The Reese Project Silent Film Series 

THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1923)

Directed by Robert Wiene

The most brilliant example of that dark and twisted film movement known as German expressionism, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a plunge into the mind of insanity that severs all ties with the rational world. Werner Krauss stars as a deranged hypnotist who spreads death through the countryside from a ramshackle traveling carnival. Before the naive eyes of the townspeople, he unveils the contents of his coffin-like cabinet: Cesare (Conrad Veidt), a spidery sleepwalker who obeys his every command. But at night, once the crowds have dispersed, Caligari lifts the lid on darker intentions, unleashing the dreadful Cesare to act upon his master’s murderous whims and carnal desires.

In making Caligari, director Robert Wiene and designers Warm, Reimann and Röhrig crafted a nightmare realm in which light, shadow and substance are abstracted, a world in which a demented doctor and a carnival sleepwalker perpetuate a series of murders in a small community. They combined techniques of painting, theatre and film to conjure a nightmare world of splintered reality ... boldly creating a visual representation of insanity ... taking the art of cinema a lengthy stride into unexplored stylistic and psychological terrain, hinting at the terrifying power the medium might possess.

The edition that will be presented is color tinted in several shades of blue, brown, rose & green according to one of the color plans followed in the film’s different releases during the silent era. Accurate new English translation titles are graphic reproductions of the beautiful hand-painted Expressionist titles which were an especially striking feature of the 1920 release (although they had been replaced by plain white-on-black titles by 1923, even in Germany, in an effort to "normalize" the film).