The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is an example of how delusional visuals can produce a quite chilling thriller. It uses many innovative techniques such as lightning and score to tell a story of a madman. Since it was a silent film, the actors may it their mission to describe a scene through exaggerated body language which i thought was clever and humorous at the same time. The setting isn't something you would find in Germany so this lopsided architecture for sure had an effect on the future films of Tim Burton. They way the set up the score so that it would fade in and fade out leaving the audience on the tip of their toes as to what was going to happen next was brilliant. The tempo of the audio was key in that whenever there was a moment of suspense, it would gradually increase which by today's standards is a common technique used. The character of Dr. Caligari played by Warner Krauss was great in that the guy had so much personality to him not to mention the makeup job on him was very believable and impressive. Everything from the setting to the credits were surreal which i can't say enough definitely caught the attention of directors like Terry Gilliam, who uses surreal aspects in his films. The lighting is something that has been imitated many times in which it shows how the audience knew something was coming through the shadows, but the other character didn't. Tinting was also used significantly throughout the film in which it not only showed the setting of the scene but the general atmosphere of the characters in the scene. If you look at the character of Cesare, you could see he's type of character whose life is controlled like a puppet. He performs the actions that Caligari wants him to do and to me, that makes me think of Cesare altogether. All he wants is to be loved but his appearance and the fact that he is a sleepwalker is only attributing to his loneliness. This is definably a movie you should go see without reading the reviews first because at the initial viewing, you will be shocked yet amazed at the same time as I was. It shows how a film doesn't need to have audio to be accepted to be great and shows how visuals can make people second guess the film's genius.