Getting back to Caligari, I always remembered the one image from it that appeared in the book, which was the shot of Cesare standing in his coffin, with Caligari standing on the left and the girl, Jane, on the right, and the first time I saw in actual footage of it wasn't too long afterward, in the summer of 2001, when I got this VHS documentary called The History of Sci-Fi and Horror, hosted by Butch Patrick, as a birthday present (the scene in question was when Caligari first unveils Cesare and has him walk out of his coffin and onto the stage in front of the audience). Over the years, I saw and read more and more on the film, from sources as varied as The Frankenstein Files: How Hollywood Made a Monster, a documentary on the Universal Frankenstein Legacy DVD set, to Joe Bob Briggs' book, Profoundly Disturbing: Shocking Movies That Changed History!, where it was featured amongst the likes of movies like H.G. Lewis' Blood Feast, The Exorcist, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and David Cronenberg's Crash. By the time I ended up actually seeing it in early 2008, I knew that it was considered to be an important landmark in the history of the horror film and that it was best known for Caligari himself, Cesare, and the bizarre, surreal architecture and set design that proliferated every bit of it. Unfortunately, my first viewing experience with it wasn't the best, as I saw it on a cheap, public domain horror DVD set that my mother got me for Christmas (one of several such sets she got me over the years), so it was in really poor quality and had very silly music playing along with it in some scenes, which was inappropriate. I also think that print of it was truncated, as I can remember it being only a little over an hour long, when the movie's actually around 74 minutes. All that said, I was still able to appreciate the bizarre atmosphere and visuals that it's known for, although I wouldn't really come to experience everything the movie has to offer until right before doing this review, when I decided to find the best print of it I could. I've watched it a couple of times on YouTube, the second time being a really good-looking version, with the appropriately-colored filters, and I can definitely say that it is a very unique and surreal viewing experience, one that really is like the most bizarre dream you can imagine, even more so than most silent horror films.
While sitting outside on a bench, a young man named Francis tells an elderly man the story of a strange and monstrous ordeal he and his fiance, Jane, have been through. His story takes place in the small village of Holstenwall, as a fair is being held. A mysterious and sinister-looking man, calling himself Dr. Caligari, arrives in town as well and receives permission from the town clerk to operate his show, centered around a somnambulist, at the fair. The following day, the clerk is found stabbed to death in his bed and, when Francis and his friend, Alan, visit the carnival, they decide to see Caligari's show. In his small tent, Caligari presents the crowd with the somnambulist, Cesare, who he awakens from his corpse-like state and walks out onto the stage in a zombie-like manner. Declaring him to have the ability to see in the future, Caligari encourages the spectators to ask Cesare questions, and when Alan asks how long he'll live, he's told that he has until dawn the next day. Initially shaken by this, Alan is able to dismiss his fears after he and Francis have an encounter with the lovely Jane, whom the two of them are both wooing in a friendly competition, but that night, a shadowy, knife-wielding figure breaks into his home and stabs him to death. Upon hearing of this, a grief-stricken Francis vows to get to the bottom of his friend's murder, joining up with Jane's father, Dr. Olsen, to investigate Caligari and Cesare. While doing so, the police arrest a man who attempts to murder an elderly woman with a knife, thinking he is the one who has been doing the killings, but when Francis and Olsen speak to him, he claims that he had nothing to do with the deaths of Alan and the town clerk. Little do they know that Jane, concerned for their safety, goes to the fair looking for them and gets the attention of Caligari, who shows her Cesare. That night, Francis keeps an eye on Caligari as he sleeps in his small shack, with Cesare apparently doing the same in his coffin; however, Cesare actually makes his way to Jane's house and, instead of killing her, attempts to kidnap her, only to be chased by an angry mob to the outskirts of the village, where he drops her before collapsing out of sight. Francis is perplexed when Jane claims that it was Cesare, but when he learns that the attempted murderer was kept securely in jail during the night, he and the police investigate Caligari's shack again to discover that the "Cesare" they see sleeping inside is actually just a dummy. His cover blown, Caligari flees and is chased into a mental institution by Francis, who discovers that he's actually the place's director. However, is it the director or rather Francis himself who isn't what he appears to be?
