Das Cabinet Des Dr Caligari (1919) // Review / Buy UK Dvd

Das Cabinet Des Dr Caligari

About This Dvd. Buy Dvd Dvd Special Features Making of a Classic/Gallery Eureka! - Masters of Cinema Index Search Site
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Robert Wiene
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We are based in South London near Croydon, UK, and if preferred this item can be picked up by appointment. Just e-mail here. I also welcome the old fashioned cheque and po as it is cheaper to process and all orders are sent off same day as cheque received.

Actors: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher, Lil Dagover, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski
Director: Robert Wiene
Format: Black & White, Full Screen, PAL, Silent
Region: Region 2 (UK & Europe)
Aspect Ratio: 4:3 - 1.33:1
Number of Discs: 1

Classification: U
Studio: Eureka Entertainment
DVD Release Date: 18 Sep 2000
Run Time: 72 minutes

In the little village of Holstenwall on the Dutch border, fairground hypnotist Dr Caligari (Werner Krauss) puts on show a somnambulist called Cesare (Conrad Veidt) who has been asleep for twenty-three years. At night, dressed in a black body-stocking and with a ghostly white face, he slithers through the town murdering people on the doctor's orders. A student (Friedrich Feher) has his suspicions about Caligari after a friend is found dead and it transpires that the doctor is the director of a lunatic asylum. The story also has a sting in the tail added by the producer!

This classic German horror film was inspired by the unsolved murder of a girl during a carnival. Fritz Lang was approached to direct but was too busy. The task was undetaken by Robert Wiene who hired Expressionistic designers Hermann Warm, Walter Roehrig and Walter Reimann, all affiliated to the magazine Sturn, to design the innovative painted sets that included distorted perspectives, twisted shapes and sharp angles. The idea was to try and expand the cinema beyond its obsession eith re-creating reality.

The finished film originally released with an elaborate green, brown and cold blue tints on the print thrust German cinema to world prominence and had a tremendous influence on cinematic art worldwide and has a quality that still impresses today. Wiene tried to repeat his success in later years, but failed miserably.