Dr Caligari Essay

As well as settings, scenic properties, such as doorway, windows, mirrors or chairs, using in the scene were also created asymmetrically, for instant, those chairs and tables which were set in the scene with civil officers or town clerks are unnaturally tall, while the doors or stairways used by characters in film are such unrealistically distorted. Moreover, light is also projected through painting in this film, to draw the highlight in the scene. In every scene, besides using paint on the walls, Weine also designed to paint the floor and some of the wall of the setting in high-coloured tone to differentiate the accentuated light from the normal one on which the main character may stand in scene in order to keep the attraction of the audience focusing on that highlighted position. …show more content…
Most of the scenes on The Cabinet of Dr Caligari were projected in low-key lighting together with the using of sharp tone lighting technique, creating the exaggerated contrast between light and shadow which is called optionally as “Chiaroscuro technique”. Throughout the film we can often see that the protagonists such as Dr Caligari, Cesare, or the narrator are mostly screened by sharpened shadows on their face which may represent their dark side identity or malicious inner mind of a man.
So we can see these unnaturally composited mise-en-scènes were frequently projected through distorted artistic elements. Weine intended to signify literally these visual presentations to the anxiety, emotional disharmony or uncertainly terror of protagonists or those characters who take the role in the scene which were set in every scene symbolically to stream the expression of inner unstated mind of protagonists and other characters in film, and also to tell the message of story to the audience