Somnambulist
In the early twentieth century, perhaps a bit before—no one is precisely sure when it all happened—two young men of the garret-dwelling variety decide to visit the traveling fair that has come to their sleepy German town of Holstenwall. In the midway with its tents and sideshows, a clangor is heard: a seedy barker rings his hand bell and holds forth a mysterious painting of a ghastly youth. Though dressed like a professor, he is unkempt and menacing: his chin is unshaven, and stringy white hair falls away from his temples onto his shoulders. Piercing eyes twitch behind round spectacles as a sneer flickers on his lips.
One of the youths, thirsting for sensation as all young men do, finds himself drawn to the attraction, and he pulls his comrade inside the tent.
In the darkness within, the rabble huddles on benches beneath a high stage, on which stands a tall, skinny box. The professor comes to stand beside the cabinet and proclaims that within lies the somnambulist Cesare, dead asleep for all twenty-three of his years of life, and yet under the professor's command. With a perverse grin the professor teases the doors aside to reveal the sleeper: corpselike, emaciated, with hollowed eyes and a face the color of ashes.
The professor bids Cesare to awaken, and, with a grotesque, labored twitching, the young man's eyes open to reveal a gaze of horror. With faltering steps the creature gasps for air and walks forth from its box, its hands tensed into claws before it.
The professor boasts to the crowd that within his ages of sleep Cesare has seen all things, past and future, and he dares the audience to ask the somnambulist any question of their choosing.
Entranced, insensible to the doom that hangs in the air before him, the rash young man shouts out to the monster:
"How long will I live?"
Cesare's face contorts, and in a ragged breath he replies:
"Until the sun rises."
And the nightmare begins.
As it is with so many our our shared, cultural memories, I do not recall when I first heard of Dr. Caligari and what lies within his cabinet; it seems like I have always known of their existence, as if that coffin-like box was a presupposition of the very condition of being alive. I do remember when I first felt its influence upon me, however: it was back in the last century, the year 1990 to be exact. Frageau and I—two young men of the garret-dwelling variety—would stay awake until late into the night poring over film textbooks as if they were manuals for the conjuration of angels or demons. My friend was particularly enchanted by the bizarre stills from the iconic Expressionist film: the cockeyed, angular houses teetering over town squares, the freakish family tableau of a top-hatted gentleman spoon-feeding a catatonic sitting upright in a box, and a shadowy, liquid figure hauling an unconscious girl across knife-like rooftops. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was not merely a film but a seventy-year-old mystery; what kind of minds would create such a bizarre contraption, such chaotic, horrible mojo?
The following year it happened that a course on the golden age of German film was offered at the college we attended. Of course this included The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and it was here that my nerdy but sincere love for the German silent cinema was born; I have both Caligari and my friend to thank for that.
What has brought all this to mind for me was that I recently bought a copy of the DVD of the film as restored by the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv of Germany, released by the film-lover's friend, Kino on Video, and as I sat down to watch it I found myself wondering if the movie would still have the power to affect the average viewer, if you can call a viewer willing to sit through a silent film "average." Caligari has of course survived and thrived in movie-buff folklore, though I think this is for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with its qualities as a motion picture. First, of course, would be those striking still photographs that continue to look so snappy in textbooks. Second is that the film was singled out in Siegfried Kracauer's famous, intriguing, and, in my opinion, not remotely plausible hypothesis on German film's anticipation of the Nazis, From Caligari to Hitler. Third, and probably not least, Caligari has become the favored example of an -ism, namely Expressionism, and, as everyone knows, -isms tend to lead rich lives even after all the participants therein have long since died and gone to heaven.
It would be nice to be able to chirpily assert that, yes, of course Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is as gripping today as it was eighty-nine years ago, but if I force myself to see what's really there instead of what I want to see, I can't be quite so categorical about how well the octogenarian has held up over time.
What's ironic here is that restorations are supposed to return films to their youth and vigor, to liven the colors, sharpen the edges, and erase all the myriad insults of time and apathy that the film has suffered over the years. This rejuvenating of Caligari is striking, incredible even, but to some extent it is a bit like turning on the lights in a spook house; in what were once dark, grainy recesses that held shadows and ghosts one can suddenly see the facade, and a bit too clearly. The sets, for all their imagination, have a distinct "canvas-y" look to them, something which is forgivable on a stage but not so much in a film. Beyond that, Caligari often conveys the impression of filmed theater, an affliction that most films of the period share; after all, this was only five short years after Birth of a Nation, and film language was still in its infancy. There is some extremely imaginative camera work in the scene in which Alan is murdered, but other than that the camera setups are all static, with the one-camera-angle-per-set rule only broken for facial closeups or the occasional action sequence.
