Academic literature on the topic 'Caligari (film) Wiene'

Recensão crítica da exposição “O Caso Caligari”, integrada no Festival “Curtas Vila do Conde”. A exposição apresentou quatro trabalhos de Daniel Blaufuks, Eduardo Brito, Rainer Kohlberger e Jonathan Uliel Saldanha, em torno do filme “O gabinete do dr. Caligari” (Robert Wiene, 1920).

Inspiriran radom Erica Santnera (1996, 2011) o političkoj teologiji i kraljeva dva tijela, u ovom radu propitujem političku teologiju filma, tj. kako drugo tijelo kralja, tijelo njegove moći, migrira u novo tijelo, tijelo naroda, te sablasno, u raznim tragovima, prati filmski način proizvodnje koji je obilježio dvadeseto stoljeće. U radu dovodim u imaginarnu vezu dva lika (jedan stvarni, drugi fiktivni) koji na određeni način utjelovljuju to migriranje: (1) sudca Daniela Paula Schrebera (čiji je autobiografski zapis mentalne bolesti, od trenutka kada je objavljen 1903., okupirao pažnju ne samo psihijatara i psihoanalitičara nego i raznih teoretičara), i (2) doktora Caligarija, hipnotizera u filmu Kabinet doktora Caligarija (red. Robert Wiene, 1920.), jednog od najpoznatijih junaka njemačkog ekspresionističkog filma, kako bih analizirao kako njihovi slučajevi utjelovljuju »sublimno rojalističko meso« u nacionalnim fantazmagorijama dvadesetoga stoljeća (koje se sve više vraćaju i u naše vrijeme u doba rastućeg populizma i brojnih teorija zavjere).

This remarkable two-volume collection contains in-depth essays on fifty of the most important films made between 1920-1977. Organized chronologically, it stretches from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920) to Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977). The contributors include well-known critics and scholars such as Peter Cowie, Jill Forbes, Penelope Houston, Camille Paglia, David Robinson, Richard Schickel, Ginette Vincendeau and Peter Wollen....

The plot of the “Sanatorium under the Sign of an Hourglass” resembles that of the most famous film of the German expressionism – The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920) by Robert Wiene. In fact, similarities go beyond the plot and can be discovered also in the expressionist manner of creating the presented world and characters, the mysterious atmosphere, and many important details discussed in the essay. Is it likely that Bruno Schulz saw the film about the demonic hypnotist and his medium, which inspired him to write the story about doctor Gotard’s sanatorium?

En el artículo se resumen los resultados más destacables de un estudio integrado en una investigación más general sobre la música como elemento narrativo en el Cine de la República de Weimar. Esta aportación se ha acotado al estudio musical de la película considerada obra maestra del expresionismo cinematográfico alemán, Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari de Robert Wiene (1919). El texto se adentra en el complejo estudio de la composición musical realizada en este caso por Rainer Viertlböck en 1993, para la versión íntegra restaurada y basada en la reconstrucción del coloreado del film. Metodológicamente se opta por un estudio de caso histórico-descriptivo, analítico-cualitativo y hermenéutico. A través de un minucioso análisis músico-fílmico de las escenas se pone de manifiesto los elementos estructurales presentes, los recursos estilísticos y estéticos utilizados, las corrientes y tendencias que emanan, así como los instrumentos empleados en la composición musical para dicho film.

