It would seem in this case that the end sequence then adds to Kracauer’s reading of the film as high in anti-authoritarian sentiment, as the viewers would be morally repulsed by such a tyrannical figure.
His reluctance to take this moment at anything other than face value, referring to Franzis’ restraint in a straitjacket and the ambiguously trustworthy asylum director staring into the camera as a ‘cheerful message’(66) severely limits the scope of his analysis. Despite Kracauer’s reasoning that film ‘more than any other medium offers an access to the inner dispositions of broad strata of the population’, his methodology in selecting films for his analysis is intensely flawed.
As explained in Beyond Caligari: The Films of Robert Weine, he selects mostly highbrow, artistic films seen by ‘very few’ of the general German population, whilst simultaneously disregarding ‘hundreds’ of more popular films that fail to fit into his thesis. (53) When attempting to create a ‘psychological history’ of a period in cinema, it is all but nonsensical to reject the most widely distributed and viewed pictures. This flaw in Kracauer’s methodology severely stunts any significance that his observations may hold.
If the pattern of tyrants and authoritarian messages that Kracauer suggests that Caligari fits into does not itself exist, then the interpretation of the film must be drastically altered. As Jung and Schatzberg continue, Kracauer ‘wants to explain a mass phenomenon… without reference to statistical analysis’. (55) The links drawn between the examined films – from Caligari, to Nosferatu (Murnau, 1922), Vanina (Gerlach, 1922), Dr Mabuse, der Spieler (Lang, 1922) and The Waxworks (Leni, 1924), exist primarily because of his retrospective position, allowing him to ‘give coherence’ to otherwise unrelated films. Elsaesser, 21)
The goal of Expressionist cinema, furthermore, was not necessarily the espousement of deepset national identity but as producer Erich Pommer articulates, ‘to make money’ and attempt to ‘compete with’ other national cinemas. (Huaco, 35) The development of ‘auteur’ cinema ran separately to that of mass entertainment; in some respects, the two were directly opposed, with the goal of artistic cinema being to elevate the medium as worthy of cultural respect, consciously distancing itself from mainstream films deemed to have no artistic or creative value.
The consistency of the use of Expressionist motifs within Caligari demonstrates a commitment to this auteur cinema. From the beginning of the film, the highly stylised titles display an eerie, distorted atmosphere. The use of incredibly brief phrases is another element of Expressionism. In some cases only a single word is used, as for Caligari’s introduction with simply “Er…”, conforming to the characteristics of Expressionist prose as described by Walter Sokel as ‘brevity, force and conciseness of expression’.
