40 Fun Facts About The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

The actor who played Cesare in Caligari later starred in The Man Who Laughs, the visual model for which Batman villain?

The Joker owes his fixed grin to the actor's 1928 role as Gwynplaine, a man whose face has been cut into a permanent smile.

Which actor played Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and, decades later, a Nazi major in Casablanca?

Conrad Veidt fled Germany in 1933 with his Jewish wife, and Major Strasser in Casablanca was the last of his roles released in his lifetime.

What is the storyteller Franzis revealed to be in the twist ending of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari?

An asylum inmate is what Franzis turns out to be, and the man he calls Caligari is the kindly director, who says he finally knows how to cure him.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is the best-known film of which art movement, seen in its jagged sets?

German Expressionism reached the cinema late: several well-known writers had already pronounced the movement dead by the time the film opened.

How did the designers of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari create many of its shadows and streaks of light?

The designers painted them on the sets to guarantee a dark, unreal look, and a test scene so impressed the producers that the artists were given free rein.

The 1962 film The Cabinet of Caligari was scripted by Robert Bloch, whose novel became which Hitchcock film?

Psycho author Bloch never meant to write a remake at all: the director forced the Caligari title onto his untitled screenplay.

Which band's video for the song Otherside borrowed the Gothic look of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari?

Red Hot Chili Peppers made a video that also drew on Cubism and M. C. Escher, and its directors said they had to work around the film's style to avoid copying it.

Which rock musician co-directed a 1999 music video whose imagery was modelled on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari?

Rob Zombie co-directed the Living Dead Girl video with Joseph Kahn, and Sheri Moon Zombie plays the Cesare part.

Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is billed as a somnambulist, an old-fashioned word for what?

A sleepwalker is what the showman presents at the fair: Cesare lies in a coffin-like box until he is woken to answer the crowd's questions.

Siegfried Kracauer's famous 1947 book on German cinema is titled From Caligari to whom?

Hitler completes the title: Kracauer argued that the tyrannical doctor and his obedient Cesare were premonitions of the dictator's rule over Germany.

The shadowy look of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari shaped which Hollywood style of the 1940s and 1950s?

Film noir took on its stylised shadows and its habit of treating everyone, even the innocent, as an object of suspicion.

Cesare from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari helped inspire the 1930s monsters of which Hollywood studio?

Universal horror films such as Frankenstein, The Mummy and Bride of Frankenstein drew on the film's style and on Cesare in particular.

Which 1922 vampire film followed Caligari's lead in using shadow to reveal its characters' minds?

Nosferatu, directed by F. W. Murnau, was among the German films that took up its use of setting, light and shadow to represent psychology.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was released in 1920, during which period of German history?

The Weimar Republic produced a run of films that followed its lead, pitting ordinary people against brutal and irrational authority.

Which American critic called The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari arguably the first true horror film?

Roger Ebert made the claim in a review that lingers on the film's tilted walls, impossible staircases and knife-like grass.

Shown Cesare's corpse, the raging Dr. Caligari is overpowered and put into what?

A straitjacket ends his rampage after he attacks a member of staff, and he is locked up in the very place he ran.

Sent to kill the sleeping Jane in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, what does Cesare do instead?

Cesare abducts her after a struggle, dragging her out through the window; women at the premiere reportedly fainted during the scene.

At the fair in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Cesare foretells that Alan will live only until when?

Dawn the next day is the limit Cesare gives when Alan asks how long he has, and Alan is murdered that very night; one scholar linked the question to soldiers' fears in the First World War.

How is Alan murdered in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, in a killing shown only as a shadow?

Stabbed in bed, Alan is killed off screen: only the shadows on the wall are shown, a lighting idea that later German films used often.

Unusually for a film of 1920, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was shot without any of which?

Exteriors were ruled out by the design: every street was built indoors, on sets that mostly measured no more than six metres across.

Which director was first choice for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari but was busy filming The Spiders?

Fritz Lang, later the director of Metropolis and M, got as far as holding script talks with one of the writers before leaving.

Which Swedish director did film historian Roy Armes call the true heir of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari?

Ingmar Bergman earned the label for black-and-white films that recall 1920s German cinema, though he himself played down the influence.

Reviewer Danny Peary named The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari cinema's first example of which type of movie?

Cult film status began here, in Peary's view, and he also saw the picture as a precursor of arthouse cinema.

Who is the first murder victim in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, killed after making the doctor wait?

The town clerk shouts at the doctor from an absurdly high seat before approving his fair permit, and is killed that same night.

Chased by an angry mob in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, how does the fleeing Cesare meet his end?

Cesare dies of exhaustion, and one critic likened him to a machine running out of fuel once he strays too far from his master.

When Franzis and the police open the box in Dr. Caligari's cabinet, what is lying in Cesare's place?

A dummy had been left in the box so the doctor looked innocent while the real Cesare was out; the doctor escapes in the confusion that follows.

In the closing scenes of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Jane is shown believing that she is what?

A queen is how Jane sees herself by the end, while Cesare turns out to be awake, quiet and not visibly dangerous.

How does Franzis learn of Dr. Caligari's secret obsession while the doctor lies asleep?

Franzis reads his diary and records with the staff's help, learning of an 18th-century mystic who used a somnambulist to commit murders.

Erich Pommer said the Caligari writers saw an experiment, while he saw a film that could be made how?

Cheaply was the attraction: Pommer later said canvas scenery was chosen mainly because it cost far less than building sets.

Which director followed The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari with the similar horror film Genuine?

Robert Wiene got the job only when the first-choice director dropped out, and in the 1930s he tried to remake the film with sound.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is set in which fictional town of twisted buildings and spiralling streets?

Holstenwall was named after a spot in Hamburg where one of the writers believed he had once witnessed a murder near an amusement park.

Which actor played Dr. Caligari and kept the only known surviving script until his death?

Werner Krauss revealed in the 1950s that he had his copy and refused to part with it; a German film archive bought it in 1978.

The physical appearance of Dr. Caligari was inspired by portraits of which German philosopher?

Arthur Schopenhauer's portraits shaped the doctor's look, and the actor himself added the top hat, cape and ivory-handled walking stick.

Which Caligari co-writer went on to script F. W. Murnau's The Last Laugh and Sunrise?

Carl Mayer co-wrote Caligari with Hans Janowitz in six weeks, when both men were penniless and neither had worked in film.

Which actress, born on Java to German parents, played Jane in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari?

Lil Dagover inherited a role written for Gilda Langer, the actress who had urged the two writers to make a film together.

Which French poet was meant to play Cesare in a 1930s sound remake of Caligari that was never made?

Jean Cocteau was the original director's pick, and the script swapped the jagged German look for French surrealism; the director died in 1938 before filming.

Co-writer Hans Janowitz claimed the name Caligari came from a letter by which French novelist?

Stendhal supposedly mentioned an officer called Caligari whom he met at a theatre, but no record of any such letter exists.

Erich Pommer likened the Caligari script to films inspired by which French theatre of horror shows?

Grand Guignol shockers were popular at the time, and Pommer bought the script the same night one of its writers read it aloud to him.

Which organisation's Hollywood branch led the 1921 protests against Caligari in Los Angeles?

The American Legion forced a theatre to pull the film, objecting to German imports costing American jobs rather than to anything on screen.

A 2024 soundtrack for The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari came from Karl Bartos, formerly of which German band?

Kraftwerk's former percussionist built his electro-acoustic score for a restored print and premiered it live in Frankfurt.