Introduction“Cage rage” is one of the most famous Internet memes (Figure 1) which made Nicolas Cage's stylised and sometimes excessive acting style very popular. His outbursts became a subject of many Youtube videos, supercuts (see for instance Hanrahan) and analyses, which turned his rage into a pop-cultural phenomenon. Cage’s outbursts of rage and (over)acting are, according to him (Freeman), inspired by German expressionism as in films like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). How should this style of acting and its position within the context of the Hollywood industry today be read in societal and political sense? Is “Cage rage” a symptom of our times? Rage might be a correct reaction to events such the financial crisis or the election of Donald Trump, but the question should also be posed, what comes after the rage, or as Slavoj Žižek often puts it, what comes the “morning after” (the revolution, the protests)?Fig. 1: One of the “Cage Rage” MemesDo we need “Cage rage” as a pop cultural reminder that, to paraphrase Gordon Gekko in Wall Street (1987), rage, for a lack of a better word, is good, or is it here to remind us, that it is a sort of an empty signifier that can only serve for catharsis on an individual level? Žižek, in a talk he gave in Vienna, speaks about rage in the context of revolutions:Rage, rebellion, new power, is a kind of a basic triad of every revolutionary process. First there is chaotic rage, people are not satisfied, they show it in a more or less violent way, without any clear goal and organisation. Then, when this rage gets articulated, organised, we get rebellion, with a minimal organisation and more or less clear awareness of who the enemy is. Finally, if rebellion succeeds, the new power confronts the immense task of organising the new society. The problem is that we almost never get this triad in its logical progression. Chaotic rage gets diluted or turns into rightist populism, rebellion succeeds but loses steam. (“Rage, Rebellion, New Power”)This means that, on the one hand, that rage could be effective. If we look at current events, we can witness the French president Emanuel Macron (if only partially) giving in to some of the demands of the gilets jaunes (yellow vests) protesters. In the recent past, the events of “Arab spring” are reminders of a watershed moment in the history of the participating nations; going back to the year 2000, Slobodan Milošević's regime in Serbia was toppled by the rage of the people who could not put up with his oligarchic rule — alongside international military intervention.On the other hand, all the outrage on the streets and in the media cannot simply “un-elect” or impeach Donald Trump from his position as the American President. It appears that President Trump seems to thrive on the liberal outrage against him, at the same time perpetuating outrage among his supporters against liberals and progressives in general. If we look back at the financial crisis of 2008 and the Occupy Wall Street movement, despite the outrage on the streets, the banks were bailed out and almost no one went to prison (Shephard). Finally, in post-Milošević Serbia, instead of true progressive changes taking place, the society continues to follow similar nationalistic patterns.It seems that many movements fail after expressing rage/aggression, a reaction against something or someone. Another recent example is Greece, where after the 2015 referendum, the left-wing coalition SYRIZA complied to the austerity measures of the Eurozone, thereby ignoring the will of the people, prompting its leaders Varoufakis and Tsipras falling out and the latter even being called a ‘traitor.’ Once more it turned out that, as Žižek states, “rage is not the beginning but also the outcome of failed emancipatory projects” ("Rage, Rebellion, New Power").Rage and IndividualismHollywood, as a part of the "cultural industry" (Adorno and Horkheimer), focuses almost exclusively on the individual’s rage, and even when it nears a critique of capitalism, the culprit always seems to be, like Gordon Gekko, an individual, a greedy or somehow depraved villain, and not the system. To illustrate this point, Žižek uses an example of The Fugitive (1993), where a doctor falsifies medical data for a big pharmaceutical company. Instead of making his character,a sincere and privately honest doctor who, because of the financial difficulties of the hospital in which he works, was lured into swallowing the bait of the pharmaceutical company, [the doctor is] transformed into a vicious, sneering, pathological character, as