š 31 Days of Halloween ā Day 30 š
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)
ā ā ā ā ā Rewatched 30 Oct 2025
You canāt really overstate how strange The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari must have looked in 1920. Even now, over a century later, it still feels alien, like it was beamed in from another dimension where geometry had a hangover. Every wall leans, every shadow has a knife edge, and even the trees look like theyāre screaming. Itās the first true horror film in the modern sense, and itās still one of the weirdest ever made.
Itās not just some old silent movie with funky sets; the entire world looks insane because the story is insane. The filmās central twist (no spoilers, even if itās over a hundred years old) reframes everything as the product of a disturbed mind, in ways that still echo in cinema today, like Shutter Island (2010). Before Caligari, film was mostly content to show you things that were happening. After Caligari, filmmakers realized movies could also show you things that were not.
The performances are broad, in keeping with the times, but that actually fits the tone. Werner Kraussās Caligari is like one of Tim Burton's stop-motion puppets incarnated in flesh. But Conrad Veidt, as Cesare the somnambulist, was probably the real influence on Burton, his gaunt frame and melancholic performance recalling that of Johnny Depp as Edward Scissorhands. But it would be a disservice to imply that it took that long for the film's influence to be felt. Cesare was reincarnated in every movie monster from Frankensteinās creature to Count āNosferatuā Orlok, decades before Tim Burton was even sperm in his old man's balls.
Thereās also a prophetic quality to it. Made in postāWorld War I Germany, Caligari is often read as an authoritarian tyrant with Cesare as a brainwashed soldier, ājust following orders.ā Even if you ignore such interpretations, Caligari is one of the few films thatās been analyzed to death in textbooks, yet it doesnāt feel dry. Itās alive, and a reminder that horror is about more than monsters. Itās about the instability of our perception of reality itself.
