Hacker Cinema
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari
1920 · Film · 77 min
Directed by Robert Wiene
Francis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep.
6 positive5 neutralfrom 11 commenters
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12 comments on Hacker News
Thanks! Here's the full list: 2001: A Space Odyssey, 8½, Aguirre the Wrath of God, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, All That Heaven Allows, Apocalypse Now, Ashes and Diamonds, A Woman Under the Influence, Barry Lyndon, Bicycle Thieves, Breathless, Casablanca, Céline and Julie Go Boating, Chinatown, Chinese Roulette, Citizen Kane, City Lights, City of Pirates, Contempt, Daisies, Damnation, Dishonored, Earth, Electra My Love, El Topo, Eraserhead, Eyes Wide Shut, Film Socialisme, Fitzcarraldo, Fuego en Castilla, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Holy Motors, Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome, In a Year with 13 Moons, India Song, Inland Empire, Irma Vep, Koyaanisqatsi, La Dolce Vita, La Jetée, Late Spring, L'Eau de la Seine, Le Voyage dans la Lune, Lolita, Los Olvidados, Lost Highway, Lucifer Rising, Man with a Movie Camera, Metropolis, Mirror, Mulholland Drive, Night Music, Ordet, Orpheus, Persona, Pickpocket, Playtime, Psycho, Rebecca, Rosemary's Baby, Rumble Fish, Scarface, Seven Samurai, Sherlock Jr., Singin' in the Rain, Stalker, Sunset Boulevard, Taste of Cherry, Taxi Driver, Testament of Orpheus, The 400 Blows, The Blood of a Poet, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Color of Pomegranates, The Green Ray, The Holy Mountain, The Isle, The Lady from Shanghai, The Night of the Hunter, The Passion of Joan of Arc, The Seventh Seal, The Spirit of the Beehive, The Tales of Hoffmann, The Tree of Life, The Turin Horse, Time of the Gypsies, Tokyo Story, Touch of Evil, Trans-Europ-Express, Ugetsu, Un Chien Andalou, Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives, Vampyr, Videodrome, Wavelength, Werckmeister Harmonies, Wild Strawberries, Moonlight Sonata, Stellar, The Haunted House Biased toward European art cinema, experimental work, and directors who broke conventional narrative rules.
This is something that gets forgotten all the time: the common man could go watch a Shakespeare play for a penny and sip on ale between one dirty joke and the other.
Pride and Prejudice, perhaps the most romance novel to ever romance novel in the history of romance novels, is described as literary fiction (and so presumably not genre fiction) by the author. I think history--and hundreds of entries on fanfiction.net and archiveofourown.org where teenagers gush about their own dark-haired and standoffish but secretly gentle imaginary men--has shown that the reason she's remembered is the substance, not the subject of her writing, as well as the historical significance in her being a pioneer, of course.
I recently watched The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. A historically and artistically important movie, and then you go check the Wikipedia page and the producer described it to the effect "Yeah from the script it looked like some quick slop which would turn a buck."[1]
I think starting out with the idea of making a "literary" work and creating a genre out of "literary fiction" inherently doesn't work. I think the avenues for greatness are either making something experimental that breaks new ground, or something more conventional but that, in exchange, shows you complete mastery of that well-known material. But you can't be great just by appropriating the superficial qualities you identify in past works you yourself consider to be great, because again, it was the substance and not the mere subject that made those work great.
[1] 'Pommer later said: "They saw in the script an 'experiment'. I saw a relatively cheap film".' Citation [36] on Wikipedia
Not exactly the same, but I love the actor's "lighting" in old German expressionist silent films. Often, instead of using actual lighting, shadows and highlights were applied to actor's faces manually using makeup.
If anyone wants to take a look, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari has some great examples.
Who decides what "filmic value" is? I've seen some of the older films, and I feel they hold up pretty well; The Passion of Joan of Arc (1927, #21 on this list) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920, not listed here) are some of my favourite films, and personally I'd say they really do stand up well today.
Some people might also find these finds incredibly boring, and that's fine. In the end this is nothing more than "films the 1,639 people who voted liked the best". I bet everyone can name some films they feel should be on that list, or has seen films on the list that they disliked; for example I felt Citizen Kane was profoundly boring. That's okay as not everyone's movie taste is the same, just as people's tastes in music or food differ.
