After watching The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, one of the first things I noticed was the music set to the film. The soundtrack itself was spooky and reminded me of the stereotypical horror movie that I figure that this film probably set a precedent for. While it seems stereotypical, when this film came out it was likely one of the first of it’s kind, which makes me appreciate it even more.
I began to see the fault in reality almost immediately, when a ghost appears in the film and they set off to tell the story of how she became a ghost. I liked that much of the film was almost like a spiral, where they were telling a story that began to tell a story that would then have a flashback and so on until it was over. At the end when Francis is in the insane asylum, it made me question whether we was ever sane to begin with or if perhaps it was all a figment of his imagination.
The scenes itself I felt like were very simplistic, however when I consider what film was like in this time period I know that this was something revolutionary for the film industry. The scenery and acting were very simple and actors were often stationary. They did not have to do much, except stand there, and the intertitles were able to describe what they could or could not convey through actions. However, lighting did play a big part in the film especially because instead of murdering someone on camera due to lack of special effects, they were able to pretend to murder someone through showing the shadows instead. Not much of the film seemed particularly fascinating to me honestly, but I could see a lot of good efforts and advancements that directors have likely studied and replicated over the years.
If I were to create a murder mystery in New York City, I would definitely use my history of SVU to aid me in that. What I learned in SVU was that the murderer is either the most obvious person, or the least obvious person. Personally, I enjoy when the least obvious person ends up being the killer, and so that’s what my murder mystery will end with, however it will have several twists and turns. I like the idea of telling a story through multiple people, and I would use several people across the five boroughs to tell the story leading up to the murder, the murder itself, and afterwards. I would make sure to use interesting angles, such as from across a train platform, or from the window of a skyscraper looking out, to show the events unfolding without putting them up close and personal. I would have a character that exists as a narrator that interacts with all of the characters, and after picturing him as the good guy, reveal to the audience through backstory that he was the killer after all.
