Inside History: A History of Film (Sample)

A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
There is nothing better than a trip to the movies. The chance to lose
yourself in a story and in doing so, forgetting about the world outside
of the cinema. That is the joy that we, as the viewer, get. But what
about the other side of the camera? Each film that we see has its own
history. Each star that we admire have their own stories to tell. This
issue of Inside History takes you behind the scenes of some of your
favourite movies.
We have tried to cover as much as we could but the history of the
movies is far from a straight forward one. For this reason we have
opted to cover some of the main points of the history of movie
making. From genres, the evolution of design and make-up to films
that made the most impact in the history of film and the stars that
made the screen shine.
Along the way we will introduce you to pioneering film directors and
show you how film and the art of propaganda went hand in hand. We
will explore how one of cinema's greatest icons took on an overempowering
studio system that controlled them. How the art of the
make-up artist changed cinema forever and how two notes of a film's
score can invoke terror, even 46 years after it was first heard. All of
which are visionaries in their own rights and all have cemented
themselves in their medium's rich and colourful history.
Some things have been left on the cutting room floor. As with
anything, sometimes time simply runs out. But from A Trip to the
Moon or a stay at Bates Motel, I hope that what we have chosen to
cover will take you on the many twists and turns of any great movie
script.
N I C K K E V E R N
Editor-in-Chief
A HISTORY OF
FILM
21
INSIDE
HISTORY
EDITOR
N I C K K E V E R N
DEPUTY EDITOR
H36
A N N A H P R I N G L E
DESIGN
N K D M E D I A
CONTRIBUTORS
Tom Daly
Dr. Daryn Egan-Simon
Niall Groome
Vince Guerrieri
David James
Nick Kevern
Hannah Pringle
Olivia Richardson
Don Stradley
Merryn Walters
Charlotte White
Beth Wyatt
IMAGES
Alamy
Bundesarchiv
The Hollywood Archive
Marine Corps Archives and
Special Collections
PictureLux
PxHere
Pikrepo
Pixabay
Unsplash
Wikimedia Commons
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INSIDE
THIS ISSUE
06
08
12
15
18
22
26
The Lumière Brothers & the birth of Cinema
Inside History
Georges Méliès: A Trip to the Moon
Hannah Pringle & Niall Groome
FLORENCE LAWRENCE: THE SILENT STAR WHO RETURNED
FROM THE DEAD
Beth Wyatt
The CABINET of DR. CALIGARI
Merryn Walters
LON CHANEY: THE MAN OF A THOUSAND FACES
Don Stradley
HOW WARNER BROTHERS CHANGED CINEMA FOREVER
Vince Guerrieri
STAN LAUREL WAS NO CHARLIE CHAPLIN – HE WAS FAR FUNNIER
David James
34
38
42
46
50
54
LENI RIEFENSTAHL: Germany's most
controversial film director
Olivia Richardson
Casablanca: THE GREATEST WAR MOVIE EVER
MADE?
Charlotte White
Disney’s animated Propaganda films during
World War Two.
Dr Daryn Egan-Simon
HOW IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE WENT FROM BOX OFFICE
FLOP TO FESTIVE HIT
Nick Kevern
EALING STUDIOS: THE SMALL STUDIO THAT MADE A
BIG IMPRESSION
Tom Daly
HOW MARILYN MONROE TOOK ON THE STUDIO
SYSTEM...AND WON
Nick Kevern
28
FRANKENSTEIN AT 90: WHALE, PIERCE, KARLOFF AND
THE MAKING OF AN HORROR ICON
Nick Kevern
58
ALFRED HITCHCOCK & THE MAKING OF PSYCHO
Hannah Pringle