Caligari was the brainchild of two devout pacifists whose experiences in World War I had made them very distrusting of authority: Hans Janowitz and Car Mayer. They met in 1918 through a mutual friend and, despite their not having connections to the film industry, decided to collaborate on a screenplay together, pulling from a number of different personal experiences from both their friendship and their own, separate lives, among them a military psychiatrist Mayer had dealt with, a visit with a fortune teller that accurately predicted the death of someone whom Janowitz loved, a murder Janowitz believed he might have possibly witnessed at an amusement park in Hamburg in 1913, and a circus sideshow both writers witnessed in Berlin where a hypnotized man performed feats of incredible strength. It's often been said that, when writing the film, the two of them had a strong political agenda in mind, with Dr. Caligari meant to be a symbol of totalitarian power, i.e. the German government of the time, and Cesare those who blindly commit the horrific acts they're ordered to with no question whatsoever, although whether or not that truly was their intent at the time is up to debate. Janowitz claimed that it happened subconsciously and he only realized that they had done what they had many years later, though some feel he was simply saying that to placate those who had interpreted the film in this way in the decades since its release. Also, one of the film's own art directors said that he felt Mayer had no political intentions when he wrote the film. In the end, it's unclear as to what the writers' intentions were, as there are so many contradictory stories about the making of the film and exactly how involved Janowitz and Mayer were during actual production. Regardless, Janowitz wrote a few more screenplays after Caligari, including a couple for the legendary director, F.W. Murnau, but left the industry in 1922; Mayer (who also worked with Murnau), on the other hand, managed to make it as a screenwriter into the late 1930's, although he left Germany in 1933 to escape the Nazi regime and lived in London for the rest of his life, working as an adviser to the British film industry.
Going back to the film's framing device and the revelation it entails, several of our main characters are at the heart of it, not the least of which is the film's ostensible lead, Francis (Friedrich Feher). The main story of the film is told by him, as he relates a horrific experience that he and his "fiance," Jane, have recently been through to an elderly man he's sitting next to on an outside bench. He talks about how it happened in the small village where he grew up, beginning when Dr. Caligari came to town with his exhibit, bringing with him some brutal murders, including that of his best friend, Alan. Because of Cesare's prophesy that Alan would die the night before his body was found, the grief-stricken Francis feels that he must have had something to do with and becomes obsessed with finding out the truth, along with the aid of Jane's father, Dr. Olsen. The two of them investigate Caligari and Cesare together and, despite some occasional roadblocks they run into, such as another man being charged with the murders after he attempts to kill someone himself and Cesare apparently being with Caligari during the time when Jane is attacked, Francis soon reveals that Caligari is behind everything. In chasing after him, he makes an even more incredible and disquieting discovery: Caligari is actually the director of an insane asylum and has lately become obsessed with a previous story of a man who used a somnambulist to commit murder, to the point where he's willing to do the same in order to understand the methods used by his predecessor. By the end of his story, it seems as though Francis exposed a dangerous madman and had him put away in his own asylum, but when we go back to "reality," it's revealed that Francis is himself an asylum inmate and that some of the characters in his story are also inmates, with Caligari actually being the director. In short, everything we've been told was the ramblings of a complete lunatic, a dark fantasy world that he himself created and is still trapped in, as right to the end, he continues insisting that he's as sane as can be and that the director is the one who's crazy. But, as he's restrained and confined to a cell for attacking the director, the film's last shot highly suggests that he's not the only one who's insane.
From the moment he's first introduced, Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) himself is most definitely a sinister figure, with the way he's dressed, with that black cloak, stovepipe hat, and cane, to his fiendish facial expressions and shifty, suspicious mannerisms and way of moving. It's not all that surprising that murders begin happening in Holstenwall the minute he arrives in town, nor is that the victims happen to be the town clerk, who seemed to have sealed his fate by repeatedly insulting Caligari during their first meeting, and Francis' friend, Alan, who asked Cesare how long he would live and was given the answer until dawn the next day. Caligari never once comes across as anything other than suspicious and sinister with a capital "S," acting rather uncooperative with Francis and Dr. Olsen when they try to examine Cesare, refusing to awaken him, even though we know he can, as he did it during his show, and menacingly inviting Jane backstage to see Cesare when she wonders into the carnival while searching for Francis and her father. He seems to have a pretty airtight alibi when Francis spies on him in his shack at the carnival, watching him sleep next to the box that apparently contains Cesare, all while Jane is nearly abducted, but it's soon revealed that the figure in the box was actually a dummy and Cesare truly was the attacker (it's not a revelation for us but for the characters). Realizing the jig is up, Caligari makes a run for it, followed by Francis, who chases him into a mental asylum and is shocked to learn that he's the place's director. That night, after Caligari has gone to bed, Francis is able to convince members of the staff to let him into his office, where he discovers that the director has become obsessed with the story of another man named Caligari who used a somnambulist to commit murder. He was so obsessed with learning how he managed to get someone to do such horrific things that he decided to become Caligari himself and make a somnambulist that was admitted to the asylum his own personal Cesare. When he learns that his plot has been uncovered, as he's presented with Cesare's body, Caligari attacks a member of the staff and is straitjacketed and placed into a cell in his own madhouse. But, in the twist ending, it's revealed that he really is the asylum's director and that he was Caligari only in Francis' diseased mind, with the man having to be restrained to the very room Caligari was confined to at the end of the story when he attempts to attack the director. However, as the film ends with the director saying that he's confident he can cure Francis of his delusion, the last shot is of an iris around his head as he looks right at the camera, suggesting that he may be just as mad as his patient.
