I start my series of posts about the films of 1920 with a real blockbuster…
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene is one of the most highly regarded artistic works of 1920. Stills from this film are probably familiar to you, most of them featuring spidery Conrad Veidt carrying a limp Lil Dagover around crazily painted sets. Today the film is most famous for the Expressionist art direction. (And for how cool Veidt looks.)
When designer Hermann Warm gave his proposed set sketches to director Wiene and producer Rudolf Meinert, Wiene gave his approval, but Meinert took an extra day to think it over before giving the order: “Do these sets as eccentrically as you can!” *
Director/Art designer Paul Leni (Waxworks, The Cat and the Canary, The Man Who Laughs) explained Expressionist set design this way:
“… I have tried to create sets so stylized that they evince no idea of reality. … It is not extreme reality that the camera perceives, but the reality of the inner event, which is more profound, effective and moving than what we see through everyday eyes… [a designer] must penetrate the surface of things and reach their heart. He must create mood (Stimmung) … It is this which makes him an artist. Otherwise I can see no reason why he should not be replaced by an adroit apprentice carpenter.” (Eisner, p. 127)
Expressionism constructs its own universe, it does not adapt itself to a world already in existence.
– Lotte Eisner
The Expressionist style was matched in the acting. The wildly over-the-top emoting is often ridiculous to modern eyes, but it was all in service to the Expressionist ideal, which required actors to invent “abnormal and excessive movements”, for the “inner rhythm of a character’s life is transposed into his gestures.” (Eisner p 145)
The film’s plot revolves around Dr. Caligari, a carnival hypnotist whose sideshow features a somnambulist named Cesar. At night Cesar roams the city taking revenge on citizens at Caligari’s hypnotic bidding. One of his victims is a young student named Allen, and his friends Francis and Jane resolve to find the murderer.
After a kidnapping and a false lead or two, Francis tracks Caligari to an asylum, where he appears to be the Head Psychologist. Oh, I didn’t mention that the film begins and ends in that asylum, where Francis, Jane, and Cesar are all inmates. The hero’s sanity and the veracity of the entire story is thrown into question. Is Dr. Caligari actually the innocent victim of Francis’ paranoia?
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari hits on a number of themes that were immensely popular at the time. A faddish fascination with hypnosis was fueled by news stories of people committing crimes in an altered state of consciousness, possibly manipulated by others. And the theories of Sigmund Freud were much in vogue among artists, whose work often explored trauma, anxiety, paranoia, nightmares, and mental collapse.
These preoccupations were hardly surprising in 1920, as World War I and the influenza pandemic had not only slain millions, but had also taken an immense psychological toll on the survivors.
“History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.”
– Stephen Dedalus (James Joyce, Ulysses)
In his book Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age, Modris Eksteins writes:
“The gargantuan effort, especially the emotional intensity, of the war could not possibly be sustained in effecting the peace, and Europe slumped into a monumental melancholy.” (Eksteins, p. 253)
He also quotes Christopher Isherwood, an English writer who lived in Berlin in the tumultuous 1920s, as referring to
“the vast freak museum of our neurotic generation”
As we shall see, horror films were fairly rare in America at that time, but the genre matched the European mood perfectly. As a result of the punitive terms of the peace, Germans lived every day with economic uncertainty, anxiety and despair. Who better to set the bar for all future horror movies?
[Other influential German horror silents: Eerie Tales (1919), Der Golem (1920), Januskopf (1920), Nosferatu (1922), The Hands of Orlac (1924), Waxworks (1924), The Student of Prague (1926).]
Because it captured the zeitgeist of the moment, and was so innovative, Caligari was very popular in Germany and spawned many imitators. (More about them another day.) It had great international appeal as well, with the result that American film companies began recruiting German directors and actors to come and work in Hollywood. Some, like Ernst Lubitsch, emigrated in the early 20s, while others, like Robert Wiene, left in the 30s with the advent of the Nazi regime.
Here is a brief look at the lives of the main actors in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari…
Conrad Veidt (Cesar) – It took me far too long to fully grasp that the somnambulist Cesar and the villainous Major Strasser in Casablanca were played by the same actor. I could go on and on about ‘Connie’ Veidt, who really was a fascinating fellow, but here’s the short version of his career after Caligari:
When the Nazis first came to power a government form was distributed to everyone in the film industry, and to the question about religion Veidt, in reality a Lutheran, wrote “JUDEN” (Jew), in large block letters. Why? Because he was a badass.
His political views caused him to be placed under house arrest and interrogated for a short time, after which he and his wife (who was Jewish) left Germany. He became a British citizen and made large donations to the British war effort before moving to America in 1940. He made several Hollywood films, specializing in playing villainous Nazis.
Finally, here’s an anecdote I haven’t been able to confirm but which sounds entirely plausible. As the script for Casablanca was being developed, Veidt was asked if he had a suggestion for his character’s name, and he replied, “Major Nazi Asshole”. Which is how Colonel Strasser became Major Strasser…
Werner Krauss (Dr. Caligari) – At other end of the spectrum, Werner Krauss was a Nazi sympathizer and rabid anti-Semite. He made propagandistic anti-Semitic movies, volunteering to caricature no less than thirteen Jews in Goebbels’ infamous film Jud Süss. He was one of many who stepped into positions and roles that were taken away from Jewish artists.
Lil Dagover (Jane) – Also remained in Germany and was known to be Adolf Hitler’s favourite actress. Unlike Krauss, however, she avoided making films that were overtly political, specializing in comedies and musicals. She was one of Germany’s most famous actresses for many decades.
Frederich Feher (Francis) – was an actor, film director and symphony conductor. As a Jew, he was unable to work after 1933, and went to Czechoslovakia and then England. Even though he’d had his own film production studio in Germany in the 20s, it was a struggle to find film work in England and later America. In the U.S. he was a symphony conductor and for extra income worked as a grocery store manager. He returned to Germany after the war.
Hans Heinrich von Twardoski (Allan) – as a homosexual, von Twardoski wisely fled to America as the Nazis were rising to power. He continued working on the stage – acting, writing, directing – but like many other German emigrés, he also played Nazi villains in anti-fascist films. He was also in the cast of Casablanca, in a bit part as a German soldier.
Previous posts in this series:
* To writer Lotte Eisner this episode demonstrates why German film never had a proper avant-garde like the French. It was because “German industry immediately latched on to anything of an artistic kind in the belief that it was bound to bring in money in the long run.” (Eisner, p. 19)
Sources:
Andriopoulos, Stefan. “Suggestion, Hypnosis, and Crime: Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)”. In Weimar Cinema: An Essential Guide to the Classic Films of the Era, Isenberg, Noah (ed.). Columbia University Press, New York, 2009.
Eisner, Lotte H. The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German Cinema and the Influence of Max Reinhardt. Translated from the French by Roger Greaves. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969) (originally L’Ecran Démoniaque, Paris: Le Terrain Vague, 1965)
Eksteins, Modris. Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age. (Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1989)
Reinhardt, Gottfried. Genius: A Memoir of Max Reinhardt. (Knopf, 1979)