The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

 The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari 

The story   

    The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is about Francis and his friend Alan meeting a man named Caligari. Caligari shows off Cesare who can see the future and predicts that Alan will die. When this comes true, Cesare is suspected to have killed Alan for foretelling his death. The story then goes into whether he murdered Alan.

    Throughout the film they use expressionism with a bit of realism to tell the story. The story is strongly taken after WW1 with the fear, depression, and uncertainty for its inspiration. The perspective we are given is by a patient of an asylum. His worldview is distorted and dark thus we see this. By using dark colors and harsh makeup to accentuate their expressions and the use of shapes and small places to make it feel claustrophobic. This is seen in scenes by cutting the room in half and having different levels to depict depth in a weird way that is off putting.  

    The title cards are what gives us the dialogs in this silent film, but the music is what sets the tone for each scene. It flows with the movie well by increasing in scenes of stress. By the end of the movie, it shows the change in atmosphere caused by the environment becoming more fixed to reality with even shapes and normal proportions. Followed by brighter colors of yellow. The plot twist at the end closes the story by answering the question at the beginning of the movie.

Study Questions

- 1 & 2. How does the film tell its story? 
    It tells its story through the viewpoint of a man in an insane asylum.  
 
- 3. What conventions of cinematic storytelling does it use? 
    The frame story tells a flashback of what Francis' perception of reality is and expressionist architecture shows distortion all throughout the film. 
 
- 4 & 5. Explain the final "plot twist." and cinematic storytelling? 
    It was all a delusion that Francis had. They are inmates in an asylum and Dr. Caligari was the director. This is shown throughout the film's designs that show unproportional rooms, weirdly shaped windows, and old hallways. This shows the distortion/insanity of Francis.  

- 6 & 7. Early designs showed the creativity of early filmmaking and storytelling using surreal design.
    They did not have CGI, so the best was structuring the set to tell a story through action.  

- 8. How do the answers to questions 6 and 7 move us to contemplate the cultural relevance of this film? 
    The cultural relevance of this film is inspired by the post WW1 era in Germany.  

- 9. If you had to think about a more modern, 20th century film with traces to Caligari, what would they be? Why? 
    Movies inspired by Caligari are Tim Burton Scissorhands, Beetlejuice, and Corpse Bride. Because of the use of dark tones, funny/dark humor, and deeper meaning in the film

- 10. How do questions about the reliability of a narrator suggest meanings, cultural relevance, and the nature of film?
    It makes the viewer think of what the narrator is really trying to say in their film. It can help a viewer better understand or completely confuse them to make them second guess their understanding for a better conclusion on their part. 

Suspense (1913)

Suspense 1913

The story   

In the first opening scene it shows a woman, the housekeeper seeming distressed as she leaves a note and the key by the door. She takes one look out the keyhole of the room where Weber is left carrying for her child all by herself. This is emphasized by how small the keyhole is when it narrows down the field of view onto the lonely mother and her infant. As she leaves a man or tramp as they call him is outside looking in through the windows of the house. As he is searching for a way in, the mother sees the tramp. The fear both have is evident on their faces when they discover each other. It then cuts to a three-way split in the screen showing the tramp finding the key by the door, the wife frantically telling her husband he is breaking in, and the husband finally understanding. This scene leaves off showing that the tramp makes his way in and as the wife is giving updates the tramp cuts the telephone line. Thus, putting her husband in the dark. When the tramp makes his way in, he does not go for the wife, instead he goes for the food. Displaying that he is a human falling to his basic needs of sustainment.  

Meanwhile, the husband is speeding to get to his wife, and he is being chased by the police. It shows the police in the rear-view mirror gaining on him which emphasizes the stress the husband is under. The husband is so stressed looking back for the police that he hits a person on the road to his house. Further, the tramp is searching the house for valuables but makes his way to the wife's barricaded door. Here he breaks in and goes for the wife. The husband, still being chased by the police, makes his way into the house, and saves his wife. The police see the tramp and finally understand the full situation.  

Suspense shows the average life of most families then and today. The mother typically is the stay-at-home mother while the husband is the breadwinner and goes to work every day. This leaves the wife alone in the house to take care of their child. This film follows this and uses it to build the suspense of what if someone breaks in. Louis Weber builds the fear a mother would experience in this situation through the camera angles that are suffocating, the three-way split screen of events unfolding in real time, and the chase of getting home in time.

Intro

     Hi, my name is Dakota Drew. I'm a sophomore from San Antonio Texas. I am also on the wrestling team, an Army cadet, and study Sociology. I came to North Central because of the great coaching staff and team. In my free time I like exploring new places outdoors like hiking and camping. I really like movies and I'm hoping to get a better understanding of scenes, plot, and the different ways of filmmaking! 

    I like mostly scary movies, but it is a struggle for me because a lot of horror films follow the same structure for jump scares and lead ups which are not scary or entertaining. I like good plots or ambiguity for these movies because the human mind can make it scarier when you let it wander. A few movies that I really like are So above, So below by John Erick Dowdle which has a pretty good plot. Another is Hereditary and Midsummer by Ari Aster, which both have good plots that doesn't give you all the answers in the first watch.   
 
    A few movies I want to see are Avatar: The Way of the Water by James Cameron and Everything Everywhere All at once by Daniel Kwan. A movie I'm planning to watch now is Pulse (2001) by Kiyoshi Kurosawa which is a scary movie. Kurosawa also directed Seven Samurai which inspired the Magnificent Seven (1960). From what I have seen in trailers and reviews it's a slower paced movie with more emphasis on frames, interpretation, and symbolism. It tells its story through the lens of Japan's main issue of sadness and isolation for their population.