Ambiguity and Free Will in the The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
In 1920, Robert Weine's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari debuted in interwar Germany. In the movie, Francis tells an old man the story of something terrible that happened to him. In a tiny German town, carnival man by the name of Dr. Caligari hypnotized his servant to try to murder multiple people, including Francis’s friend and his fiancée Jane. Francis, with the aid of others including the police, unmasks Dr. Caligari as the director of an insane asylum who is bent on imitating another Dr. Caligari and his murderous sleepwalking servant from the 1700’s. Francis’s story to the old man ends, and Francis himself is revealed to be a patient at the asylum, along with the sleepwalker and his supposed fiancée, and Dr. Caligari as the director who ends the movie by stating now he knows how to cure Francis. The only reasons the audience might have to distrust Dr. Caligari come from a story told by a mental patient potentially just with a potentially active imagination, as multiple people from the asylum appear to be unrealistically reimagined in his story. Despite the unreliable nature of the main narrative, Dr. Caligari’s character fails to be completely trustworthy in the final scene as a result of the sudden juxtaposition of his evilness in the main narrative with the character who has an innocent air to him but lacks evidence to calm our suspicions. Is he planning on silencing Francis? Has he used his power of authority to promote a truth that suits him and subdue Francis? Or was Francis’s story simply that of a madman with an active imagination? To what extent are we willing to have faith in the goodness of authority?
This uncertainty presents a tension—the audience has no certainty in the ending, and any certainty they might have is easily undermined. Weine intentionally prevents the ability to easily break down and understand the movie. For example, the movie features highly stylized sets, typical for German Expressionist movies where the sets, often partially motivated by tight budgets, represented the dramatic emotional states of the characters instead of any reality. This would easily be exaggerated in a story from an asylum patient—representing the terror and fictitious nature of his story, a product of the imagination with a corresponding unrealistic set. But the sets are not entirely realistic in the main narrative, preventing the assumption that everything is back to a straight-laced reality. For example, in the opening scene, tiny branches hang around Francis and the old man like spider webs, and, in the closing scene, the wallpaper and staircases are stylized, and more noticeably stylized is the room Francis is taken to and restrained by the asylum workers and Dr. Caligari. A more convincing frame narrative, in terms of cementing the main narrative as a crazy fantasy and the frame as reality, would show the audience a thoroughly realistic set, one with very plain and sensible doors and chairs and sets. Also, Dr. Caligari would be more actively cleared of Francis’s accusations. Instead, the audience is left with the juxtaposition of a crazy Dr. Caligari, as described by Francis, being restrained by asylum workers and put in a straight jacket, with this director in the main narrative who still comfortably holds his power and seems to be working to cure his patients. The director does nothing to actively absolve himself, but instead there are no incriminating details, leaving any paranoia about the director unfounded in terms of the main narrative. From these tensions about reality or imagination and good or bad, the ambiguity is deeply woven into the movie and the characters.
The sleepwalker, Cesare, stands as one of the most concentrated examples of this tension. The main narrative describes him as a patient of the asylum who was admitted because of issues with sleepwalking. Dr. Caligari then proclaims that he can use this to his advantage in order to “learn if it’s true that a somnambulist can be compelled to perform acts which, in a waking state, would be abhorrent to him …. whether, in fact, he can be driven against his will to commit a murder”. Cesare becomes his slave, entirely denied of his own person free will in favor of becoming a mechanism for Dr. Caligari. Weine’s set up denies Cesare any free will, but in that sense, also absolves him of any culpability of his actions. After trying to kill Francis’s fiancée, Cesare drops dead, and no time is wasted blaming Cesare; instead, the people who were pursuing him immediately go after Dr. Caligari. Cesare is portrayed, then, as Dr. Caligari’s tragic puppet who he has completely and consuming control over.
Cesare’s essence as a person, his own power to choose his own actions or at least be aware of them, is violated by Dr. Caligari. This, given the context of interwar Germany, seems to be symbolically criticizing a system of authority where others become mindless cogs in a machine, where the hunger for power of the authorities corrupts and eradicates the souls of the people. Cesare, for example, drops dead when being chased by Francis and others after trying to kill Jane. Once separated from his master, who entirely controls him and therefore he has no ability left to function on his own, he then dies. There is a forbidding tone to this—once part of the system, your soul is sold, and there is no escape except death. They have no potential for rehabilitation into society because they lack the basic component of a distinct human being—an idea of free will. But the death of Cesare does not seem to be just punishment, but instead a tragic fate, as the people do not persecute him, but rather his master.
Weine systematically shows through Cesare how people in a system are robbed of their free will, and, with this, responsibility for their actions. It seems to be a nervous justification for collaboration, a discussion amplified post-World War II, assuming the collaborators had no choice but to submit, and the power-hungry authorities eagerly consumed them as means to an end. Through this perspective, when can we ever trust authorities? Are we easily subjugated? The only way to prevent this proposed violation and destruction of people would be if we viewed the situation from a comprehensive but entirely detached point of view. But how obtainable is this? Dr. Caligari’s narrative seems to be the victorious one, because despite however much we might believe Francis or at least doubt Dr. Caligari, Francis’s placement in an insane asylum prevents any confidence in what he might say. When violence uproots society, as WWI did and Francis accuses Dr. Caligari of doing, can there ever be a satisfying conclusion? Can we ever be confident in the victor’s version of the events, and is an objective truth ever possible?
