The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Set in the German mountain village of Holstenwall, the film opens with a story related by Francis about his fiancée Jane his friend Alan, beginning when Francis and Alan met Dr. Caligari at a carnival. Caligari’s exhibit at this carnival, a prophetic somnambulist, Cesare, predicts Alan’s death. Caligari orders Ceasare to kill Jane but he is captivated by her beauty and cannot harm her. Instead, he abducts her.
As the prime suspect in Alan’s murder, Cesare flees the pursuing villagers, finally falling to his death. Caligari leaves a dummy in Cesare’s place and disappears as well. It is up to Francis to track Caligari down and we learn that Dr. Caligari may not have been a travelling magician afterall, for he works as the director of a mental asylum from which he hypnotized Cesare to commit murders.
With the help of one of Caligari’s colleagues, Francis learns that the doctor harbours an obsession with the life of a former Doctor Caligari that used a sleep-walking killer as part of his travelling act. Confronted with the death of his own Cesare, Caligari has an emotional and mental breakdown, during which he confesses his manic obsession and goes from running the asylum to imprisonment therein.
The film ends with a twist that suggests Francis’ story may have been his fancy. Cesare is alive and Caligari is Francis’ doctor, who after hearing about this delusion, suggests a cure. The script was written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer, who based the story on their recollections of a notorious Hamburg sex murder and an unsympathetic military psychiatrist. The unmasking of Caligari can therefore be read as anti-authoritarian, although there have been varied interpretations of this film.