The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Essay Questions

What elements of the film makes it part of the genre of German Expressionism?

The film deals with madness, insanity, betrayal, and deceit, all themes and topics that are particularly connected to the legacy of German Expressionism. Additionally, the film uses surreal set pieces and perspectives to give it a particularly psychological, distorted, and anti-realist aesthetic. German Expressionism was invested in representing the subjective experiences of characters and putting the viewer into the psychology of characters (however insane) to tell a story, rather than representing more literal physical realities.

Why is the final revelation of the film so startling?

The ending, in which the viewer realizes that Francis, our narrator, has been in the mental asylum the entire time, is particularly disorienting because it calls into question the entire plot of the film. Everything we have seen depicted in the film is revealed to likely have been the ravings of a madman. Thus, it is the ultimate twist ending because it completely subverts the viewers' expectations and reveals the narrator to have been unreliable. Still, however, we have been brought so deeply into Francis' narrative that we still question what is reality and what is delusion. Was it all imagined? Who is the patient and who is the asylum director? How can we ever be sure?

How can the relation between Dr. Caligari and Cesare be interpreted as a political metaphor?

Dr. Caligari keeps Cesare in a cabinet and gets him to do his bidding. Because Cesare is a Somnambulist, he is never actually awake and thus cannot be held accountable for his actions. Thus he is the perfect pawn for Caligari to carry out his murderous ambitions without having to get his hands dirty. In this way, Caligari and Cesare's relationship can be read as a metaphor for a corrupt government using its people to further violent means. Cesare is Caligari's puppet, a sleepwalker without free will or any desires of his own, who has no choice but to make himself subject to the evil leader's commands. Cesare is akin to a violent military, programmed to destroy and kill on behalf of the leader without any conscience of its own.

What are some of the Expressionistic clues that the story is itself a dream state, the account of an insane man?

The sets in the film are very strange and do not reflect reality as we know it. Streets wind in strange angles and directions, shadowy staircases lead to high-ceilinged offices, and roofs and walls seem to extend in every which direction, often at pronounced diagonals. Boundaries are dissolved, with characters walking in and out of rooms and building with an unsettling ease; it is as though the world of the town is a world without doors or locks. Chiaroscuro—a high contrast between shadows and light—makes the action all the more ominous. All these elements of the visual landscape imbue the film with a dreamlike quality. The characters wander through a fantastical and anti-realist domain, which mirrors the unusual and skewed psychological states of the characters that people the story.

Is the final moment of the film definitive in its suggestion that Francis is the insane one?

The twist ending certainly calls the entire plot of the film into question in that it establishes that Francis was an unreliable narrator. We see the same actor who portrayed Caligari in Francis' account only now he is a tidy looking asylum director with no signs of being a crazed madman. The abruptness of the twist, however, and the enduring dream-like, unrealistic tone of the film, however, makes it so that we are unsure of what is real and what is not. It is as though the twist ending is meant to show us that nothing is ever as it seems, that perceptions distort reality all the time. The ending plays at being conclusive, but because the film invested so fully in Francis' narrative, we cannot help but question the validity of all perceptions, left to wonder, "Who is Dr. Caligari?"