if psychological depravity […] somehow replaces and displaces the anonymous, utterly non-psychological drive of capital. (Violence 175)The violence that ensues–the hero confronting and beating up the bad guy–is according to Žižek mere passage a l’acte, an acting out, which at the same time, “serves as a lure, the very vehicle of ideological displacement” (Violence 175). The film, instead of pointing to the real culprit, in this case the capitalist pharmaceutical company diverts our gaze to the individual, psychotic villain.Other ‘progressive’ films that Hollywood has to offer chose individual rage, like in Tarantino's Kill Bill Volume I and II (2003/2004), with the story centred around a very personal revenge of a woman against her former husband. It is noted here that most of Nicholas Cage’s films, including his big budget movies and his many B-movies, remain outside the so-called ethos of “liberal Hollywood” (Powers, Rothman and Rothman). Conservative in nature, they support radical individualism, somewhat paradoxically combined with family values. This composite functions well values that go hand-in-hand with neoliberal capitalism. Surprisingly, this was pointed out by the guru of (neo)liberalism in global economy, by Milton Friedman: “as liberals, we take freedom of the individual, or perhaps the family, as our ultimate goal in judging social arrangements” (12). The explicit connections between capitalism, family and commercial film was noted earlier by Rudolf Arnheim (168). Family and traditional male/female roles therefore play an important role in Cage's films, by his daughter's murder in Tokarev (2014, alternative title: Rage); the rape of a young woman and Cage’s love interest in Vengeance: A Love Story (2017); the murder of his wife in Mandy (2018).The audience is supposed to identify with the plight of the father/husband plight, but in the case of Tokarev, it is precisely Cage's exaggerated acting that opens up a new possibility, inviting a different viewpoint on rage/revenge within the context of that film.Tokarev/RageAmong Cage's revenge films, Tokarev/Rage has a special storyline since it has a twist ending – it is not the Russian mafia, as he first suspected, but Cage’s own past that leads to the death of his daughter, as she and her friends find a gun (a Russian-made gun called ‘Tokarev’) in his house. He kept the gun as a trophy from his days as a criminal, and the girls start fooling around with it. The gun eventually goes off and his daughter gets shot in the head by her prospective boyfriend. After tracking down Russian mobsters and killing some of them, Cage’s character realises that his daughter’s death is in fact his own fault and it is his troubled past that came back to haunt him. Revenge therefore does not make any sense, rage turns into despair and his violence acts were literally meaningless – just acting out.Fig. 2: Acting Out – Cage in Tokarev/RageBut within the conservative framework of the film: the very excess of Cage’s acting, especially in the case of Tokarev/Rage, can be read as a critique of the way Hollywood treats these kinds of stories. Cage’s character development points out the absurdity of the exploitative way B-grade movies deal with such subjects, especially the way family is used in order to emotionally manipulate the audience. His explicit and deliberate overacting in certain scenes spits in the face of nuanced performances that are considered as “good acting.” Here, a more subdued performance that delivered a ‘genuine’ character portrayal in conflict, would bring an ideological view into play. “Cage Rage” seems to (perhaps without knowing it) unmask the film’s exploitation of violence. This author finds that Cage’s performance suffices to tear through the wall of the screen and he takes giant steps, crossing over boundaries by his embarrassing and awkward moments. Thus, his overacting and the way rage/revenge-storyline evolves, becomes as a sort of a “parapraxis”, the Freudian slip of the tongue, a term borrowed by Elsaesser and Wedel (131). In other words, parapraxis, as employed in film analysis means that a film can be ambiguous – or can be read ambiguously. Here, contradictory meanings can be localised within one particular film, but also open up a space for alternate interpretations of meanings and events in other movies of a similar genre.Hollywood’s celebration of rugged individualism is at its core ideology and usually overly obvious; but the impact this could on society and our understanding of rage and outrage is not to be underestimated. If Cage's “excess of acting” does