Did You Know?
Jump to:
Spoilers (1)
Producer Erich Pommer wanted to have Fritz Lang as the film's director. Lang was interested, but then decided to work on another film.
Share this
Writer Hans Janowitz wrote the female lead character for his girlfriend Gilda Langer, an actress at the "Residenz-Theater" in Berlin but it is Lil Dagover that finally got the role.
Share this
Weeks before the initial release of the film, posters with the tag-line "Du mußt Caligari werden!" ("You have to become Caligari!") were put up in Berlin without the slightest hint that they were promotion for the upcoming movie.
Share this
Writer Hans Janowitz claims to have gotten the idea for the film when he was at a carnival one day. He saw a strange man lurking in the shadows. The next day, he heard that a girl was brutally murdered there. He went to the funeral, and saw the same strange man lurking around. He had no proof that the strange man was the murderer, but he fleshed the whole idea out into his film.
Share this
When the film opened at the Capitol Theater in New York in April 1921, some audience members reportedly booed and demanded their money back.
Share this
In the May 12, 1921 edition of the Chicago Daily News, Carl Sandburg wrote of the film: "It is a healthy thing for Hollywood, Culver City, Universal City, and all other places where movie film is being produced, that this photoplay has come along at this time. It is sure to have healthy hunches and show new possibilities in style and method to our American Producers."
Share this
Made before "horror" was a designated genre, this is sometimes cited as the first true horror film (although films with elements of the macabre were certainly made earlier).
Share this
The earliest German film including among the '1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die', edited by Steven Jay Schneider.
Share this
Spoilers
Director Robert Wiene added the opening and closing scenes to Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer original script in order to make the film more commercially viable. Fritz Lang claims to have suggested the introductory scene when first presented with the script.
Share this
