Because a whole one person wanted to see: My 80% Essay, for Cultural Studies: National Cinema

Explore the significance of Dr Caligari’s glasses.



Germany had entered the First World War as a conservative country dominated by military, aristocratic and bureaucratic elites. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles involved Germany admitting 'war guilt' and making financially ruinous reparations. The Weimar Republic was established as a liberal, democratic, constitutional state, but the time was characterised by social unrest and political divisions. [Aitken, 2001, pp50-51] In 1920 Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari was written by Janowitz and Mayer, and directed by Wiene. The story of a psychiatrist obsessed with a mythical doctor, directing a somnambulist to do murder, it was filmed using a highly stylised Expressionist mise en scene, and became a classic of German Expressionist film. Later Kracauer saw in the film symptoms of the German national soul, tendencies that led to the rise of Hitler and the Second World War. His 1947 book From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film made Caligari part of an explanatory myth about a people torn between tyranny and chaos. Elsaesser (2000) calls it a historical imaginary, an explanation for German history woven from symbols. Kracauer saw in one early horror film a collection of themes that reflected all the tensions of the time. He also believed that the potentially revolutionary message of the film, revealing and overthrowing the tyrant, was defused and contained by the frame story that portrayed the narrator as insane. But a more ambiguous reading is possible, especially if you focus on Dr Caligari’s glasses.

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