GERMAN EXPRESSIONISM:THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI

Lecture 12

GERMAN NATIONAL FILM CONTEXT: 1913-1919

• 1916 ban on film imports • Boom in national wartime production– 1913: 30 production companies– 1919: 250 production companies

• 1917: Universum Film A.G. (or Ufa) formed with 1/3 of funding provided by the state.– 1918—Ufa privatized (purchased by Deutsches

Bank)• 1920: Reich Film Act

Context for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

• Cabinet unlike French Impressionist films emerges from an industrial, commercial filmmaking context

• Expressionism was in vogue at the time.– Kasimir Edschmid in 1919: “[Expressionism] today

affords titillation and edification to clergymen’s daughters and factory-owners’ wives… What once seemed a daring gesture has now become routine. The thrust forward of the day before yesterday has become the gimmick of yesterday and the big yawn of today.” (quoted in Robinson)

Expressionism• Pre-cursors: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Munch• Rejection against realism• Two phases:

– Pre-war artists: 1905-1915• Developed by two groups

– Die Brucke “The Bridge” (1906)» Ernst Kirchner» Erich Heckel

• Der Blaue Reiter “The Blue Rider” (1911)» Franz Marc» Wassili Kandinsky

– Post-war, second generation artists: 1915-1925• More politicized• Deeply affected by war-time experience• Associated with “Der Sturm” (The Storm)

Wassili Kandinsky, “Winter” 1909

We start from the idea that the artist, beyond impressions which he receives from the exterior world, from nature, continually accumulates experience in his inner world, and is in quest of artistic forms which must be liberated from all irrelevant elements, so as to express only the necessary… (Kandinsky, 1909)

CONTEMPORANEOUS RECEPTION

• World premiere at the Marmorhaus in February 1920

• German critics were universally enthusiastic• U.S. premiere: April 1921 at the Capitol

Cinema in NYC

Marcel Duchamp, 1912

Is Kracauer’s critique of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari so different from the French Impressionists critique of the film?

THE OPENING:FROM OUTSIDE THE FRAME

FROM INSIDE THE FRAME

THE ASYLUM

Inside the framing-story Outside the framing-story

FROM OUTSIDE THE FRAMING STORY

THE FAIR: A MERRY-GO-ROUND