INSIDE
HISTORY

THE BIRTH OF CINEMA
The Lumière
Brothers & the
birth of Cinema
Words: Inside History
On the 28th of December 1895, something amazing was
about to happen. Louis and Auguste Lumiere may not have
known it at the time but they were about to make history.
Selling tickets for their new film about everyday life in France,
the two brothers already felt that were on to something that
would alter the course of people’s lives forever.
In March that year, they had already shown what their new
invention was capable of. It was a simple scene showing
workers leaving their factory after a days work. These moving
images were filmed by a simple device. The Cinematographe
didn’t just show moving pictures, it also could film the live
action wherever it was placed. A camera, that with a simple
tweek could also act a projector. It would be the birth of
motion pictures as we know it today.
The Lumiere Brothers were not the first to try to make images
move. In the 1830’s Joseph Plateau of Belgium and Simon
Stampfer of Austria simultaneously developed a device called
the Phenakistoscope. The Pheanakistoscope uesd a spinning
disk where series of images could be placed. By spinning the
wheel these images gave the illusion of movement. Thomas
Edison would also become involved in the quest to make
images move. He would develop the Kinetoscope which
would allow one person to watch a short film through the
machine’s peephole. Yet, all of these inventions were
designed for individual use. What the Lumiere Brothers had
developed would bring film to a mass audience.
Now an auditorium full of people would gasp as the Brothers
showed their first ever movie. To the audience at the time,
what they were seeing before their very eyes was
mindblowing.
The Lumiere brothers. Auguste (left) and Louis (right)
06 INSIDE HISTORY

The Lumière
Brothers & the
birth of Cinema
Whilst what was filmed produced no sound, piano
accompaniment would be used to fill the void. One scene in
particular caused a panic. The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat
might not sound like the first horror film produced, and
indeed it was not. However to the audience it felt like it could
be. As the train arrived at the station before their eyes there
was panic and terror with some of the audience believing that
the train was coming straight for them.
Soon, the experience would be felt across the world as the
Brothers opened Cinématographe theatres in London,
Brussels, Belgium and New York. The camera would be sold
to aspiring film makers who in turn would learn more about
the Lumiere’s device. The would take film-making to other
levels beyond the train station but in what the brothers had
created they had done more than simply develop a new
camera. In opening theatres and producing a device that was
mobile, light and also acted as a projector...they had just
created what we call today, Cinema.
Cinematographe Camera mode projection invented by The Lumière Brothers
INSIDE HISTORY 07

MELIES
GEORGES
MELIES: A TRIP
TO THE MOON
(1902)
Words: Hannah Pringle & Niall Groome
08 INSIDE HISTORY

As one of the greatest pioneers of the film industry, George
Méliès was the first to explore the realm of fantasy and fiction
in narrative film. As a well-established French illusionist, he
took an experimental approach to the new world of cinema,
making use of innovative editing tricks and optical illusions to
create special effects, never imagined on film. He paved the
way for narrative film with the creation of his most successful
film, the iconic Le Voyage dans la Lune / A Trip to the Moon
(1902).
A Trip to the Moon is a 14-minute narrative film, which follows
a group of scientists as they embark upon their expedition to
the moon. The black and white film was produced on a
budget of ₣10,000 and favoured wide camera angles to give
the impression of a theatre performance. It is no surprise,
considering Méliès background, that this silent film was
intended to be accompanied by a narrator and musical
special effects at the discretion of the exhibitor.
Professor Barbenfouillis – played by Méliès – first approaches
a room of astronomers dressed in clothing, which resemble
that of a magician. When sharing his ideas on the board via a
diagram of a capsule being launched from earth, a discussion
erupts and only a small group agree to join him. As the
scientists embark on their journey, they are fired from a
canon and crash directly into the eye of the Man in the Moon.
This iconic scene remains an important part of cinematic
history as it demonstrates how Méliès was able to manipulate
the camera with the use of special effects.
Shortly after arriving on the moon, the group settle down and
begin to experience an array of dreams. They wake to a storm
caused by Phoebe, Goddess of the Moon, and begin to
explore the unusual vegetation growing around them. As they
venture around the new world, they are confronted and
eventually captured by a group of indigenous beings - the
Selenites. They are taken to the leader and proceed to use
violence to escape capture. Upon their descent, a Selenite
clings to the capsule. As the scientists return to Earth, they
are greeted by a celebratory crowd as the Selenite is paraded
around and abused with the use of ropes and sticks.
Méliès knew his audience and used the contemporary
attitudes surrounding science, exploration, and colonisation
to create a visual narrative people would enjoy and loosely
understand. His time as an anti-Boulangist cartoonist for
L’Illusionnise and Passez Muscade magic magazines surely
influenced the satirical nature of the film.
Méliès immediately became interested in film as a medium
upon the invention of the cinématographe by the Lumière
brothers in 1895, allowing films to be projected to audiences
for the first time. Méliès was among the attendees as the
brothers held a private demonstration of their invention at
their Parisian home on 28th December 1895. He was
infatuated by the possibilities that it presented and
promptly offered to buy one of the machines. The brothers
wanted to keep control of their invention for the time being
but Méliès was hooked and set about finding another
projector for his theatre. He managed to purchase a more
rudimentary animatograph from British film pioneer Robert
W. Paul, which he then modified to also function as a film
camera.
Early films typically displayed documentary-style snippets of
everyday life and didn’t run longer than a couple of minutes.
Méliès initially started to experiment with the same type of
film, as he began shooting and screening films at his theatre -
Théâtre Robert-Houdin - in 1896. He quickly began to
show an affinity for spectacle and fantasy with some of his
INSIDE HISTORY 09

