Dr. Caligari Film Summary/Questions

 

1. The story is about a man named Dr. Caligari and his assistant Cesare coming into town and having a presentation of sorts at the local fair.  Soon after, murders begin to occur in the town.  The story is told by a man named Francis, who tries to figure out the reason behind all the murders.

2. The story is told through Francis' perspective as he narrates the entire thing, as the camera focuses on him whenever he's on screen.  The story is told mostly in the past, with it going back to the present occasionally.

3. The film uses a lot of darker lighting, as well as keeping the information the audience gets about the plot to a minimum, in order to give the film a more scary tone, and to build suspense as the film progresses.  This gives the film a more horror film vibe.

4. The final plot twist is that Francis ends up being a patient at an insane asylum.  From how I interpret it, it seems that he was the insane one the whole time, and the film made it sound like the story he told was some type of insanity condition of some sort.

5. The twist shows how films can skew an audience's perspective of a film based on one character's point of view of the story, and then be told at the end that that character's perspective was skewed.  The twist leaves the audience's interpretation of the film up to them, as it seems like they were told the same story from two different views.

6. The sets used in this film looked like the sets of a play.  It showed that filmmakers didn't have much to work with when it came to set design or set spacing, as a lot of the shots in the film looked pretty narrow, and the special effects were nothing to write home about either.

7. The set designs imply that this film was meant to be a little more scary, a little more eerie, and that the film was to have a darker tone.  The sets also look pretty good for their time.

8. For it's time, the film itself is pretty solid, and it was interesting to see the set design of a 1920 film and how much different set designs are in movies over 100 years later.  It also paved the way for other, more modern horror films to be made.

9. Caligari gives me a similar vibe to the movie American Psycho (2000), not necessarily from a plot perspective, but from a more psychological perspective, dealing with the idea of insanity, and how much it can change the perspective of certain events based on if the audience believed if it happened or not.

10. It makes you question if these events happened or not, or if certain events happened in the story and others didn't.  By leaving the film up to the audience's interpretation, it can really change the viewpoints on the story of the film, and/or the film itself.