The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

The Matrix was really enjoyable to watch, this being the first time that I actually payed attention to the film. I found that during the course of the film, the color scheme, the way in which the shots were composed (both the camera angles and how they framed the subjects), as well as the mise en scène of the shots all worked to give this film a very animated/comic book-esque feeling. What was interesting to me about this was, although it felt animated in a similar way as Do the Right Thing or…

With reference to two films, analyse the relationship between Expressionist Art and Film. In what ways can German Expressionist cinema be considered a graphic art? Lyonel Feininger, Street Lantern (1918) Otto Dix, Streetcar (1920) Fashioning ‘artificial worlds of light and shadow’ expressionist film, during the early twentieth century, and its stark contrast to the prosaic Hollywood films of the period gave the audience a relatively new visual and sensory experience by ‘creat[ing] a…

echoes the characters’ mindsets and visually replicate the abstract visons of the time. Also, the viewpoints of the camera and general tactics used to film bringing out the essence of the film. Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is considered the finest example of German Expressionism in…

THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI’ FILM ANALYSIS ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Calgari’, directed by Robert Weine, is a widely regarded quintessential work of German Expressionist Cinema. The 1920 German silent horror film utilises a fragmented set, with unnerving and twisted visual style, unusual sharp- pointed forms, tilted sets, hand painted shadows and light and odd lines to create a film that was it’s own art form, when previously film had been more like filming a play. The oblique structures and hand…

Germany to its knees. Thus, it comes to no surprise that a country with such issues would produce these kinds of films; surrealistic, oppressive and oftentimes terrifying. Of those films, the ones that cemented German expressionism were The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920), Nosferatu (F.W Murnaw, 1922) and later Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). These films brought a whole new…

It was the atrocities of World War I that started to manifest themselves in German cinema through the horror genre. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, released in 1920, has been labelled the quintessential example of German expressionist cinema. The most striking aspect of director Robert Wiene’s horror masterpiece is the style and tone of the film, which left the German public both horrified and enthralled. On the surface, the basic narrative is pretty straightforward. A young man named Francis…

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…

German produced film by Robert Wiene, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) hit American shores with a thunderous bang—albeit a divisive and tumultuous one. Though reaction was polarized, from a purely critical perspective, Caligari’s slick and surgical artistic precision exposed a glaring staleness in the air of American cinema, prompting a veritable arms race to match it’s creative force. In his book The Monster Show, author David J. Skal writes, “Caligari built up a pretentious head of…

for a new ways of cinema. This new wave of Cinema was noted for its “great burst of artistic activity” (TEXTBOOK). In Frankenstein the use of this creativity can be displayed through its specific elements of set design and recording, the monster and Dr. Frankenstein and finally its’ influence on future films. In Frankenstein, German Expressionism can be conveyed through its’ supernatural or unrealistic…

intensively in German film of the early 20th century to represent cinematic themes throughout particular movies, usually in the form of reflection, shadows and impersonation of different characters. In the cases of The Student of Prague and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, this cinematic technique is used throughout these films to link two or more images of the main character to illustrate a larger idea of film making history in Germany. In The Student of Prague, doppelgänger technique is used…