Georges Méliès (far left) in his original Star-Film studio in
Montreuil, near Paris, France
early films, where he started to experiment with illusions
and camera tricks such as dissolving scene cuts,
superimposition, and many practical effects. His most
notable trick, substitution splicing, was allegedly
discovered by accident after a camera jam whilst filming
on a Parisian street; an illusion cleverly demonstrated
throughout A Trip to the Moon to make various objects
transform or disappear.
Méliès initially struggled to market A Trip to the Moon due
to its unusually high cost for the time. It consisted of 260
metres of film, which was 3x longer than the short clips
being produced by the Lumière brothers and Thomas
Edison. This naturally came with a high production cost
involving intricate set designs, costumes, and the 3
months it took to film. Méliès agreed to lend a copy to a
carnival exhibitor for free to trial it to audiences and it
was met with great applause. The exhibitor immediately
purchased the film, which went on to be a major
international success.
This success was not without problems, as several
producers in the United States – including Thomas
Edison – reproduced the film and sold it as their own.
Méliès responded by expanding his Star Film Company,
establishing an office in New York City. His brother,
Gaston, worked to discourage piracy and the
extortionate profits made at Méliès’ expense.
Méliès had several years of continued success before
fading into obscurity. He struggled with the quickly
evolving methods of film distribution, made poor
financial decisions, and was faced with the onset of
World War I. During the war, Méliès’ film stocks were
occupied by the French military, who melted them down
for silver. Remaining copies were sold cheaply to secondhand
outlets or discarded as his theatre was demolished
in 1923. In the same year, Méliès burned the negatives
for the film out of frustration. This devastating time
caused him to withdraw from film completely.
Journalist Georges-Michel Coissac sparked a revival in
Méliès work towards the late 1920s, as he was finally
recognised for his revolutionary contributions to cinema.
Louis Lumière awarded him the Knight of the Legion of
Honour in 1931 and named him “the creator of
cinematic spectacle”. Incomplete copies started to
emerge around this time, and in 1997 a complete
version was finally reconstructed. In 2011, a full
restoration of a hand-coloured print was completed and
featured in the Martin Scorsese film Hugo (2011). This
centred around the life of Méliès and paid homage to the
remarkable impact that he made at the beginning of
cinematic history.
10 INSIDE HISTORY