Along with Dr. Caligari, the character that everybody remembers from this movie is the murderous somnambulist, Cesare (Conrad Veidt). He may not be much of a character, as he's little more than a pawn for Caligari's deadly experiments, but he's definitely a striking and eerie presence nonetheless, with his tall, thin form, slow, zombie-like movements, and his pale face and very striking eyes. There's a reason why scene where Caligari unveils him to the crowd at the fair is one of the movie's most iconic moments, as he slowly opens his eyes and shambles out of his coffin-like box with his arms outstretched (I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't the inspiration for Imhotep's creepy resurrection scene in The Mummy). It's also the only time Cesare speaks, when he tells Alan that he'll only live till dawn the next day, as Caligari, just as he had with the town clerk, sends him out to ensure that the prophesy comes true. However, when Caligari attempts to make Jane Cesare's third victim, something goes awry, as just as he's about to stab her to death while she sleeps, he decides at the last minute to abduct her instead, a move that isn't completely spontaneous, as he did seem rather fascinated with her when Caligari brought her to him at the fair earlier. He drags her out of her home and into the village streets but, when a mob chases after him (this could very well be the earliest instance of that trope), he drops her on the outskirts of the village and, after walking a little farther, falls off into a ravine and is later revealed to have died when the police bring in his body to show Caligari that his plot has been uncovered. After the story, it's revealed that, like the somnambulist he represented, Cesare really is an inmate at the asylum, although he appears to be gentle and not dangerous in the slightest.
Jane (Lil Dagover) is introduced in the film's opening along with Francis when she wanders by both him and the elderly man he's talking to on the bench in a kind of daze, looking more than a little ghostly and giving the first hint that something isn't quite right here. In Francis' story, she's little more than the object of a friendly competition between him and his friend, Alan, as the two of them compete to see which one she'll decide to be with, and is as horrified as Francis is when she hears of Alan's murder. She also unwittingly catches the attention of both Caligari and Cesare when she wonders to the fairgrounds, searching for Francis and her father, Dr. Olsen, who were there earlier to investigate both the somnambulist and his exhibitor. After Caligari lures her into his tent and shows her Cesare, causing her to run off in fright, he sends him to kill her that night, for Cesare to instead attempt to kidnap her. Upon being left behind by Cesare on the outskirts of Holstenwall, she's taken back to her home, raving upon his abducting her, which initially puzzles Francis, as he'd been watching Caligari during the attack and it looked as if Cesare was in his shack with him. However, this claim ultimately leads Francis to discover that Caligari was behind everything, leading to his chasing him down to the nearby mental asylum. After Francis' tale ends and the truth of the situation is revealed, Jane is shown to be an inmate who believes that she is a queen and that, as a result, she cannot follow her heart and marry Francis the way he wishes she would. (Eerily, when Hans Janowitz wrote the screenplay with Carl Mayer, he intended for his lover at the time, Gilda Langer, to play Jane but she's the one whose death was apparently foretold by a fortuneteller Janowitz visited, prompting to use it as the basis for Alan's fate in the film.)