However, I do feel that there is something lasting about Dr. Caligari and Cesare, in the way that a powerful dream can remain in our memories for years or a lifetime. Like other fairy tales, it is nonsensical but compelling, as though we are looking at a strange caricature that we only just fail to recognize as something already within ourselves.
If nothing else, I know that the movie has woven its way into the fabric of my own life and is the touchstone of many thoughts and memories. One of my sharpest mental images of the world of Caligari is that of a book that my friend Frageau owned on the subject and which he always kept handy, and here fantasy and reality begin to reflect each other in odd ways, though I am only just seeing it all now, in hindsight. Just as the two young men in the film both love the same girl, my friend and I were also both smitten by a particular female, and it was she who had originally stumbled across the book and bought it as a present for Frageau. On the cover was yet another of the famous images, the chained convict in the oubliette, arrows of light or vengeance descending from above to frame or imprison him. In the wheels within wheels that seem to pervade anything that has to do with the film, this character with his mop of dark hair, long nose, and glowering, unshaven face was the very double of my friend, the similarly unfortunate Frageau.
A couple of years later, Frageau, who counted amateur photography among his numerous hobbies, was taking pictures of me for my college yearbook photo, and on a whim I picked up the Caligari book as a prop and pretended to read it. That photo ended up being the one that I eventually submitted, though I was never able to goad him into making an extra print for me to keep. No matter: some years after that his girlfriend, who was still at school, stumbled across the original in a bin in the student co-op, and she gave it to Frageau, who gave it to me. Sadly, my friend is gone now, and the book with him, lost Rosebud-like in some box or milk crate that he left behind somewhere, with someone, some someone who will probably never know what it means. I have a photograph, though, and that counts for something.
I am far away from all these people and dreams now. The lights have been turned on in the spook house. No matter—shadows still fall, and in the darkness an evil old man still keeps a young one in a box, pale, sickly, under sway, and asleep. We can thrill ourselves with the thought that some lives are short while others continue on in loss and confusion. "How long will I live?" Better to not ask questions to which you don't want to hear the answer.
One of the youths, thirsting for sensation as all young men do, finds himself drawn to the attraction, and he pulls his comrade inside the tent.
In the darkness within, the rabble huddles on benches beneath a high stage, on which stands a tall, skinny box. The professor comes to stand beside the cabinet and proclaims that within lies the somnambulist Cesare, dead asleep for all twenty-three of his years of life, and yet under the professor's command. With a perverse grin the professor teases the doors aside to reveal the sleeper: corpselike, emaciated, with hollowed eyes and a face the color of ashes.
The professor bids Cesare to awaken, and, with a grotesque, labored twitching, the young man's eyes open to reveal a gaze of horror. With faltering steps the creature gasps for air and walks forth from its box, its hands tensed into claws before it.
The professor boasts to the crowd that within his ages of sleep Cesare has seen all things, past and future, and he dares the audience to ask the somnambulist any question of their choosing.
Entranced, insensible to the doom that hangs in the air before him, the rash young man shouts out to the monster:
"How long will I live?"
Cesare's face contorts, and in a ragged breath he replies:
"Until the sun rises."
And the nightmare begins.
As it is with so many our our shared, cultural memories, I do not recall when I first heard of Dr. Caligari and what lies within his cabinet; it seems like I have always known of their existence, as if that coffin-like box was a presupposition of the very condition of being alive. I do remember when I first felt its influence upon me, however: it was back in the last century, the year 1990 to be exact. Frageau and I—two young men of the garret-dwelling variety—would stay awake until late into the night poring over film textbooks as if they were manuals for the conjuration of angels or demons. My friend was particularly enchanted by the bizarre stills from the iconic Expressionist film: the cockeyed, angular houses teetering over town squares, the freakish family tableau of a top-hatted gentleman spoon-feeding a catatonic sitting upright in a box, and a shadowy, liquid figure hauling an unconscious girl across knife-like rooftops. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was not merely a film but a seventy-year-old mystery; what kind of minds would create such a bizarre contraption, such chaotic, horrible mojo?