THE "BIOGRAPH" GIRL
FLORENCE
LAWRENCE: THE
SILENT STAR
WHO RETURNED
FROM THE DEAD
Words: Beth Wyatt
In February 1910, American newspapers reported on a tragic
event which stunned movie fans. The Canadian actress
Florence Lawrence, a star of the silent film industry, had been
killed in a road accident. Lawrence’s untimely death was a
huge blow to her many followers, who had admired the
actress through her ‘Biograph Girl’ days into the phase of her
career where she became known by her real identity. You can
only imagine their surprise when Lawrence appeared in St
Louis the following month, very alive and well, having
previously read about her own death in a New York
newspaper. The star’s manager, Carl Laemmle, had
orchestrated the ‘accident’ as a publicity stunt and it was a
roaring success from his point of view, helping to cement
Lawrence’s popularity and status as the first motion picture
celebrity. But for the actress herself, these events were not
such a happy occasion.
While it wasn’t a given that Florence Annie Bridgwood, of
Hamilton, Ontario, would shine on the screen, acting was in
her blood. Her mother Charlotte Bridgwood – known by the
stage name Lotta Lawrence – was a talented actress in the
theatre, both manager and star of the Lawrence Dramatic
Company. Florence had early exposure to treading the
boards, engaging in routines with her mother and playing
speaking roles when she was old enough. Her first taste of
motion pictures came in her early twenties, when Florence –
often known as Flo – appeared with her mother in the Edison
Company short Daniel Boone, or Pioneer Days in America
(1907) and Vitagraph’s The Shaughraun, an Irish Romance
(1907). These were to be the beginnings of a career which
would span more than 250 movies, encompassing genres
from romantic comedy, and slapstick comedy, to society
dramas, and literary adaptations. At Vitagraph, Lawrence
began to display her huge talent and versatility. While
definitive proof of many of her roles at the studio has not
survived, as the historian Kelly Brown has noted, she was
quite possibly in productions of Macbeth and Julius Caesar,
and may have played important female roles including
Cleopatra, Salome, and Juliet in Shakespeare’s Romeo and
Juliet.
But it was her work at the American Mutoscope and Biograph
Company from 1908 which would propel Lawrence to fame.
Having accepted a salary of $25 a week – $10 a week more
than her contract at Vitagraph – the actress went on to star in
the majority of the 60 shorts directed by D.W. Griffith in 1908,
and became a familiar face to audiences through the Mr. and
Mrs. Jones comedy shorts from 1909. While there would be
competition at Biograph from other stars including Mary
Pickford – who film critic Helen O’Hara has described as
writing “the rule book on being a movie star,” – Lawrence was
able to enjoy regular work. One of her critically lauded parts
was as Katusha opposite Arthur V. Johnson’s Dimitri in a
production of Leo Tolstoy’s The Resurrection, released on 9
May 1909. As Brown has discussed, a review in Moving
Picture World gave high praise indeed: “[…] And then the
acting of the leading woman and the prince – how fine and
tragic the former is! How excellent the latter! We do not know
the lady’s name, but certainly she seems to us to have a very
fine command of her emotions and to be able to express
12 INSIDE HISTORY

