Now See the Movie!

Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) is the masterpiece of German Expressionist film. One of the most admired and influential motion pictures of all time, Caligari has achieved the status of a cultural icon. Even those who have never seen the movie immediately recognize the haggard forms of Conrad Veidt as Cesare and Werner Krauss’s Caligari, a representation of crazed totalitarianism foreshadowing the advent of the Third Reich.

The film tells the story of a mysterious carnival hypnotist, Dr. Caligari, who visits the fictitious German town of Holstenwall with Cesare, a somnambulist who can apparently predict the future. Cesare foretells the death of a student who, sure enough, is murdered the very next morning. An investigation ensues, but Caligari manages to escape and seeks shelter in a lunatic asylum, where a friend of the murdered student finds him. To his horror, however, the friend discovers that he is now a prisoner in the asylum, of which Dr. Caligari appears to be the director.

Although Robert Wiene’s film is now considered the epitome of the Expressionist style, recent criticism suggests that the surrealist plot and cinematography owe less to the elliptical symbolism of German Expressionism than to the distinctly cruder world of the Grand Guignol. Hypnotic spells, the ultimate superiority of insane authority over bourgeois power, gratuitous violence, the frailty of love — all these were characteristic features of Grand Guignol plots.

Even the film’s celebrated sets, largely constructed of paper painted with bold, abstract patterns, may owe less to Expressionism than to a simple misunderstanding; screenwriter Hans Janowitz claims that he requested scenic designs inspired by the work of the painter and illustrator Alfred Kubin but that his handwriting was misread, and three “Cubist” artists, Hermann Warm, Walter Röhig, and Walter Reimann, were engaged in his place.

More than seventy-five years have passed since Caligari’s first screening in Berlin, but the film remains as vivid and shocking as ever. After each performance of John Moran’s new opera The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, A.R.T. patrons will be invited to attend a special screening of the film in the Loeb Drama Center’s West Lobby, with a live piano accompaniment by Martin Marks (see below).

Bringing the Sound of Music to Silent Films

piano manMartin Marks, a specialist in music for silent film, is the pianist for the A.R.T.’s showings of the film Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari.. Associate Professor of Music and Theatre Arts at M.I.T., Mr. Marks teaches a variety of courses, including “Introduction to Western Music,” “Operas of Mozart, Wagner, and Verdi,” and, most pertinently, “Film Music,” a subject that he began to teach in the mid 1980s. His innovative book Music and the Silent Filmwas recently published by Oxford University Press, and he is currently working on a follow-up volume,Music of the Early Sound Film, 1925-1955. Mr. Marks frequently performs piano accompaniments for silent films, most often at the Harvard Film Archive, where he is Music Consultant, and where he played a weekly series from April through June last spring. He has lectured and performed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Library of Congress, as well as at many institutions across the country.

Mr. Marks said the following about his music: “The scores I play vary. When original scores from the silent period are available, I make use of them as much as possible. When not, I prepare my own accompaniments, finding appropriate repertoire and arranging it to fit each film’s particular visual style and narrative. Occasionally I devise a theme or two of my own. My goal, like that of musicians during the silent period, is to use a variety of music to bring this strange, ghostly medium to life.” Typically, the piano scores that Mr. Marks has performed for silent films (including The Big Parade, The Birth of a Nation,The Gold Rush, and many others) contain a mix of familiar music by leading nineteenth-century composers together with functional pieces by silent film specialists of the teens and twenties. Though mostly forgotten today, these men were experts at crafting music to suit all kinds of film scenes and situations.

Mr. Marks first played forDas Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. in April, 1996 at the Harvard Film Archive, using a copy of a compilation score obtained from the Museum of Modern Art. He tells us: “Because the film is so exceptionally weird and intense, the score makes use of a lot of generic music of the types known as Misterioso and Agitato . These pieces have suitably evocative titles (“Carnival Grotesque,” “Weird Scenes from Nature,” “Omens,” “Facing Death,” etc.), and they tend to be unusually ‘modernistic’ for their time. But the score also features nostalgic pieces by classical composers (Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Grieg) to temper the mix. Indeed, like most such compilations, this one abruptly changes style from segment to segment in a dizzying manner. Even so, in the hands of a good performer, such as I aspire to be, the music can seem to flow naturally as ‘part of’ the film, and make it far more vivid. At the same time it is a live, theatrical experience of a very exciting kind, which today’s audiences are rediscovering and enjoying anew.”

Thanks to Mr. Marks, A.R.T. audiences can experience this long-lost art form first hand. Simply remain in the West Lobby after any performance of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and enjoy!