THE CABINET OF CALIGARI

UK, 1962, 106 minutes, Black and White.
Glynis Johns, Dan O'Herlihy.
Directed by Roger Kay.

The Cabinet of Caligari is an updating of the German cinema classic of 1920, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The present film is of average interest, using a number of routine horror techniques, but the story is spun out too long with cliche dialogue. However, once the reality is revealed, the details of the film take on more interest as they are all meant to represent the creations of an insane imagination. The film probably needs to be seen twice to appreciate the details.

The original was set in Germany, involved a male patient in a similar story. What was frightening about that film was that the diseased mind imagined an evil doctor who had a mesmerised servant who murdered at his command. This was seen by later social commentators as an image of the German people led by the will of an insane murderer whom they themselves had created. All these overtones are missing from the present film, which concentrates on individual madness (with post-Freudian overtones) and not the social disease. Part of the genius of the original film was its bizarre and eerie sets, stage built and artificial, the products of a diseased and crooked imagination. A little of this is used in the later film.

Not a particularly good film, but one which may lead to interesting discussion on madness and the imagination.

1. Was this just another horror-mystery story?

2. Did the film have any serious points to make - did it become serious at the end?

3. What kind of a woman did Jane seem to be at the beginning, ordinary, reasonably sensible, then persecuted, nervous?

4. What kind of a man was Caligari? How was he presented?
What camera angles and lighting were used to heighten
impressions of him?

5. Did you realise that Paul was Caligari early in the film?
When?

6. Did you find the atmosphere of the film menacing and frightening? The stairs of the building, the bath and the hole in the roof, the people at the house? Did the lives of the others make sense?

7. Why was Jane unable to leave the house?

8. Why was Jane driven more and more to extremes to escape from the house and, eventually, to taunt Caligari with impotence? (This was suggested by Paul.)


9. What difference to the whole film - and all the details - did it make when you discovered what the reality was?

10. Go through as many details as you can remember and try to see how they were all Jane's subjective imaginings. What picture of her madness can you build up?

11. What was Jane in reality? Why did her madness cast various people - inmates, doctors and nurses, her son - in various roles? What did this reveal about her madness?

12. Did you think the film merely a far-fetched thriller, or did it give you some idea of insanity, reality and unreality?