INSIDE HISTORY 13

these emotions before such an unemotional thing as a
camera. A very ordinary person indeed can act before a
crowded house of interested men and women, but it
takes a genius to do so with real feeling on a moving
picture stage.”
In her work, Lawrence was billed as the ‘Biograph Girl’,
following the practice of anonymity whereby stars were
known by the names of the studios they were contracted
to. Florence Turner, who was in the ascendancy at a
similar time to Lawrence, was, for example, the
‘Vitagraph Girl’. After her fans clamoured to know her
real name, Lawrence became the first major star to be
identified, and soon the actress was able to command
twice the usual Biograph salary.
Upon later joining Carl Laemmle’s Independent Motion
Picture Company (IMP), the actress became embroiled in
the infamous publicity stunt, which led her to make
history once again as the subject of the first ever film
publicity tour. Laemmle timed the truth of his own lie
about Lawrence’s death to the release of her latest
project. On 25 March 1910, the star was paraded in St
Louis with another actor, King Baggot. Crowds – who had
been warmed up by Laemmle’s publicity blitz in the local
newspapers – rushed towards Lawrence, in one version
of events pulling at her dress and ripping off its buttons.
The actress was caught up in the crush and was said to
have become disturbed and frightened. This all came
after the bizarre experience of reading about her own
death in a newspaper. In her autobiography Growing Up
with the Movies – serialised in four issues of Photoplay
between November 1914 and February 1915 – Lawrence
described this as “the most astounding adventure of my
life […] half-consciously I glanced at the paper and was
startled to see several likenesses of myself staring me in
the face, topped by a flamboyant headline announcing
my tragic end beneath the wheels of a speeding motor
car. To say that I was stunned would be putting it
mildly”. She added: “I shall never forget that trip to St.
Louis. It simply overwhelmed me.”
After working at IMP for almost a year, making about 50
films, Lawrence collaborated with other studios including
the Victor Company, which she founded with her
husband Harry Solter in 1912, with support from
Laemmle. In another first, the company was one of the
earliest in America to be led by a woman. But Victor
would only last for a few years, and Lawrence’s career
was beginning to stall. Her difficulties were compounded
by ill mental and physical health. This included an on-set
accident during filming for Pawns of Destiny in spring
1914. Solter – who also worked in film, including
directing his wife in multiple productions – tasked her
with a scene in which she carried her male co-star down
a flight of stairs, as part of a narrative where their
characters were affected by a fire. While the nature of
Lawrence’s injuries is unclear, it appears she sustained a
Bioscope actress Florence Lawrence, c. 1908. (Public Domain)
back injury from the stunt. Not long afterwards, the
couple’s volatile marriage fell apart, and they instigated
divorce proceedings in 1916, following a previous split in
1912. Solter would fall ill in the spring of 1920, and
he died after experiencing a severe stroke. Lawrence
remarried twice, to automobile salesman and former
soldier Charles B. Woodring, and the physically abusive
Henry Bolton, who she divorced after a few months of
marriage.
The former star’s attempts to resurrect her career during
the 1920s foundered, with efforts including having
cosmetic surgery on her nose seeming to have little
effect. Lawrence branched out into business, opening
Hollywood Cosmetics with Woodring, and assisting her
mother with her own entrepreneurial ideas. Both sides
attempted to capitalise on Lawrence’s once brightly held
fame, as Brown has discussed. Hollywood Cosmetics’
range included products with the actress’s image on the
cover, and Lotta Lawrence drew on her daughter’s
career in marketing materials for her ventures. But the
business world proved to be as tough to crack as the
movies, and Lawrence was forced to return to vaudeville
shows. In the mid-1930s, she was able to gain some
work in the ‘Talkies’, making $75 dollars a week for small
parts at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Just a few years later, in
late December 1938, Lawrence died. She had taken her
own life at the age of 52. The American media paid little
attention – as the historian Greg Jenner has noted, the
public only cared when Florence Lawrence died the first
time. The actress’s legacy has been one of obscurity,
alleviated to an extent by the efforts of film scholars. But
as the first major film celebrity, star of hundreds of silent
films, and a producer and studio founder in her own
right, she deserves a place in Hollywood history.
14 INSIDE HISTORY

T H E
C A B I N E T
O F
D R . C A L I G A R I
Words: Merryn Walters
Images: Flickr
WikiMedia
Some films make history. Others
predict it. You don’t have to be a fan
of horror films to appreciate the
enduring influence of The Cabinet of
Dr. Caligari. It is dark and it is deep.
Delightfully macabre. Indeed, the
innovative mise-en-scène of this early
silent movie saw the fairer sex
fainting in the aisles when it was first
released in 1919. Today though,
Robert Wiene’s classic is also seen as
a prophetic metaphor for the acts of
the far right in the first half of the
20th century – but don’t drop your
popcorn, let’s start with the plot.
10 INSIDE HISTORY