The following year it happened that a course on the golden age of German film was offered at the college we attended. Of course this included The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and it was here that my nerdy but sincere love for the German silent cinema was born; I have both Caligari and my friend to thank for that.
What has brought all this to mind for me was that I recently bought a copy of the DVD of the film as restored by the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv of Germany, released by the film-lover's friend, Kino on Video, and as I sat down to watch it I found myself wondering if the movie would still have the power to affect the average viewer, if you can call a viewer willing to sit through a silent film "average." Caligari has of course survived and thrived in movie-buff folklore, though I think this is for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with its qualities as a motion picture. First, of course, would be those striking still photographs that continue to look so snappy in textbooks. Second is that the film was singled out in Siegfried Kracauer's famous, intriguing, and, in my opinion, not remotely plausible hypothesis on German film's anticipation of the Nazis, From Caligari to Hitler. Third, and probably not least, Caligari has become the favored example of an -ism, namely Expressionism, and, as everyone knows, -isms tend to lead rich lives even after all the participants therein have long since died and gone to heaven.
It would be nice to be able to chirpily assert that, yes, of course Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is as gripping today as it was eighty-nine years ago, but if I force myself to see what's really there instead of what I want to see, I can't be quite so categorical about how well the octogenarian has held up over time.
What's ironic here is that restorations are supposed to return films to their youth and vigor, to liven the colors, sharpen the edges, and erase all the myriad insults of time and apathy that the film has suffered over the years. This rejuvenating of Caligari is striking, incredible even, but to some extent it is a bit like turning on the lights in a spook house; in what were once dark, grainy recesses that held shadows and ghosts one can suddenly see the facade, and a bit too clearly. The sets, for all their imagination, have a distinct "canvas-y" look to them, something which is forgivable on a stage but not so much in a film. Beyond that, Caligari often conveys the impression of filmed theater, an affliction that most films of the period share; after all, this was only five short years after Birth of a Nation, and film language was still in its infancy. There is some extremely imaginative camera work in the scene in which Alan is murdered, but other than that the camera setups are all static, with the one-camera-angle-per-set rule only broken for facial closeups or the occasional action sequence.
However, I do feel that there is something lasting about Dr. Caligari and Cesare, in the way that a powerful dream can remain in our memories for years or a lifetime. Like other fairy tales, it is nonsensical but compelling, as though we are looking at a strange caricature that we only just fail to recognize as something already within ourselves.
If nothing else, I know that the movie has woven its way into the fabric of my own life and is the touchstone of many thoughts and memories. One of my sharpest mental images of the world of Caligari is that of a book that my friend Frageau owned on the subject and which he always kept handy, and here fantasy and reality begin to reflect each other in odd ways, though I am only just seeing it all now, in hindsight. Just as the two young men in the film both love the same girl, my friend and I were also both smitten by a particular female, and it was she who had originally stumbled across the book and bought it as a present for Frageau. On the cover was yet another of the famous images, the chained convict in the oubliette, arrows of light or vengeance descending from above to frame or imprison him. In the wheels within wheels that seem to pervade anything that has to do with the film, this character with his mop of dark hair, long nose, and glowering, unshaven face was the very double of my friend, the similarly unfortunate Frageau.
A couple of years later, Frageau, who counted amateur photography among his numerous hobbies, was taking pictures of me for my college yearbook photo, and on a whim I picked up the Caligari book as a prop and pretended to read it. That photo ended up being the one that I eventually submitted, though I was never able to goad him into making an extra print for me to keep. No matter: some years after that his girlfriend, who was still at school, stumbled across the original in a bin in the student co-op, and she gave it to Frageau, who gave it to me. Sadly, my friend is gone now, and the book with him, lost Rosebud-like in some box or milk crate that he left behind somewhere, with someone, some someone who will probably never know what it means. I have a photograph, though, and that counts for something.
I am far away from all these people and dreams now. The lights have been turned on in the spook house. No matter—shadows still fall, and in the darkness an evil old man still keeps a young one in a box, pale, sickly, under sway, and asleep. We can thrill ourselves with the thought that some lives are short while others continue on in loss and confusion. "How long will I live?" Better to not ask questions to which you don't want to hear the answer.
Labels: Movies
posted by Joe Gola at 9:28 AM
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