Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		5.0

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov October 1, 2014

Robert Wiene's "Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari" a.k.a. "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Eureka Entertainment. The supplemental features on the disc include new trailer for the recent restoration of the film; new video essay by critic David Cairns; audio commentary by film historian David Kalat; Rudiger Suchsland's documentary film "Caligari: The Birth of Horror in the First World War"; and more. The release also arrives with an illustrated booklet featuring Lotte H. Eisner's essay "The Beginning of the Expressionist Film" and Variety's original review of the film. With German intertitles and optional English subtitles. Region-B "locked".

The beginning

The film has a rather puzzling plot. It begins with a fascinating conversation between two men who seem to be recalling their past. In the middle of their conversation, a beautiful woman in a white gown emerges from the shadows and slowly approaches them.

Rather abruptly, the action now moves to a small German town. At the local fair, Dr. Caligari (Werner Krauss) introduces to the excited crowd his somnambulist, Cesare (Conrad Veidt), who sleeps in a coffin and can predict the future. Cesare has a long, unusually pale, and genuinely unsettling face.

Amongst the spectators are Francis (Friedrich Feher) and his good friend Alain (Hans Heinz von Twardowski), who wants to know when he will die. Cesare indifferently announces that he will die later that night. Soon after the two friends leave the fair, Alain is found dead.

Convinced that Dr. Caligari is somehow responsible for Alan’s death, Francis and his friend, Jane (Lil Dagover), begin monitoring him. When Dr. Caligari accidentally discovers that he is being followed, he asks Cesare to kill Jane.

The film is broken into six acts, each expanding its story in ways that keep redefining its identity. Indeed, there are different tonal shifts and strange subplots that eventually make it virtually impossible to tell with absolute certainty whether everything that takes place in it is in fact real. The end result is a magnificent but truly bizarre film, one that feels like a very long dream that makes sense only while one is experiencing it. After it ends, it is hard to accurately recall various parts of it, let alone properly align them.

Based on stories by Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz, the film’s biggest strength is its pure atmosphere. It is difficult to explain with simple words precisely why, but there is something about the employment of light and shadow and the astonishing sets that give the film a certain vibe that very few other silent films have -- it is very dark, genuinely spooky, and it triggers something in the viewer’s mind that makes the viewing experience quite unusual.

There is a very curious study (From Caligari to Hitler) produced by German sociologist and theorist Siegfried Kracauer in which he argues that Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari was directly responsible for the rise of Nazism. It is difficult to tell with absolute certainty if the film really was that influential, but it is very easy to see that it profoundly changed cinema. Its aesthetics are replicated in many of the greatest silent era films, including Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) and M (1931), F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, Joe May's Asphalt (1929), and Henrik Galeen's The Man Who Cheated Life (1926).

Robert Wiene completed Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari in 1920. He was assisted by cinematographer Willy Hameister (Dimitri Buchowetzki's Peter the Great), artistic designer Hermann Warm (Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr), and expressionist artists Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig.

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1, encoded with MPEG-4 AVC and granted a 1080p transfer, Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of British distributors Eureka Entertainment.

The following text precedes the film's opening credits:

"The 4K restoration was undertaken by Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung in Wiesbaden from the original camera negative held at the Bundesarchiv-Filmarchiv in Berlin. The first reel of the camera negative is missing and was reconstructed using alternative sources. Jump cuts and missing frames in 67 shots were reinserted from multiple prints. An original German release print does not exist. The basis for the color tinting were two nitrate prints from Latin America, which represent the earliest surviving prints of the film, now stored at the Filmmuseum Dusseldorf and the Cineteca di Bologna. The intertitles were recreated from the flashtitles in the camera negative and a 16mm print from 1935 from the Deutsche Kinemathek-Museum fur Film und Fernsehen in Berlin. The digital image restoration was carried out by L'immagine Ritrovata - Film Conservation and Restoration in Bologna."

The promotional materials for the new 4K restoration of this legendary film which BertelsmannSE provided earlier this year were quite impressive, but now having seen the restoration I have to say that it is one of the very best done for a silent film. Detail and clarity are frequently astonishing. In fact, at times depth is so striking that it is almost impossible to believe that the film was actually reconstructed. (See the opening sequence where the woman in white slowly approaches the two men -- screencapture #1). Arguably the biggest improvements, however, are in the area of image stability. Excluding a few minor skips where frames are clearly missing, the film looks as if it was shot just a few years ago -- there is no edge flicker, image weaving or shimmer. The different tints also look lush and stable. There are no traces of problematic degraining or sharpening adjustments. Lastly, there are no encoding or compression anomalies to report in this review. To sum it all up, the 4K restoration of Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari is absolutely magnificent and Eureka Entertainment's technical presentation of the film mighty impressive. (Note: This is a Region-B "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-B or Region-Free PS3 or SA in order to access its content).

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There are two standard audio tracks on this Blu-ray release: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and LPCM 2.0. For the record, Eureka Entertainment have provided optional English subtitles for the intertitles.

I viewed the film with the 2.0 track and later on did a few random comparisons with the 5.1 track. The film is complimented by a somewhat minimalistic and quite moody score that fits its atmosphere very well. There are various string solos which occasionally create the impression that one is listening to a newly discovered dark chamber piece composed by Alban Berg. The pure and intentionally flat brass solos are equally effective. Rather predictably, the overall range of nuanced dynamics is rather limited, but depth and clarity are outstanding. There are no pops, cracks, audio dropouts, or digital distortions to report in this review.

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Re-Release Trailer - trailer for the 4K restoration of Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari. Music only, with English text. (2 min).

• On the Restoration - presented here is the excellent promotional piece from BertelsmannSE, which appeared earlier this year before the introduction of the new 4K restoration of the film at the Berlinale. In German, with optional Enlgish subtitles. (9 min).

• You Must Become Caligari - in this new video essay, critic David Cairns discusses the fascinating production history of Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari as well as the film's unique visual style. In English, not subtitled. (16 min).

• Caligari: The Birth of Horror in the First World War - this outstanding German documentary film, produced by Rudiger Suchsland, takes a closer look at the socio-political environment in Germany at the time when Robert Wiene directed Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari, the tremendous impact the film had on German cinema, and the evolution of German cinema before and after Hitler's rise to power. Included in the film are clips from different interviews with various German film scholars as well as plenty of archival footage. In German, with optional English subtitles. (53 min).

• Audio Commentary - in this new commentary, film historian David Kalat discusses the production history of Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari, its visual style, the unique structure of its plot, the film's critical reception outside of Germany, etc.

• Booklet - illustrated booklet featuring Lotte H. Eisner's essay "The Beginning of the Expressionist Film" and Variety's original review of Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari.

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The new 4K restoration of Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari, one of the truly great masterpieces of German expressionist cinema, is absolutely astonishing. When earlier this year BertelsmannSE released the long promo piece for the restoration and I saw it, I knew that the inevitable Blu-ray release will be a special one. Now having seen the restoration, I can comfortably state that it is one of the very best done for a silent film. Eureka Entertainment's technical presentation of Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari is also outstanding. This is truly one of the year's most important releases, folks. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.