The Cabinet of Caligari (1962) Californigari in the Twilight Zone

"A dissociative fugue noir"

Produced and directed by Roger Kay. 

Born in Cairo, Kay moved to Paris where after an association with Louis Jouvet he got a taste directing Grand Guignol theatre. It's basically staged "Horror" theater. 

"In a typical Grand Guignol performance patrons would see five or six short plays, all in a style that attempted to be brutally true to the theatre's naturalistic ideals. The most popular and best-known were the horror plays, which featured a distinctly bleak worldview and gory special effects, particularly in their climaxes. The horrors depicted at Grand Guignol were generally not supernatural; rather these plays often explored altered states like insanity, hypnosis, or panic. To heighten the effect, the horror plays were often alternated with comedies, a lineup referred to as "hot and cold showers."" ("What is Grand Guignol?". Grand Guignol Online. & Grand Street Magazine.) 

In 1941, Kay moved to the United States (some place within this period of time after leaving Cairo and returning to directing in the U.S., Kay gets a degree in psychology). In Los Angeles, he eventually picks up directing again in 1950 for various TV series i.e., Ford Television Theater, Panic!, The Untouchables, Route 66, Naked City, Twilight Zone, etc., etc. That's basically it. His only other films were a Western and a Comedy. 

The screenplay was written by Robert Bloch (Psycho). The story goes like this, Sam Goldwyn bought the remake rights back in 1921. (The original film came out just the year before). So Goldwyn sits on these rights for forty years and assigns Kay the project to produce and Kay gets Lippert Pictures to make it. Kay hires Bloch to write the screenplay. Kay wants to make more of a homage rather than a straight remake. The title drops the "Dr." from the original title. If you've seen the original film, you know what "the cabinet" really is. Bloch and Kay had creative differences Kay tries to get Bloch off the "credits" Bloch took it to court and won. To get Bloch's side of the story you'd have to read his autobiography.  

If you go to the Wiki article on the film there's some interesting trivia that raises questions: 

• Harry Spalding, who worked for Lippert Pictures, later recalled that everyone in their organization thought making the film was a bad idea except for Robert "makes a lot of cheap pictures but he's never made a stinker" Lippert. Spalding says the director hired Robert Bloch to write the script, but they had a falling out and the director wrote the script himself. (Weaver, Tom (19 February 2003). Double Feature Creature Attack: A Monster Merger of Two More Volumes of Classic Interviews. McFarland). 
• Kay used a color chart when making the film. He went through the script and allocated a color representing the emotion the audience was to feel. Was it going to originally be in color?, or was it going to be tinted? (Schumach, Murray (11 December 1961). "New Film Makes Horror a Science". The New York Times.) 
• In 1963, Kay said he "disowns" the film, blaming Fox for turning it into a "lurid, sex charged picture" and claiming the version released was "considerably different" from his version. He said a copy of his original cut was with the Museum of Modern Art. (Scheuer, P. K. (17 May 1963). "Busy Tony Curtis Talks 'Off the Cuff': 'Rawhide's' Fleming in Film; 'Liza' No Snap, Audrey Admits". Los Angeles Times.)

So, after reading the above you have to wonder WTF? Did Twentieth Century Fox make the final changes? If Kay disowns it he must not have had the final cut. So then was it Fox using some of the Bloch part of the final script that included the "lurid" and "sex charged" aspects of the film? I don't know but it sounds like the same problems Orson Welles had with the studios, no? Anyway, it's good enough thematically and visually for me to review it here. 

The Cinematography by John L. Russell (Moonrise, The Man From Planet X, City That Never Sleeps, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Hells Half Acre, then more and more TV Mike Hammer, Johnny Staccato, M Squad, and then Psycho), Music by Gerald Fried.

The Cabinet of Caligari stars Glynis Johns (Night of the Fire, Miranda) as Jane, Dan O'Herlihy (Odd Man Out, Larceny, Fail Safe) as Paul/Caligari, Dick Davalos (East Of Eden, I Died a Thousand Times, Cool Hand Luke) as Mark, Lawrence Dobkin (D.O.A., Whirlpool, The Mob, The Day The Earth Stood Still, Deadline - U.S.A., Loan Shark, The Long Wait, The Killer Is Loose, Sweet Smell of Success, Mike Hammer TV Series 1958–1959, ) as David, Constance Ford (House of Women) as Christine, Estelle Winwood (Dead Ringer) as Ruth, TV staple J. Pat O'Malley as Perkins. Vicki Trickett as Jeanie the Maid, Doreen Lang as Vivian, Charles Fredericks as Bob and Phyllis Teagardin as Little Girl Jane.