The film opens with a subtle framing
device – for which the German language
has a most glorious term,
Rahmenerzählun – and we are
introduced to our protagonist, Francis, as
the narrator of events. We then meet
Alan, and the embedded story starts to
unfold as the two friends are shown
visiting the annual travelling fair. They
meet a performing mystic, the
eponymous Dr. Caligari, and Cesare, his
sleepwalking, fortune-telling sidekick – a
somnambulist or somniloquist.
From a trance-like state for a pfennig or
two, Cesare will shuffle forward and
answer the audience’s most pressing
questions about the future. Alan asks:
“How long will I live?”
The unexpected and frankly alarming
response, “Until dawn…” turns out to be
entirely prophetic. This leads to
escalating anxiety for everyone in the
village, and not surprisingly makes
Cesare a prime suspect for Alan’s demise
the next day. Simple but effective. More
murder ensues.
However, is Cesare guilty of these
crimes? Or should we blame evil Dr.
Caligari, controlling the sleepwalker,
intentionally directing the monstrous
acts? The curtain lifts on analogies that
should be clear to all. Still, there’s a lot to
unpack here. This is German
expressionism at its finest.
B E H O L D , T H E D A R K A R T S
In the early 1920s, Germany was
beyond broken and demoralised. Four
years of horror had culminated in
national shame, isolation and
exhaustion, and political and financial
discord were the order of the day for
the new Weimar Republic (Germany’s
government from 1919 to 1933). With
some degree of irony though, the
German film industry wasn’t doing too
badly. A ban on imports of foreign
cinema had been the catalyst for
domestic creativity, leading to an
increase in the output of films. At the
same time, the visual arts had become
both an outlet and a mirror for social
unease during the interwar period,
and the result was a cinematic
interpretation of German
expressionism – a movement that
emerged against a backdrop of
economic hardship, post-traumatic
stress, suppressed identity and
isolation. This was brutal. There was
nothing subtle or gentle about it.
German expressionism emphasized
those darkest, most painful inner
feelings. In both art and film, madness,
insanity and betrayal were common
subjects. The film movement
itself was best characterised by the
aesthetics of expressionism – jagged,
geometric shapes and symbolism that
graphically externalized the inner
psyche. Stage sets and backdrops
brought warped representations of
reality to life through which the actors
moved with exaggerated, tragic pace.
However, this commitment to brutal
artistic direction wasn’t all by choice.
Cinematography may have been
gathering momentum towards its
heyday, but German film-makers
simply could not afford to spend
money on exquisite costumes, or the
elaborate stage sets that had started
appearing in Hollywood.
Rather than film on location, footage
was often shot on a closed set, making
no attempt to obscure the fact a
performance took place on stage.
Classic moments from this film
show Caligari walking slowly towards
the camera, the outline of his cloak in
perfect alignment with staged
doorjambs that give us the impression
of a warped, rhomboid doorway. An
amber tint removes all doubt about the
emotionless intent of the deranged
protagonist (Caligari wasn’t shot in
colour, but the celluloid film was
soaked in green, yellow, and blue dye
with hand-drawn interstitial captions
appearing in a bizarre, ethereal font).
The effect at the time was chilling and
has had a profound impact on art
direction ever since.
Have you ever enjoyed the disturbed
gothic visions of Tim Burton or mused
on Wes Anderson’s eccentricities and
colourful, organised symmetries? Then
you’ve witnessed the next generations
of German expressionism. When it
came to communicating emotions, the
simplicity of this aesthetic was an ideal
medium for connecting with the
audience. A perfect way to reflect the
dark mood of the day.
Psychologically, civilians were living in
the shadow of internecine warfare, the
insanity of conflict that – for many of
the population – had seemed to have
no clear moral or political objective. A
malaise had settled everywhere, and
the subliminal questions about
Caligari’s projected culpability
resonated strongly with the audience.
They did then, they have done ever
since.
A T W A R W I T H C I N E M A
On film, Cesare is the abject
manifestation of a catatonic population
that’s destined to enact the will of an
authoritarian figure. And at this point,
reflective cinema-goers might ask
themselves, “is this art reflecting life, or
life reflecting art?”
In his book, ‘The Great War and
Modern Memory’ the literary historian
Paul Fussell explores the idea that
bloody conflict is such a liminal
experience, it may only be the act
of pretence or fictitious recall that
makes it bearable.
The phrase, ‘theatre of war’ takes on a
whole new meaning. Soldiers cannot
articulate the reasons why they take
part in perverse and cruel acts until
they hypothesise their participation as
an act of submission to others will,
rather than murderous exertions of
their own intent – Caligari and Cesare,
incarnate.
Fussell draws from Freud’s insights:
“We cannot, indeed, imagine our own
death; whenever we try to do so we
find that we survive ourselves as
spectators ,” and then he
continues, ‘it is impossible for a
participant to believe that he is taking
part in such murderous proceedings in
his own character’. It comes as no
surprise to discover that the film’s
scriptwriters, Hans Janowitz and Carl
Mayer, had both suffered traumatic
experiences before and during the war.
Janowitz had seen a murderer escape
from the scene of his crime – a
Hamburg fairground – in 1913. Mayer
had an unhappy childhood and had
16 INSIDE HISTORY

