Okay, maybe it's not the most innovative, though I can't think of anything that would steal that title from it, but if it isn't, it certainly is one of the most innovative. This 1920 classic basically invented the horror genre, the suspense genre, the expressionist genre, and the twist ending. All done in a haunting, surrealistic manner that will forever echo in your mind.
The movie begins with one man relating his sorrowful tale to another: yes, the movie is a flashback. In a nameless town, (well, I didn't catch the name, anyway), the town's carnival is visited by the impish Dr. Caligari and his demented, prophetic somnambulist Cesare. The sleepwalker, who sleeps in a coffin when he's not sleepwalking, makes startling predictions of death. It turns out that he's always right because when he predicts you'll die, he'll come and kill you! But Cesare, a universal metaphor for soldiers who fight in wars, is a mindless and thoughtless automaton. He obeys the macabre orders of his depraved master, Dr. Caligari, without question or remorse. Finally, he's caught trying to steal a slumbering young woman and dies in the chase.
In the conclusion of the film, we learn that Dr. Caligari is the administrator of a local insane asylum. When he learns that Cesare is killed, he himself goes insane in one of the most memorable special effects scenes in the history of cinema: he is haunted by the word Caligari, which is scrawled across the entire world in his fractured mind. Crude by today's standards, yes, but the distorted and bizarre effect possesses ten times the heart that canned digital effects have today. It's an earnest effort to disturb, and it succeeds. However, the twist is perhaps the first in all of cinema: the young man who narrates the film is a patient in an insane asylum, and made up the entire affair. Dr. Caligari, the villain in his delusion, is merely his doctor, while his romantic interest is actually another patient at the asylum.
Most memorable about this classic is its visual style: in the first example of mise en scene, the landscape is portrayed as a crooked, nightmarish world of wild, splintered, and abstract shapes and angles, convoluted in a metaphor of insanity. Every second gazing upon such a twisted vision of a dark, Gothic world is a grotesque feast for the imagination. I can't recommend it enough.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari itself stands as a masterful film, but in the long run is remembered as an influential one. The modern world of cinema would simply not be the same were it not for this expressionistic classic.
The movie begins with one man relating his sorrowful tale to another: yes, the movie is a flashback. In a nameless town, (well, I didn't catch the name, anyway), the town's carnival is visited by the impish Dr. Caligari and his demented, prophetic somnambulist Cesare. The sleepwalker, who sleeps in a coffin when he's not sleepwalking, makes startling predictions of death. It turns out that he's always right because when he predicts you'll die, he'll come and kill you! But Cesare, a universal metaphor for soldiers who fight in wars, is a mindless and thoughtless automaton. He obeys the macabre orders of his depraved master, Dr. Caligari, without question or remorse. Finally, he's caught trying to steal a slumbering young woman and dies in the chase.
In the conclusion of the film, we learn that Dr. Caligari is the administrator of a local insane asylum. When he learns that Cesare is killed, he himself goes insane in one of the most memorable special effects scenes in the history of cinema: he is haunted by the word Caligari, which is scrawled across the entire world in his fractured mind. Crude by today's standards, yes, but the distorted and bizarre effect possesses ten times the heart that canned digital effects have today. It's an earnest effort to disturb, and it succeeds. However, the twist is perhaps the first in all of cinema: the young man who narrates the film is a patient in an insane asylum, and made up the entire affair. Dr. Caligari, the villain in his delusion, is merely his doctor, while his romantic interest is actually another patient at the asylum.
Most memorable about this classic is its visual style: in the first example of mise en scene, the landscape is portrayed as a crooked, nightmarish world of wild, splintered, and abstract shapes and angles, convoluted in a metaphor of insanity. Every second gazing upon such a twisted vision of a dark, Gothic world is a grotesque feast for the imagination. I can't recommend it enough.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari itself stands as a masterful film, but in the long run is remembered as an influential one. The modern world of cinema would simply not be the same were it not for this expressionistic classic.