Since none of the other characters in Francis' story appear in the asylum, you can surmise that they were simply creations of his warped mind, including Alan (Hans Heinrich von Twardowski), his supposed friend in Holstenwall, who is depicted as being rather carefree, in spit of being momentarily frightened of Cesare's prediction of his impending death, and who is caught up in a friendly rivalry with Francis for Jane's affections before he's murdered. Jane's father, Dr. Olsen (Rudolf Lettinger), does little more than act as an authority figure who Francis is able to trust, getting permission from the police to investigate Caligari's shack at the fair and examine Cesare, as well as interview the man who is arrested and charged with the murders after attempting one himself. Said man (Ludwig Rex), who has a very sinister look to him that's on par with Caligari, admits to trying to murder someone but that he had nothing to do with the deaths of Alan or the town clerk, saying that he took advantage of the situation, knowing that the death of his intended victim would be blamed on the one who killed them. Later, his having been kept under lock and key during the time when Jane was nearly abducted gives Francis further proof that Caligari and Cesare are the cause of what's going on. (When I first got a good look at his face, I thought that Rex might have gone on to have a bit part in the Spanish version of Dracula that Universal produced alongside the Bela Lugosi film, as he looks an awful lot like a terrified sailor on the Vesta when Dracula rises from the hold to kill them all. But, according to all sources, Rex had stopped acting by 1927, so it doesn't seem like this is the case.) And finally, there's the distraught landlady (Elsa Wagner) who is the one who finds Alan's body and informs Francis of what's happened. I also have to mention the temperamental and abrasive town clerk, who makes the mistake of berating and acting dismissive towards Caligari when he's asking for a permit to exhibit his show at the fair, becoming Cesare's first victim offscreen in the process; whoever played him, though, is unlisted.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is one of the earliest examples of the type of movie where the characters and the story are less significant than the visuals and the atmosphere that it creates, akin to the films of Italian horror maestros like Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci (other examples from around this time may include Haxan, aka Witchcraft Through the Ages, and Carl Theodor Dreyer's very unearthly early sound film, Vampyr). Indeed, the one aspect of the film that stays with people, whether they actually watch it or see clips of it, is how bizarre and unearthly everything looks. This is thanks to art director Hermann Warm who, working under the philosophy that films should be drawings brought to life, brought in his two friends, Walter Reimann and Walter Rohrig, painters and set designers who were associated with the Berlin art magazine, Der Sturm, and the three of them decided to go for a very fantastical, stylized look to best accentuate the film's subject matter. They were given free reign to do whatever they wanted by both Robert Wiene and the producers and, as a result, what they created is a world that is just as nightmarish and eerie as it is impressive. For starters, nothing about this place feels natural, which is helped by the fact that it was shot entirely in a studio. Everything looks like it's made out of cardboard and paper, rather than wood or metal (even the few potted plants and flowers that you see don't look right), and there are very few straight lines to be found in the architecture; it's all weirdly curved, has sharp points, or built at weird, unnatural angles. This goes for both the streets of Holstenwall, where the buildings are twisted and clustered around each other, with back-alleys that are just as dark and unnatural-looking, and the interiors, which are dominated by everything, from the windows and doors to even the furniture, being shaped unnaturally, be it in strange and sharp angles or being unnaturally tall, like the chairs. You can often see unusual black lines on the walls, along with instances of bright white and deep darkness, meant to represent light and shadow that are painted directly onto the sets and making them even stranger to look at. The scenes that are meant to be set on the outskirts of the village and the countryside don't feel natural either, with the wide-shots of Holstenwall looking exactly like what they are, which are of an abstract, painted backdrop, sometimes with slight pieces of actual set in the foreground (particularly that merry-go-round at the fair), and the latter coming across as claustrophobic as the inside of the village, with plants that have tentacle-like vines reaching out. For that matter, even the intertitles for the dialogue are stylized and strange, with the words written in a jagged prose in front of an abstract painting rather than normal white text on a black background. In short, it's no exaggeration to say that literally every frame of this movie could be blown up and made into a creepy work of art, which it already is in and of itself.