function here as parapraxis this indicates firstly, the excessive individualism that these movies promote, but also the futility of rage.Rage and the Death DriveWhat are the origins of Nicholas Cage’s acting style? He has made claims to his connection to the silent film era, as expressive overstating, and melodrama was the norm without spoken dialogue to carry the story (see Gledhill). Cage also states that he wanted to be the “California Klaus Kinski” (“Nicolas Cage Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters”). This author could imagine him in a role similar to Klaus Kinski’s in Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampire (1979), a homage remake of the silent film masterpiece Nosferatu (1922). There remain outstanding differences between Cage and Kinski. It seems that Kinski was truly “crazy”, witnessed by his actions in the documentary My Best Fiend (1999), where he attacks his director and friend/fiend Werner Herzog with a machete. Kinski was constantly surrounded by the air of excessiveness, to this viewer, and his facial expressions appeared unbearably too expressive for the camera, whether in fiction or documentary films. Cage, despite also working with Herzog, does mostly act according to the traditional, method acting norms of the Hollywood cinema. Often he appears cool and subdued, perhaps merely present on screen and seemingly disinterested (as in the aforementioned Vengeance). His switching off between these two extremes can also be seen in Face/Off (1997), where he plays the drug crazed criminal Castor Troy, alongside the role of John Travolta’s ‘normal’ cop Sean Archer, his enemy. In Mandy, in the beginning of the film, before he goes on his revenge killing spree, he presents as a stoic and reserved character.So, phenomena like ‘Cage Rage’, connected to revenge and aggression and are displayed as violent acts, can serve as a stark reminder of the cataclysmic aspect of individual rage as integrated with the death drive – following Freud’s concept that aggression/death drive was significant for self-preservation (Nagera 48).As this author has observed, in fact Cage’s acting only occasionally has outbursts of stylised overacting, which is exactly what makes those outbursts so outstanding and excessive. Here, his acting is an excess itself, a sort of a “surplus” type of acting which recalls Žižek's interpretation of Freud's notion of the death drive:The Freudian death drive has nothing whatsoever to do with the craving for self-annihilation, for the return to the inorganic absence of any life-tension; it is, on the contrary, the very opposite of dying – a name for the “undead” eternal life itself, for the horrible fate of being caught in the endless repetitive cycle of wandering around in guilt and pain. (Parallax 62)Žižek continues to say that “humans are not simply alive, they are possessed by the strange drive to enjoy life in excess, passionately attached to a surplus which sticks out and derails the ordinary run of things” (Parallax 62). This is very similar to the mode of enjoyment detected in Cage’s over-acting.ViolenceRevenge and vigilantism are the staple themes of mass-audience Hollywood cinema and apart from Cage’s films previously mentioned. As Žižek reports, he views the violence depicted in films such as Death Wish (1974) to John Wick (2014) as “one of the key topics of American culture and ideology” (Parallax 343). But these outbursts of violence are simply, again, ‘acting out’ the passage a l’acte, which “enable us to discern the hidden obverse of the much-praised American individualism and self-reliance: the secret awareness that we are all helplessly thrown around by forces out of our control” (Parallax 343f.).Nicholas Cage’s performances express the epitome of being “thrown around by forces out of our control.” This author reads his expressionistic outbursts appear “possessed” by some strange, undead force. Rather than the radical individualism that is trumpeted in Hollywood films, this undead force takes over. The differences between his form of “Cage Rage” and others who are involved in revenge scenarios, are his iconic outbursts of rage/overacting. In his case, vengeance in his case is never a ‘dish best served cold,’ as the Klingon proverb expresses at the beginning of Kill Bill. But, paradoxically, this coldness might be exactly what one needs in the age of the resurgence of the right in politics which can be witnessed in America and Europe, and the outrage it continuously provokes. ConclusionRage has the potential to be positive; it can serve as a wake-up call to the