Film Series Continues with Dr. Caligari
Do you like Tim Burton films or movies about disturbing dystopias? How about psychological horror movies with mysterious visitors, creepy murderers, and 11th century curses? If you do, or if you are just a cinephile or someone who loves modern art, then you should attend the Wednesday, December 15 showing of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to see the visual origin of many ideas used by today's filmmakers.
Directed by Robert Wiene in 1920, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is widely recognized as one of the most influential German-Expressionist films. Made in the Weimar Republic era between World War I and II, the film draws on the relatively new science of psychology and the art movements of Dada and the Bauhaus for its mise-en-scène. Set in a geometrically exaggerated world made up of cardboard and sharply painted shadows (similar to the sets by Tim Burton in Beetlejuice [1988]), Das Cabinet follows a storyline of murder by proxy through psychological manipulation. Dr. Caligari and his puppet somnambulist Cesare (played by the great Conrad Veidt) are two of the most imitated villains in film history.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari will be shown as part of a series of important German Expressionist films of the 1920s sponsored by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). Fritz Lang's 1927 science fiction masterpiece Metropolis will complete the series on Dec. 29. All showings will be held in FFB-05 at 6 p.m.