I'm not kidding or following the crowd in praising the movie when I say this: when I watched it those couple of times before I did this review, the images and atmosphere that it evokes did make me rather uncomfortable. What mainly got me is not just how unearthly Holstenwall looks and feels but also the fact that people have to live there. I couldn't imagine having to live in such a bizarre place, where even the interiors of people's homes feel unnatural and alien. Some have said that Jane and Alan's homes break with this notion, that they come across as secure and comforting, but not to me, as Alan's apartment still has the bizarre architecture and claustrophobic feeling of everything else, as does Jane's home, in spite of its being more spacious, with a very high ceiling in her bedroom. That's another thing about this place: the claustrophobia. It all feels very closed in and smothering, both out on the streets and in the homes and other places, such as the police station and the town clerk's office. The rooms that have the very high ceilings, with other examples being the shadowy, twisting staircase leading up into the main office of the police station (something like that just screams both Gothic and Expressionism to me) and the cell where the suspected murderer is kept, still have an uncomfortable vibe, especially to me, as those types of enormous interiors have always gotten under my skin, for some reason. And when we come out of Francis' story, there's no comforting return to "reality" waiting, as was already clear from the eerie opening and punctuated by the revelation that he's an inmate at the very madhouse where he supposedly chased Dr. Caligari and exposed him. Some viewers and critics have said that Francis' strange depiction of Holstenwall in his story was a hint at the revelation to come right from the start, as it can only be viewed as something a deranged mind would come up with, but then again, when we go back to what is ostensibly the real world, everything is still unusual and out-of-balance, suggesting, as others have said, that the asylum director Francis sees as Caligari really is just as mad as his patient. Personally, that's the way I look at it, especially given the last shot of the iris around the director's face, which feels sinister to me, despite his facial expressions coming across as fairly normal and benign.
The term "nightmarish" is very apt in describing the film, in more ways than one. Silent horror films tend to be inherently dream-like anyway, due to the lack of audio, the virtually ever-present music used to accompany them, the exaggerated acting style of the time, and the flickering images and the filters making things feel all the more surreal (for me personally, that's the way to watch these films, rather in complete black-and-white, as you get in public domain copies), but Caligari is a major example of a movie where watching it is like having a waking dream because of its sheer otherworldly quality. This is due to those inherent qualities of silent films that I've mentioned combined with the visual style, along with the effectively eerie mood that permeates the movie throughout. Its very opening makes it feel as if there's something ghostly going on, as the old man on the bench with Francis talks about spirits being all-around, right before Jane walks by with a dazed, trance-like expression on her face and dressed completely in white. If it weren't for Francis' saying that she's his "fiance," it wouldn't be unreasonable for you to think that she's one of the spirits the old man is talking about, and even then, as the two of them sit on the bench and Francis begins telling his story, it does feel as if you're looking at ghosts the whole, due to how pale they and so many of the other characters are, often with dark circles around their eyes. The same also goes for the famous scene where Dr. Caligari unveils Cesare at the fair, especially that creepy close-up of his face as his eyes slowly open and he walks out onto the stage like a ghoul, when you see his shadow nothing more than his shadow on the wall when he breaks into Alan's home that night and murders, and his entering Jane's home and being chased out of the village. In fact, even the most benign of scenes, like those in Jane's home and Francis and Alan meeting her on the street after the fair, are made to feel off-kilter because of the surroundings and the way everything is lit and filtered, as is the scene depicting the aftermath of Alan's funeral, which should be somber and sad but is still just plain unsettling.
The eerie, dream-like vibe is enhanced even further by some odd optical effects, most notably irises that often lead into or close out a scene by enveloping around a person's head or some random part of the frame and staying there for a few seconds before the transition actually happens, making the screen completely black except for whatever the iris is highlighting. Irises are nothing special in and of themselves and they were commonplace in films, especially cartoons, made around this time and into the 50's and 60's, but I don't think I've ever seen them utilized in this manner, where they highlight a specific part of a scene or setting before transitioning into or out of the scene in question. It makes for even more bizarre and uncomfortable imagery, especially when the iris is enveloping Dr. Caligari's sneering or evilly smiling face in an otherwise black screen. Another noteworthy, surreal effect in the film happens when Francis and the asylum staff read the director's diary and see how obsessed he's become with the real-life Dr. Caligari, to the point where he's tried to become him. In the dramatization of the events they read up on in the diary, you see the director walk onto the grounds of his asylum, when German words that translate as, "You must become Caligari," or simply the name, "Caligari," suddenly appear in the air around him, materializing letter by letter as if they're flashing neon signs. It's a memorable scene, one that visualizes how the director's obsession has consumed him and driven him mad, but like everything else in Francis' story, it's revealed to be the twisted but still creative figment of an insane mind, one that we already knew he had to have concocted himself since such a scene couldn't have actually happened in the reality of his account.
