However, in one of those pop culture convergences I am forever stumbling upon, I will mention that I recently was interviewed by the 1001 Movies Blog Club administrator and I took advantage of the platform to wax nostalgic with appreciation for the movie The Crow starring the late lamented Brandon Lee. The Crow is in no way shape or form a Must See flick, but it holds a special place in my heart for a variety of reasons which are subjective and personal and no doubt born of right-time-and-place circumstances which means that trying to evangelize for them is really not going to get me very far. But I will defend my belief that one of the strongest elements of the film is Lee’s performance, something which really crystallized for me when I saw a behind-the-scenes featurette about the movie in which Lee talked about how liberating it was to play Eric Draven, avenging spirit from beyond the grave. Because, as Lee put it (rather self-evidently, but hey, I was 19 and thought it was profound enough at the time), since people don’t really come back from the dead, no one knows how a person who did come back from the dead would really behave, and that freed Lee to play it any way he wanted. And he does some wild tonal shifts throughout the movie, from grief-shattered wreck to cocky badass streetfighter to sarcastic clown to soulful poet, and generally makes a story about violent supernatural retribution way more fun than any movie with a near-black palette and a soundtrack by The Cure, Nine Inch Nails and Henry Rollins has any right to be.
Much as I love The Crow (and mourn the further filmography of Brandon Lee that it should have kicked off), and much as I have hunted down like-minded analyses of the flick over the years, I have never heard anyone draw an explicit line of connection to it from precedents in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. But it jumped out at me pretty hard all the same. True, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is probably fairly obscure to all but the most hardcore cinephiles, so assuming that Brandon Lee had ever seen it is a bit of a stretch. If not, it’s an exceptionally eerie coincidence.
Quick synopsis of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari: two men are talking when a woman walks by in a strange daze. The younger man says the woman is his fiancé and offers to tell the older man a strange story about something that happened to them some time ago. Most of the rest of the movie is then a flashback recalling how the man, Francis, and the woman, Jane, as well as their friend, Alan, lived in a small town together where a carnival was held, and one of the attractions was Doctor Caligari and his fortune-telling somnambulist, Cesare. (This is a non-scientific version of somnambulism wherein Cesare has allegedly been asleep for twenty years and has no volition except for the commands of Dr. Caligari.) Alan asked Cesare how long he would live, and Cesare predicted Alan’s imminent death, a prophecy fulfilled when Alan was murdered that night. Francis investigated the crime, assuming Dr. Caligari had something to do with it, and Cesare attacked Jane in her sleep, but kidnapped her rather than killing her. An angry mob of townspeople chased after Cesare and rescued Jane, and Cesare fell while fleeing and died. Dr. Caligari disappeared in the confusion, and Francis went ot the local insane asylum to see if maybe Caligari had been an escaped patient all along. But he discovered that Caligari was a cover identity being used by the director of the asylum himself. The director was obsessed with an old legend about a somnambulist who was compelled to commit murder by his master, a monk named Caligari, and when a new somnambulist patient was admitted to the asylum the director leapt at the chance to live out Caligari’s misdeeds. Confronted by Francis’s accusations and the corpse of Cesare, the director went fully mad and was committed to a cell in his own asylum. The film then returns to the two men from the beginning, with the old man looking skeptical and Francis looking pleased at having recounted his tale. Francis then returns to the asylum from his story, which is populated with many patients, including a “Jane” who believes she is a queen, and a “Cesare” in his own sad, silent and isolated state, plus a director of the asylum who is (a much more benign-looking) “Caligari”. So the hero/narrator was crazy all along!!! OR WAS HE????
Both the framing device structure and the swerve of an ending were fundamentally innovative for their time, and obviously cast long shadows of influence, so if you’re looking for justification for the movie as a Must-See, there you go. But even more striking is the portrayal of Cesare by the legendary Conrad Veidt. All of the other players on the screen give performances which are about what you’d expect for the silent era, all theatrically broad expressions and gestures. But Veidt animates Cesare with unearthliness in his slow, sinuous movements and his inhuman mannerisms.
And of course, the look of the character(s) must be noted: the dark hair, pale skin, stylized dark makeup on the face, and skintight black clothes. Expressionistic Cesare definitely looks like a forerunner of goth-y Eric Draven, but their kinship is even more deeply rooted in the way both carry themselves, differentiating themselves from everyone else in the picture around them, the mythical somnambulist every bit as much an exotic and unknowable phenomenon as the re-animated revenge-seeker. Lee’s performance might be more sustained and more multi-faceted (he does have the benefit of dialogue) but Veidt’s is no less impressive, especially considering that it came to life with 74 fewer years of cinematic history behind it. Veidt’s presence elevates The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from a weirdly interesting curiosity to enduring art.
The bonus points for giving me a new, ridiculously artsy talking point to pump up my favorite 90’s graphic novel adaptation, however, are also very much appreciated.
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