‘Art Historian Sidra Stich links the Surrealist fervour for deformity and disfigurement to the sudden presence of the crippled and mutilated in society post’ WWI. Just as Film Noir is acknowledged as a response to disillusionment during and post WWII, so too can the comparable movements of Surrealism, Dada and Expressionism be seen as reactions to changes in the symbolic order as a result of war. This sense of disjuncture is evident in the sets of Caligari, where distortion is a projection of Francis’ disturbed psyche, optical complexity connoting psychical complexity. The artificiality of the production design intentionally lacks coherence, the serpentine and rectilinear lines converging on the walls evocative of dreams, memory and a subjective