Some people have read even more into the film's perceived themes of irrational and tyrannical authority, particularly German film theorist and sociologist Siegfried Kracauer, who wrote that Dr. Caligari and Cesare can be seen as premonitions of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the way he bent the German people to his will to commit and condone acts of unbelievable evil (the book where he wrote about this is even called, From Caligari to Hitler). He even went as far as to say that Caligari was symbolic of some kind of subconscious need in German society for a tyrant, which others have strongly disputed, as the film itself does not glorify authority, which it doesn't. As I said, even the frame-story doesn't completely undermine this theme, given how the asylum director's trustworthiness is still brought into question in the final scene, and in the context of the main story, the citizens of Holstenwall and the staff at the asylum had no idea who Caligari really was or what he was up to, reacting in horror and acting against him once they knew. Some critics and viewers have seen other tyrannical figures in the film, particularly the temperamental and dismissive town clerk, who sits up on his high chair while barking orders at those below him and treating Caligari himself with disrespect when he tries to get a permit to exhibit Cesare at the fair (the fact that he becomes Cesare's first victim can be seen as an act of anti-authoritarianism on Caligari's part, in spite of his being a symbol of that very notion himself). They've also pointed out how the high chair is one of several visual motifs that point to the hierarchy of authority figures like, such as that long, twisting staircase that leads up to police headquarters and the stairways that lead to the asylum director's office. And there are some who say that the bookends of the film might, in fact, not undermine the validity of Francis' story at all, that his story is true and that he's been institutionalized by the director to keep him quiet. One could argue that the idea doesn't hold water, given how Cesare is shown to have died in the story, despite being alive and well as an inmate in reality, that Jane is a delusional inmate who thinks she's a queen rather than his fiance, and that Francis' story ended with the director being restrained and made a patient in his own madhouse, while he's actually running the place like normal, but there are others who will say that he may have embellished aspects of the story while telling it but that doesn't mean the whole thing is false. That's true, but then again, it doesn't negate the whole notion of his being insane either, as it could be seen as a scenario he's come up with to give credence to his belief that everyone else is mad and he isn't. As I've said, I personally believe that both Francis and the director are insane, living in their own nightmarish worlds that they themselves have created.
That leads into another theme of the movie: duality. The main characters each have a double life to them, some of them both within the context of Francis' story and when the film's two sides are looked at as a whole. For instance, not only is Dr. Caligari presented in the story as a murderous madman and a respectable authority figure in the framing device but, when you look at just the story, he fits into both molds there as well: a seemingly benign asylum director by day and a sinister carnival showman who sends his somnambulist subject out at night to commit murder. Moreover, he's serving as a double for the historical Caligari, having become so consumed with knowing his secrets that he's decided to literally try to be him. As a result, the somnambulist who is delivered to his asylum unwittingly leads a double life as well, one as a patient who's supposed to be receiving help from the asylum director and the other as a pawn in his homicidal experiments. In short, he's both victim and antagonist in the story (it's made even more apparent when, instead of killing Jane like he has everyone else, he disobeys Caligari's instructions and attempts to act on his apparent infatuation with her from before by abducting her), and you could say the same for his representation in Francis' story as a monster with no will of his own and of his true existence as a gentle inmate in reality, one who's been victimized by Francis' warped mind. Of course, we've already discussed Francis' double life in this film to the nth degree, and the same goes for Jane, who serves as his beloved in the story but, in reality, is a woman who's deluded into thinking that she's royalty. And going back to Siegfried Kracauer and his theory of the film representing Germany's subconscious need for a tyrannical dictator, he said that the notion of Francis overthrowing a tyrant like Caligari in his story but remaining under his thumb in reality alludes to a two-sided aspect of German life, that they question their traditional belief in authority even while they continue to go along with it like usual. (Kracauer was someone who was really hung up on the frame story and its effect on the film's political relevance, as much or even more so than Hans Janowitz claimed to have been.)
One last bit of symbolic interpretation of Caligari that I'll mention here is the notion that it represents the fragile condition of Germany during the time it was made, particularly after the end of World War I. Historian Vincent LoBrutto has said that the basic premise of a madman preying on a society as distorted as the one depicted here is indicative of how Germany was a country in absolute chaos at the time, while Anton Kaes sees it as a statement of the psychiatry of war. For instance, he says that when Alan asks Cesare how long he'll live, it ties into what both the soldiers on the battlefront and their friends and families back home must have been thinking during the war, going further with it by noting that Cesare murders him when it's close to dawn, which is when attacks during the war often occurred. He also says that the overwhelming grief that Francis feels after he learns of Alan's death is symbolic of that felt by soldiers who survived the war but were forced to watch their friends die horrible deaths. There are many more ways to read into this film and you can look them up if you want, but I just wanted to talk about some of the interpretations that really fascinate me in particular.
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