The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is considered the quintessential cinematic example of German Expressionism, an artistic movement that began before WWI and reached its prime in 1920. German Expressionism was one branch of a broader Expressionistic movement in European art, typified by its exploration of subjective experience, distorted perspectives, and a privileging of meaning and emotionality over physical verisimilitude and realism. Perhaps the most archetypal example of an Expressionistic work is painter Edvard Munch's The Scream in 1893.
One can easily see the lineage of Munch's painting to a film like The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. The distorted skies and distressed expressivity of the foregrounded figure in The Scream can be easily mapped on to the asymmetrical sets and wide-eyed facial expressions of Robert Wiene's film. However, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, oriented as it was in the German film world of 1920, is more specifically connected to German Expressionism, which was particularly tied to Berlin in the years after WWI. Throughout the 1910s and 1920s, German Expressionist films—such as From Morn to Midnight, The Golem: How He Came into the World, Nosferatu, Phantom, and The Last Laugh—were contextualized by their release in the politically-isolated Germany. While the Expressionist movement was affecting the whole of Europe, encouraging artists to follow bolder threads of inspiration and embrace the unrealistic, German Expressionism developed its own course, due in large part to its seclusion. By 1916, following WWI, Germany had banned any films from other countries, so there was a huge increase in domestic film production. Many films were released which typified the political disillusionment and alienation felt by the country at this time. The topics explored included isolation, alienation, madness, betrayal.
As WWII erupted in Germany, and Nazis took control of the government, many German Expressionist filmmakers fled the country. Robert Wiene, the director of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, was himself Jewish and had his film Taifun banned by the Nazi party. He fled to Budapest, then to London, and finally to Paris. Other German filmmakers fled to the United States, where they were embraced by the rapidly growing institution of Hollywood. The styles of the German Expressionists influenced two American film genres in particular: horror and film noir. The legacy of Expressionism can be seen in the works of Billy Wilder, Otto Preminger, Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, and others. Unique camera angles, unusual sets, and stark lighting schemes in American films of the early 20th century owe much of their inspiration to the groundbreaking principles of German Expressionism.
