Practicing Evil With ‘Dr. Caligari’

With so many “firsts” to recommend it, “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” has to be considered a true milestone of silent filmmaking.

The 1919 movie was the first true horror flick and the first picture to use set design as more than just a backdrop for the action. Artists Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Rohrig, all followers of the German Expressionist movement, created an environment of twisted angles and darkened spaces for the Robert Wiene-directed movie.

The strangely suggestive look of “Dr. Caligari” added to its symbolic import, which also distinguished the picture. Not many films of the time used character and environment to present a deeper layer of meaning, but this one did; it’s gone down as a metaphor for the disorienting nature of insanity and the threat of an authoritarian system.

Many cinema historians credit “Dr. Caligari” (which launches the Newport Harbor Art Museum’s “Caligari and Co.” Halloween-inspired series Friday night) as the first artistic statement on celluloid to question the rigid, leader-oriented German society that let someone like Hitler rise to power.

As an archetype, Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) puts a face on megalomania. In Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz’s screenplay, he’s a mysterious figure who presents himself as a hypnotist in a traveling carnival. His star attraction is Cesare (Conrad Veidt), a grotesque-looking somnambulist who awakens on command to prophesy the future. Cesare’s skills go beyond telling fortunes, though; he murders anytime the good doctor tells him to.

The story is told by a young man, Francis (Friedrich Feher), whom we later learn is as mad as the doctor he’s obsessed with. This revelation ends “Dr. Caligari” on a disturbingly ambiguous note (one that has resulted in much debate among critics), but it doesn’t diminish the film’s eeriness. Regardless of his state of mind, Francis becomes the hero of “Dr. Caligari” and keeps the plot moving as he protects his girlfriend (Lil Dagover) and ferrets out the doctor’s secrets.

Much of the film’s effectiveness lies in its ability to drop us into a world that seems so alien. The environment created by Warm, Reimann and Rohrig is so distinctively crazy that the viewer feels disoriented. This displacement, however, only adds to the force of “Dr. Caligari.”

If the audience is left off-balance Friday night, Arthur Taussig, a local movie historian and Orange Coast College professor, will be there to answer questions. Taussig will introduce the film and be available afterward for more discussion.

The same format will be used Nov. 5 when “Mad Love” is offered. This 1935 picture stars Peter Lorre (in his first American film) as a mad doctor who grafts the hands of an executed murderer onto a concert pianist, creating a symphony of trouble along the way.

On Nov. 12, “Murders in the Rue Morgue” will be shown. In this 1932 adaptation of Poe’s famous story, Bela Lugosi plays the crazy scientist who injects ape blood into humans to prove his own evolutionary theories.