injustices within society, and inspire reform as well as revolution. But rage is defined here as primarily an urge, a drive, something primordial, as an integral expression of the Lacanian Real (Žižek). This philosophic stance contends that in the process of symbolisation, or rage’s translation into language, this articulation tends to open up inconsistencies in a society, and causes the impetus to lose its power. As mentioned at the beginning of this article, the cycle of rage and the “morning after” which inevitably follows, seems to have a problematic sobering effect. (This effect is well known to anyone who was ever hungover and who therefore professed to ‘never drink again’ where feelings of guilt prevail, which erase the night before from existence.) The excess of rage before followed, this author contends, by the excess of rationality after the revolution are therefore at odds, indicating that a reconciliation between these two should happen, a negotiation, providing a passage from the primordial emotion of rage to the more rational awakening.‘Cage Rage’ and its many commentators and critics serve to remind us that reflection is required, and Žižek’s explication of filmic rage allows us to resist the temptation of enacting our rage that merely digresses to an ’acting out’ or a l'acte. In a way, Cage takes on our responsibility here, so we do not have to — not only because a catharsis is ‘achieved’ by watching his films, but as this argument suggests, we are shocked into reason by the very excessiveness of his acting out.Solutions may appear, this author notes, by divisive actors in society working towards generating a ‘sustained rage’ and to learn how to rationally protest. This call to protest need not happen only in an explosive, orgasmic way, but seek a sustainable method that does not exhaust itself after the ‘party’ is over. This reading of Nicholas Cage offers both models to learn from: if his rage could have positive effects, then Cage in his ‘stoic mode’, as in the first act of Mandy (Figure 3), should become a new meme which could provoke us to a potentially new revolutionary act–taking the time to think.Fig. 3: Mandy ReferencesAdorno, Theodor W., and Max Horkheimer. Dialektik der Aufklärung: Philosophische Fragmente. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Verlag, 2006.Arnheim, Rudolf. Film als Kunst. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2002.Cage, Nicolas. “Nicolas Cage Breaks Down His Most Iconic Characters.” 18 Sep. 2018. 19 Dec. 2018 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j_WDLsLnOSM>. Death Wish. Dir. Michael Winner. Paramount Pictures/Universal International. 1974.Elsaesser, Thomas, and Michael Wedel. Körper, Tod und Technik: Metamorphosen des Kriegsfilms. Paderborn: Konstanz University Press, 2016.Freeman, Hadley. “Nicolas Cage: ‘If I Don't Have a Job to Do, I Can Be Very Self-Destructive.” The Guardian 1 Oct. 2018. 22 Nov. 2018 <https://www.theguardian.com/film/2018/oct/01/nicolas-cage-if-i-dont-have-a-job-to-do-it-can-be-very-self-destructive>.Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1982.Gledhill, Christie. “Dialogue.” Cinema Journal 25.4 (1986): 44-8.Hanrahan, Harry. “Nicolas Cage Losing His Shit.” 1 Mar. 2011. 19 Dec. 2018 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOCF0BLf-BM>.John Wick. Dir. Chad Stahelski. Thunder Road Films. 2014.Kill Bill Vol I & II. Dir. Quentin Tarantino. Miramax. 2003/2004.Mandy. Dir. Panos Cosmatos. SpectreVision. 2018.My Best Fiend. Dir. Werner Herzog. Werner Herzog Filmproduktion. 1999.Nagera, Humberto, ed. Psychoanalytische Grundbegriffe: Eine Einführung in Sigmund Freuds Terminologie und Theoriebildung. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1998.Powers, Stephen, David J. Rothman, and Stanley Rothman. Hollywood’s America: Social and Political Themes in Motion Pictures. Boulder: Westview Press, 1996.Shephard, Alex. “What Occupy Wall Street Got Wrong.” The New Republic 14 Sep. 2016. 26 Feb. 2019 <https://newrepublic.com/article/136315/occupy-wall-street-got-wrong>.Tokarev/Rage. Dir. Paco Cabezas. Patriot Pictures. 2014.Vengeance: A Love Story. Dir. Johnny Martin. Patriot Pictures. 2017.Wall Street. Dir. Oliver Stone. 20th Century Fox. 1987. Žižek, Slavoj. The Parallax View. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009.———. “Rage, Rebellion, New Power.” Talk given at the Wiener Festwochen Theatre Festival, Mosse Lectures, 8 Nov. 2016. 19 Dec. 2018 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbmvCBFUsZ0&t=3482s>. ———. Violence: Six Sideways Reflections. London: Profile Books, 2009.

