#hermann warm

Hermann Warm (1889–1976)

set design art for “Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari,” 1920

The Tunnel (1915)

[letterboxd | imdb]

Director: William Wauer

Cinematographer: Axel Graatkjær

Art Director: Hermann Warm

Warm and Morris

Inktober day 28. Sparkle

Warm had no doubt that production credit for the film belonged to Rudolph Meinert, already known as an actor and director when he took over from Pommer as production head of Decla between mid-1919 and mid-1920 - a period which embraced the entire production and release period of the film (and a reasonable explanation for Pommer’s absence from the production). Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, says Warm, represented the high point of Meinert’s career: ‘I would like at this point to thank production leader Meinert, for producing the Caligari film despite the opposition of a part of the management at Decla.’

In the autumn of 1919, Warm had just finished his work as designer of Fritz Lang’s Die Spinnen, which preceded Caligari in Decla’s Lixie-Atelier at Weissensee. Meinert handed him the screenplay of Caligari in the presence of Robert Wiene - it was the first time the designer and director had met - and asked him to come back the following day with proposals for the design. Reading the script the same afternoon, Warm found that ‘the strange atmosphere of this very unusual script inspired me more and more...The film images had to be removed from reality, had to have a fantastic graphic style.’ Warm consulted with (Hans) Reimann and (Walter) Rohrig, painters who had recently been working with him, also in the Lixie-Atelier, on Otto Rippert’s Pest in Florenz, written by Fritz Lang. The collaboration had worked out well: the critics wrote that someone who knew Florence well might believe that they were seeing the real thing, not studio sets. Warm recalled that the three of them spent much of the night reading and discussing the Caligari script:

Finally Reimann, whose paintings followed the technique of the expressive artists, won me round to his opinion that this theme called for an Expressionist style in decor, costume, acting and direction.

The painters spent the rest of the night roughing out designs in the Expressionist style, which they presented the following day to Wiene and Meinert. Warm recalled that Wiene approved instantly, but Meinert asked for twenty-four hours to think about it. The following day he too gave his approval, persuaded by cynical pragmatism rather than aesthetic ideals:

He wanted the style and production to appear crazy...as crazy as could be. The film would then be a success as a sensation, regardless of whether the press turned out negative or positive, whether the critics killed it or praised it as art - either way the experiment would profit.

The decision thus made, the artists set to work. Warm recalls that the designs and ordering of construction, costumes and props took a week and a half or two weeks. So far as possible sets were prepared to permit the film to be shot in story sequence. Shooting began at the end of December 1919 and lasted till the end of January 1920.”

The Tunnel (1915)

[letterboxd | imdb]

Director: William Wauer

Cinematographer: Axel Graatkjær

Art Director: Hermann Warm