If you've seen the original 1920 film, and not this one just stop here because the big twist in both films will be revealed and discussed below. 

In The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) our main character is Franziz, He sitting on a bench along a wall with another man. When Franzis starts telling his story we go into a flashback to Holstenwall the town where he was from. Everything in the world of the flashback is bizarre and distorted, eerie and dreamlike. Just from that you you know you are no longer in reality. Its a world gone mad, insane. 

The Cabinet of Caligari starts off in darkness, then we see a light. We see a distant portal. It's very similar to the opening sequence of Blast of Silence where we are in a Pennsylvania RR tunnel under Hudson River (a direct homage, a coincidence?, either possibly). 

In this film its a highway tunnel and unlike Blast of Silence with it's voice over by Lionel Stander, here we just hear the throaty roar of sports car motor, then the curtesy waning bleat of a horn as the approaching portal daylight reveals the top outline of a windscreen. We then see the rest of a 1959 Renault Caravelle Convertible as it bursts from  the tunnel portal opening.  (a symbolic rebirth?) 

Jane Lindstrom, a twenty going on thirty something woman is at the wheel. The slipstream flowing over the windshield is ruffling her blond hair. She is driving barefoot, a wandering free spirit cruising the dry  coastal hills of Southern California. 

Jane gets a flat out in the middle of nowhere. She pulls onto a turnout. She slips her pumps back on. We next cut to her walking away from Renault. She has apparently pulled further off the turnout and parked it on the side of a well traveled, gravel driveway. She is going for help and hoofing it up the road to find the house. 

By the time she finds it the sun has set and it's early evening. The large house sets in a more verdant valley. It is constructed in mid century modern with an open floor plan with lots of big glass windows It sits behind a high wall with a gated entrance. On the gate is a large C strangely ornamented with intertwining snakes. 

Now remember Kay wanted to homage the original The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and it is here that we get a small quote to the original film.

As Jane walks through the gate and up towards the entrance to the house we get a reverse angel shot through a peephole it in effects mimics the use of the kinetic vignettes in the original film. It also foreshadows the peeping theme that develops later in the piece. 

The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari

At the door she is greeted by Caligari. He is backlit and in shadow at first appearance. Shadowy figures in doorways and windows are used in the original The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari.

The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari

The  house inside has a series of open rooms, some have glass walls some use see through bookcases to partition the spaces. A strange spidery circular stairway with bent web like railings leads to the upper stories. The entire lower part of the house suggests that everything' is on display. (Like a cabinet)

Other visual quotes are subtly hinted at throughout the film. Below a picture on the wall recalls the town of Holstenwall, and a sky light eerily matches the distorted windows in the original film.

Jane is reassured by Caligari that his employees can take care of her car and that there is no need to use the phone for outside help. Caligari offers Jane a drink and presses a button that summons Christine. Caligari tells Christine to grab the garage man and go see about Jane's car. When they return Caligari offers Jane a room for the night. 

<again spoilers below>

The twist in the original film is that as Franzis relates his story you know from the get go something is outa whack. We see that the flashback is a distorted hallucination, and eventually it ends up that he is in an insane asylum. There as he concludes his tale he becomes even more alienated and disconnected from himself and the world around him. He attacks the Director calling him Caligari.

The twist we find in this film is that Jane (like Franzis) is already in an asylum. Everything we see that looks like reality is is her dissociative fugue state. She has forgotten most of her personal background, certain time periods and major events in her life. At the end of the film this twist is exposed when she becomes cured and we see her as she really is a much older woman. All the people she though were just house guests, and later prisoners of Caligari were actually other patients and sanitarium personnel. The young man who only came in the evening and was going to take her home with him is actually her son. The reason he came in the evening and never stayed was because he just came during visiting hours. 

