Introduction: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligart
“The Cabinet of Dr. Caligart” is German horror movie that was made in 1920 and stands out as an exceptional work of the German expressionist ideology based cinematic art. The theme of the movie is a psychological genre based murder mystery where the antagonist used a somnambulist to conduct homicides on his command by hypnotizing him. Ths essay deals with the other aspects of the movie concerning its generalized opinion , time and era in which it is set, its characters and genre, and the impact of major art movements like Bauhaus and Dada on the cinematic art depicted via this film.
The film is set in an era of World war and it tries to explain the notion of unacceptable brutality and unauthorized acts of torture and trauma inflicted upon the innocents by the evil-minded scientists. The movie also thematizes the sufferings and problems experienced by pacifists during the World War I. The film is set on a German background and is set in the era of German war against the world and symbolizes the mindset of normal people conditioned to torture and kill the innocent people (Youtube 1). Thus, the ideology behind the German acts of nihilism is opinionated via this movie by using an expressionist tone of cinematic art.
Characters and Genre
The main characters are Francis (male protagonist), Jane (female protagonist), Alan (Francis’s friend), Dr. Caligari (antagonist ), and Cesare (homicidal somnambulism). The film is of the horror genre with a plot based on psychological thriller elements created by using the storyline where Dr. Caligari used the somnambulist Cesare for murdering people. During the course of investigation in the movie, Alan (Francis’s friend) got murdered by the somnambulist and this adds the cinematic surrealism due to the central theme of the film being inspired by the expressionist school of art. The film integrates the thematized feature of irrational authority and torturous facilities for mental patients that were developed by the German war scientists and army officers. The film has a twist in its plot when the protagonists are found to be mental patients in a german psychiatric facility and the antagonist was actually treating them of their hallucinations.
Conclusion : The impact of the Dada and Bauhaus movement on the film
Dada movement is evident as an impacting element in the movie due to the use of expressionist surrealism which was developed due to the intrusion of World War related human adversities into the cinematic stance of the film. The sets of the film were made by using black and white paints to use the surrealism of opposite colors in externality of the film’s art layout for portraying the contrasting features in the internalities of humans. Thus, the use of visual elements crucial to the Dada movement’s sole ideology of post world war related fight for power, authority and extremism are used to exaggerate the core theme of the film.
Similarly, the impact of the Bauhaus movement is clearly visible in the Avante Garde notions in the expressionist theme of the film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligart as there is the use of two mutually incompatible notions and aesthetically different aspects of human nature depicted via the change in the attributes of the characters in the film. The film used specific spaces and architectural elements to illustrate the significance of Bauhaus movement in envisioning the design of the new Metropolis envisaged in the film.
Works Cited
" The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari (1920) ". Youtube. Remembering the classics, 2013. Film.
