The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

The look of Robert Wiene’s film came from three designers: Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig proposed painting shapes and shadows straight onto the sets. Producer Rudolf Meinert approved on commercial rather than artistic grounds: Expressionism was fashionable and painted canvas cost far less than built scenery. The whole film was made inside the small Lixie studio in Weissensee, Berlin. Most sets do not exceed 6 metres in width or depth, so the script’s horse cab chase, Jane’s carriage and the roundabout fairground were dropped; the fair became a painted Holstenwall plus two spinning merry go round props. Telephones, telegrams and electric light were scripted too and removed during shooting, so nothing on screen dates the story. The frame story was imposed on the writers afterwards. Janowitz objected openly, and in 1947 Kracauer argued the original text carried no frame. The screenplay, published in 1995, showed a frame had been there from the start, a different one: guests on a villa terrace ask Franzis for a story from twenty years earlier. A good fit if you want the design doing more work than the performances and can treat a style born of studio constraint as the draw. Not for viewers who need the plot to stand on its own; here the narrative carries the design.