The blackness at the beginning of the film and the travel through the tunnel is her rebirth as one of her identities the 26 year old Jane of her youth. We also see her as a child a few times. Her perceptions of her physician swing back and forth like a good cop / bad cop routine. Caligari is the bad side who asks intimate, probing questions, the one who "peeps" on her, while Paul is the good, friendly, compassionate assuring side of the doctor.

Another quote to the original The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is in the way the sanitarium's head psychologist aka Caligari is lighted when Jane is apprehensive of him, he is lighted by an overhead spot that throws deep dark shadows over his eye sockets reminiscent of the makeup on the somnambulist Caesar. 

Caesar in The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari

Caligari's office door also has a revolving glass door that he can lock. It further adds to the display cabinet theme of the asylum. 

Noirsville

Here is a sequence above that antecedes Frank Miller's Sin City That Yellow Bastard (below)

This film is certainly an acting tour de force for Glynis Johns. She displays quite the range from young child to seductress. Dan O'Herlihy as Paul / Caligari is also quite good. Another film to add to the Transitional Noir cannon. It  also has, like Bloch's Psycho, a coda with Dr. Paul explaining Jane's condition. Worth a look for Johns and the Visuals it plays like an extended Twilight Zone. 7/10

See It For Glynis

ferbs549 April 2012

As was the case with many baby boomers, my first encounter with South African-born Glynis Johns, the daughter of renowned Welsh character actor Mervyn Johns, was via her short-lived American TV show, "Glynis." On this 1/2-hour sitcom, which only ran from September-December 1963 on CBS, Glynis played a character named Glynis Granville, a mystery writer who helped her husband solve crimes, and who was absolutely--to my young mind--delightful. A recent viewing of one of Glynis' later films, 1973's "Vault of Horror," served to remind me of just how charming she has always been, with her pretty blonde looks and inimitable husky voice. So it was with great eagerness that I even more recently popped one of her films that I'd never seen, "The Cabinet of Caligari," into the DVD player at home. Released in May 1962, five months before Glynis' 39th birthday, this "remake" of the classic German silent "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (1919) jettisons most of the original's story line, salvaging only that famous twist ending. Scripted by Robert "Psycho" Bloch, the film introduces us to 27-year-old Jane Lindstrom (our Glynis), who seeks help at the ultramodern house of Dr. Caligari (Dan O'Herlihy) after her automobile suffers a blowout. The doctor is more than accommodating, but after she is unwittingly drugged, poor Jane realizes that she--and a good half dozen other residents under the doctor's roof--is a prisoner in this bizarre household, while Caligari's demands for highly personal information, as well as his peeping Tom proclivities, abuse of other "guests" and proffering of pornographic pictures, only add to Jane's distress....

Though lacking the surreal sets that made the original film an enduring and endearing classic of German Expressionism, the 1962 "Caligari" is still a fairly strange experience. Director Roger Kay utilizes interesting camera angles, freeze frames and occasionally non sequitur dialogue to engender an atmosphere of the macabre. Kay makes excellent use of space in his CinemaScope frame, and yes, DOES throw in some decidedly Expressionistic FX toward the film's conclusion. (I should perhaps add here that those viewers who choose to watch this DVD utilizing the "full-screen" option, rather than the "wide-screen," will be lacking almost 50% of the image, and will certainly be missing most of the picture's impact.) The director is ably abetted by the excellent camera work of John L. Russell, who had lensed "Psycho" for Hitchcock two years earlier (Jane Lindstrom, it might be added, has a bathtub experience in the film that is not QUITE as harrowing as Marion Crane's!), as well as by the lovely and memorable score provided here by Gerald Fried. But surely, this picture belongs to Glynis Johns, who perforce appears in every single scene in it. She is simply superb here, running the gamut from sweet to scared, haggard to Marilyn Monroe-type sexpot, suicidal and submissive to zesty and domineering; practically an Oscar-worthy performance! (And while I'm on the subject, hey, Academy: Glynis is 88 as of this writing. Howzabout an honorary Oscar for this wonderfully unique performer while she's still with us?) Perfectly cast here, she brings a combination of steely outrage and befuddled defenselessness to her role that is quite wonderful to behold, and makes the film--essentially a 100-minute-long red herring--a genuine must-see, and one that can stand independently of its famous forebear....