Ariel Margolin
Blog #6
Although I was left perplexed beyond most words, I found Dr.Caligari to be one of the most interesting works I’ve seen recently. I believe it was meant to create fright in its audience via sheer confusion; the insane jump from scene to scene, and inexplicability of certain elements perfectly captures the mind of the insane. They say hell is a place of disorder, and what Dr.Caligari lacked in special effects due to the limitations of the times, it made up for in showing us the delusion and disorder of an unhinged world. Beyond the macabre and horrorful screen sights, Dr.Caligari was meant to portray a very serious and sane idea to the audience: the manipulation of society into war. As soon as Professor Heath said to look for a historical/philosophical undertow to the film, my eyes were affixed in search of such. Between the lines of mayhem and bedlam, I gathered that Cesare was the common man lulled into non-thought by his warsome government (in the form of Dr.Caligari) and sicced onto whomever his master wanted dead. Although I enjoy watching old films, writing one in the style of is a weighty challenge indeed, but this is a mountain I will scale. Dr.Caligari’s ethereal screen works proved to me that reality can be shown through many different courses, even those which we would label as crazed.
My silent film would be set in the course of one night and would be uncovering the mystery of a murdered person found in the alley adjacent to a popular bar. The people contact a policeman on the street and it just so happens that this police-man is on thin ice with his lieutenant, and needs a big break and doesn’t call in the murder to solve on his own to receive all the credit. The policeman would follow the bloody tracks through the winding alleyways until he enters a secret hell. This hell would be paintings upon paintings of all the worst moments of his life and as he rushes back in escape, he stumbles over the dead body and sees it his him. The film would end there and the central message would be self-destruction is not always self-evident, and how sometimes the end can come without us seeing it.
Dr.Caligari surely expanded my understanding of early film. My impression of silent films was that they were sappy love-stories with an occasional piano falling for comedic effect; I was surprised to find a thought-provoking prototype to the psychological horror-films of today. I would want my old film to have the same eerily, skin-crawling effect Dr.Caligari had on me. Perhaps the movies of today can take a page from Dr.Caligari’s book and make their audience leave in thought.
