Quartile rating: 8/10 · 1 rating
Francis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a landmark of German Expressionism and cinema history, its wildly distorted, angular sets and painted shadows creating a visual language that remains utterly distinctive over a century later — cinematography earns a clear 4. The film's twist ending, introducing the unreliable narrator device to cinema in a startling way, is genuinely ahead of its time and earns a 4. Novelty is unquestionably a 4: no film before or since looks or feels quite like it, and it essentially invented an entire aesthetic tradition. Plot and acting, however, are products of their era — the narrative is relatively thin by modern standards and the pantomime-heavy silent acting, while effective for its form, reads as stylized rather than nuanced, both sitting at 3.