In today's lecture, we watched the Cabinet of Dr Caligari. It is a silent film (Dubbed with music) from 1919. It was directed by Robert Wiene, a German director, whose films had a large affect on Early German (and worldwide) cinema. The first few minutes of the film I felt were quite awkward, as I had to adjust to watch the actor's expressions and movements to follow the story, as there was no dialogue. After the first few scenes I got more aquainted with it, and felt I could understand the story just fine, doing off the captions and actions.


After getting over the grim idea that the film was created when my Great Grandfather was a child, and that every person on screen died decades ago,I started to quite enjoy the story. It was quite a creepy and horror-filled plot, and although the technology was very early, i thought it still managed to be quite frightening and gripping. The main reason Phil showed us this film was because of the set design and enviroment, which I thought was very well done in most parts, and gave the film a quite eery feeling.

I was also surprised that the film was created when it was, less than two years after the end of the First World War, when Germany couldn't have been very enthusiastic about anything, let alone cinema.