The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari truly did undermine and play with the audience’s understanding of reality and truth throughout the entire film. The truth and reality in this film is completley convoluted thanks to the techniques that the film uses so effectively. Being a silent film, the techniques of setting, lighting, and costumes were used so effectively that dialogue between characters was not needed to convey the message of the story.
This film, without a doubt, used lighting to manipulate the audience’s understanding of reality. The difference between the scenes that were exposed to a lot of light versus those that were exposed to very little became very apparent throughout the movie. The lighting gave the movie its creepy feeling at the moments when it needed it the most.
The film’s setting and overall architecture was also essential to this manipulation of the audience’s sense of reality. The beginning of the film was set with backgrounds of angular and jagged shaped walls and buildings. This gave off the immediate feeling of an unreal place. It was not a setting of any normal place. The audience’s sense of reality was being tested right from the beginning because of this fantasy like setting the film was placed in.
Lastly, I feel that the film did a very good job of using costumes and makeup to manipulate reality throughout. The makeup of Dr. Caligari and Ceasare was changed from being dark and shadow like at the beginning of the film to white and normal towards the end. The makeup characterized the two actors to make them seem evil and then change the audience’s sense of reality to make them have the appearance of normality towards the end when they were the most deceiving.
If I were to create a murder mystery in present day New York City, I would make sure I utilized all of the unique aspects the city has to offer. New York has so many different identities that could be exploited to create the horror effect needed in this film. I would have different parts of the film take parts in parts of New York such as Harlem, Manhattan, Queens, and even Long Island to portray the different scary scenes. I would also love to utilize things like the subways, parks, and insanely tall angular buildings to create a mysterious setting for my film.
