Rating summary

Movie		5.0
Video		5.0
Audio		5.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		5.0

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Dr. Svet Atanasov November 7, 2014

Robert Wiene's "Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari" a.k.a. "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1920) arrives on Blu-ray courtesy of Kino Classics. The supplemental features on the disc include an original trailer for the recent 4K restoration of the film; Rudiger Suchsland's documentary film "Caligari: How Horror Came to the Cinema"; alternate score by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky; restoration demonstrations; and image gallery. The release also arrives with a leaflet featuring film historian Kristin Thompson's essay "Expression of Horror". With German intertitles and optional English subtitles. Region-A "locked".

The somnambulist

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.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Presented in its original 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 Kino Classics.

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 completed from different prints. Jump cuts and missing frames in 67 shots were completed by different prints. A German distribution print is not existing. Basis for the colors were two nitrate prints from Latin America, which represent the earliest surviving prints They are today at at the Filmmuseum Dusseldorf and the Cineteca di Bologna. The intertitles were resumed from the flashtitles in the camera negative and a 16mm print from 1935 from the 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."

As the quoted text above confirms, the release uses as a foundation the same excellent 4K restoration which British distributors Eureka Entertainment accessed when they prepared their Blu-ray release of this iconic German film. Excluding a minor discrepancy in the brightness settings -- the high-definition transfer Eureka Entertainment used appears slightly darker -- detail and clarity are every bit as impressive as they are on the Region-B release. Image stability is very good, though in areas of the film where frames are missing the occasional skips are easy to spot. Regardless, having seen the film on DVD multiple times, I can confirm that the stabilization enhancements are indeed quite remarkable. There are no traces of digital anomalies to report in this review. Finally, the encoding is very good. All in all, this is a magnificent restoration of Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari, and I am absolutely convinced that it will remain the definitive presentation of the film on the home video market. (Note: This is a Region-A "locked" Blu-ray release. Therefore, you must have a native Region-A or Region-Free PS3 or SA in order to access its content).

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There are two standard audio tracks on this Blu-ray release (see below). Also included are optional English subtitles for the intertitles.

1. Original score by the University of Music, Freiburg: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0. (Also used on Eureka Entertainment's release).
2. Alternate score by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.

The two lossless tracks are outstanding. The first score is quite moody and fits the film's 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. (On the Region-B release this score is also offered in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1).

DJ Spooky's new score is equally atmospheric but has a distinctively modern edge. It blends a variety of ambient electronic sounds, sound effects, and occasionally very beautiful soft vocals.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Caligari: How Horror Came to the Cinema - 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. This documentary film also appears on Eureka Entertainment's release. In German, with optional English subtitles. (53 min, 1080p).

• Alternate Score - alternate score by Paul D. Miller a.k.a. DJ Spooky. DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0.

• Image Gallery - a gallery of archival stills. (1080p).

• Restoration Demonstration 1 - before-and-after demonstrations. Without sound. (2 min, 1080p).

• Restoration Demonstration 2 - before-and-after demonstrations highlighting key differences between the 1984 and 2014 restorations of Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari. Without sound. (3 min, 1080p).

• Trailer - original trailer for the new 4K restoration of Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari. Music only. (2 min, 1080p).

• Leaflet - featuring Kristin Thompson's essay "Expression of Horror". (The author is a film historian based at the University of Wisconsin-Madison).

• Trailers - trailers for the following Kino Classics releases:
  
  1. Die Nibelungen
  2. Metropolis
  3. Nosferatu

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The new 4K restoration of Robert Wiene's Das Cabinet Des Dr. Caligari is one of the very best that I have seen done for a silent film. The film has literally been given a new life and there is no doubt in my mind that an entirely new generation of film lovers will rediscover it. Kino's upcoming Blu-ray release features Rudiger Suchsland's outstanding documentary "Caligari: How Horror Came to the Cinema" as well as a very good exclusive score created by DJ Spooky. VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.