spent time in the care of an army psychiatrist whom he
heartily disliked. Both men empathised with each other’s
views on authority and obedience when they saw a
hypnotised strong man performing huge feats of strength
at a fair; acting out, without control. It’s easy to see how
Caligari and Cesare came to life from both their
imaginations and their first-hand experiences.
Still, while war in the abstract is horrific, and the
manifestation of a fascist figurehead through the medium
of German expressionism is no less abhorrent, it was
somehow … transiently tolerable. This film became an
accessible, remote exposition of the psychological reality
for soldiers, survivors and surrogates of war – first-hand,
they had all experienced conflict as order through chaos,
and culpability as a complex concept. First-hand, everyone
in the audience had already been subject to the effects of
an unassailable, fascist authority on a passive population.
However, there is a twist in the tale. In the final scenes, our
protagonist – the narrator, Francis – is revealed to be a
patient in an asylum, and the director of the asylum –
Caligari – is treating him for hallucinations. Caligari looks to
the camera, the audience draws breath, and the mad
doctor’s final words appear on screen, “Now I also know
how to cure him!” This heinous denouement absolves
Caligari from the responsibility of his work and, at the
same time, continues to manifest him as the authoritarian
figure from whom there is no escape. It’s enough to make
you order more popcorn.
Conrad Veidt – talented actor, acting as a murderous
somnambulist
D R A M A T I C , H O R R I F I C , P R O P H E T I C
There is little wonder, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is revered
as a seminal work for the cinematographic arts. Its
aesthetic alone has influenced countless films. But it is also
seen as a profound, prophetic commentary on the
potential to manipulate people. Indeed, in his book, “From
Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of German Film”,
the sociologist Siegfried Kracauer sees this film as a key
reference for the evolution of the far right: the core
pathology of fascism is a cultural perversion that sees a
population become subservient in the extreme.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was a silent classic. The
audience depended on interstitial captions for
momentum. Let’s give Kracauer the final word: “To
understand today’s society, one must hear the confessions
of the products of its film industries. They are all blabbing a
rude secret, without really wanting to.” Watch this film, see
its hidden meaning. Don’t hide behind the sofa.
Merryn Walters is a writer and military historian. Her work often looks at the
persuasive influence of language in war. Merryn is undertaking an MA at the
University of Wolverhampton and is the Communications Director for the
International Guild of Battlefield Guides.
Learn more about the making of
The Cabinet of Dr.Caligari by
visiting our selection of Film History
books at our online bookshop
INSIDE HISTORY 17