Years ago I watched The Childhood of a Leader in the theatre with my then-girlfriend. I thought it was pretty good. I could see her shifting in her seat and sighing heavily, and her dislike of it was palpable even in the dark without any words spoken. She hated it and would have walked out if it wasn't for me. My rating would be 8/10 or so; hers 1/10. Average rating: 4.5, which is not too far off the 54% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Anyhow, my point is: I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss people's tastes.
"Paddington 2" is one of the best movies ever made, it is up there with the "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari".
"she inspired a generation of film makers and artists that reality is not one that needs to be reproduced exactly as it is filmed or photographed"
I'm not sure what you mean by that, but there were plenty of films before the 1943 Meshes of the Afternoon which showed reality in fantastic, even dreamlike ways.
From the 1902 A Trip to the Moon to the 1920's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari to 1922's Nosferatu to 1927's Metropolis, and other German Expressionist films, to name just a few.
For me the new thing that Meshes of the Afternoon brought to the cinema was an explicit interest in dream symbolism.. though even that may not be that new, if you count Bunel's 1930 film L'Age d'Or and other films of the surrealist era.
Deren has often been described as being in the surrealist tradition, and I think that's accurate in as much as she was interested in artistic use of dreams and dream symbolism, and the borderline between dream and waking life.
> Some have stood the test of time as a work of art like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.
I tried watching The Cabinet once. Maybe I should try again, but, as far as I remember, the quality of the video was so bad that I don't think I had even a chance of appreciating the movie as a work art (at least not in the way I usually watch movies); and I think it was my impression at the time that no copy with better quality existed anymore?
Was it easily watchable for others here who watched it, or was it necessary to approach it studiously, e.g., rewinding every so often and slowing down the playback, to be able to appreciate it at all?
Definitely check out The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, which is on YouTube and linked to in the article. Once you go back far enough, a lot of great films are in the public domain and you can find them on YouTube, Daily Motion, etc. Streaming services probably don't find much value in them for that reason.
When you look at the selection criteria, it's hard to accept this as Kurosawa's favorite movies.
Based on the handful of films I've seen on this list, though, this is probably a list of films you should go out of your way to see if you're into film for something more than just for entertainment. Some are just flat out entertaining for anyone though, with the drama of Witness, the comedy of The Thin Man or the wonder of My Neighbor Totoro. Some show off the technical prowess of the director, like Barry Lindon. Some have stood the test of time as a work of art like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Of course, I guess the point is that great movies hit many of these categories.
I'm not sure I'm able to visualize this correctly. Let's say we have an array of strings containing the top 20 movies from Rotten Tomatoes:
The Wizard of Oz The Third Man Citizen Kane All About Eve Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) Modern Times A Hard Day's Night The Godfather E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial Metropolis It Happened One Night Singin' in the Rain Laura The Adventures of Robin Hood Inside Out Repulsion Boyhood North by Northwest King Kong Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
What would this data structure look like?
It's not entirely about compression - some "remasters" have been de-noised (i.e. no more grain - which in my opinion (and it is opinion) loses some of the atmosphere of a film (hell, if grain is unimportant, why do so many games have shaders which add it?)), some are run through a sharpen filter to deal with out of focus scenes and to "improve" the image quality, and so-forth - so it's not so much about compression as it is about other subjective "improvements" made to the transfer.
An example of something which has been done wonderfully, again in my opinion, is last year's restoration of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari".
Interestingly, they re-added the original tints to the remaster, as what's not commonly known is that many "black and white" films were projected through a coloured glass slide, in order to either give the entire scene a hue, or even to make the ground red/brown and the sky blue.
As Rod Serling would say, "Submitted for your approval":
Eraserhead Forbidden Zone Gaslight Invaders from Mars Invasion of the Body Snatchers Laura Minority Report Mirage Rebecca Suddenly, Last Summer The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari The Devil's Advocate The Wizard of Oz Total Recall Vanilla Sky
Some are better than others, of course. And some fit the mindf definition better than others. Oh, well. These are some films that popped into my head.