What can be said about this breathtaking film but that it is Art in its purest sense. The Cabinet, a sideshow act at a small German Town Fair, contains Cesare, a somnambulist or sleep-walker (this term had far more horrific connotations in 1919). He is under the care of the sinister seeming Dr. Caligari. Trouble starts when bodies start turning up, stabbed by an unknown assailant. The townfolk wait nervously for the next body to drop, suspicious of everything and everyone.
This is all narrated to us by Friedrich Fehér, a student whose friend's death was foretold by the lurking somnambulist. He puts two and two together and goes to exact vengeance. Does he succeed? Well, I'm not going to tell you, go watch it and have a rip-roaring time.
Though a lot of credit must go to the producer of this movie, Erich Pommer, the main attraction is the quality of the sets and costumes, designed by German Expressionists Hermann Warm, Walter Röhrig and Walter Reinmann. These dark, brooding designs push the film from a realistic recreation of life to a mystical new place where all is art and nothing matched this reviewer's humdrum imagination.
A must.
This is all narrated to us by Friedrich Fehér, a student whose friend's death was foretold by the lurking somnambulist. He puts two and two together and goes to exact vengeance. Does he succeed? Well, I'm not going to tell you, go watch it and have a rip-roaring time.
Though a lot of credit must go to the producer of this movie, Erich Pommer, the main attraction is the quality of the sets and costumes, designed by German Expressionists Hermann Warm, Walter Röhrig and Walter Reinmann. These dark, brooding designs push the film from a realistic recreation of life to a mystical new place where all is art and nothing matched this reviewer's humdrum imagination.
A must.
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