Fondée sur un corpus de huit films allemands réalisés entre 1919 et 1924 (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, Genuine et Raskolnikow de Robert Wiene, Algol de Hans Werckmeister, Von morgens bis mitternachts et Das Haus zum Mond de Karlheinz Martin, Torgus/Verlogene Moral de Hanns Kobe et Das Wachsfigurenkabinett de Paul Leni), cette étude porte sur l'esthétique et la réception du cinéma expressionniste, dont l'étiquette fait aujourd’hui encore l'objet de confusions. Pour identifier des traits constitutifs de son esthétique, trois axes sont envisagés : la réception critique, l'esthétique fantastique et la réflexivité. Le retour à la première phase de la réception repose sur un corpus de 225 documents d'archives majoritairement inédits, principalement extraits de huit revues de cinéma allemandes, et notamment des trois périodiques qui font alors autorité : Der Kinematograph, Lichtbild-Bühne et Film-Kurier. Le recours aux critiques et aux premières théories esthétiques qui précédent les célèbres ouvrages de Siegfried Kracauer et de Lotte Eisner permet d'appréhender l'horizon d'attente de la critique. Dans le contexte du débat sur la valeur artistique du cinéma, l'expressionnisme est perçu comme l’avènement d'un art du cinéma, caractérisé par la volonté des créateurs de faire œuvre d'art, qui s'exprime par l'unité stylistique, la conception des décors et l'opposition au naturalisme. La réception se fait aussi au prisme du fantastique et témoigne à la fois de l'héritage du romantisme et de l'importance du renouveau du fantastique. L'enjeu de l'analyse filmique proposée est de dégager en quoi la tension entre les deux pôles du fantastique est constitutive d'une esthétique des frontières, à l'origine de la structure narrative, de la configuration de l'espace et d'une réflexion ontologique. Enfin, ambition artistique et fantastique se rejoignent dans l'esthétique d'un cinéma qui se prend lui-même pour objet. En recourant à la notion d'écran second, élaborée dans le cadre de l'énonciation cinématographique, l'analyse identifie des formes de mise en scène du regard et de l'expérience cinématographique, dans leur rapport au désir
Based on a corpus of eight german films made between 1920 and 1924 (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari, Genuine and Raskolnikow by Robert Wiene, Algol by Hans Werckmeister, Von morgens bis mitternachts and Das Haus zum Mond by Karlheinz Martin, Torgus/Verlogene Moral by Hanns Kobe and Das Wachsfigurenkabinett by Paul Leni), this thesis investigates the aesthetics and the reception of German expressionist film. Up until today, there is still some confusion over the definition of expressionist cinema. In order to identify constituent characteristics of its aesthetics, three areas of research are explored: the critical reception, the fantastic aesthetics and the self-reflexivity. The analysis of the first period of reception is based on a corpus of 225 mostly unpublished archival documents. These documents come from eight different film periodicals, mainly from the three leading trade journals of the early twenties: Der Kinematograph, Lichtbild-Bühne and Film-Kurier. By focusing on film reviews and on the first theories of aesthetics that preceeded Siegfried Kracauer's and Lotte Eisner's famous works on Weimar cinema, we get a sense of film critics' expectations back when the movies were first released. In the context of the debate about cinema and its artistic value, expressionism was perceived as the advent of film art, caracterised by the deliberate will of its contributors to create art. This ambition expresses itself through stylistic unity, a very distinctive conception of set designs and an opposition to Naturalism. Expressionist film is also perceived through the lense of the fantastic, which shows both the legacy of German romanticism and the importance of the renewal of fantastic literature and film in Germany. The film analysis of the present work aims at showing how the tension between the two poles of the fantastic is a constituent characteristic of the aesthetics of borders that caracterises expressionist film: it accounts for its narrative structure, its configuration of space and the ontologic reflexion it offers. Finally, cinema itself appears to be one of the main topics of these films. This is both the result of the artistic ambition of expressionist filmmakers and the explanation for their predilection for the fantastic: in some respect, films are fantasies, in that they manipulate the spectator and produce illusions. This is why spectatorship plays a major role in expressionist cinema: thanks to the notion of secondary screen, borrowed from the field of filmic enunciation, our analysis identifies characteristic representations of looks and gazes as well as of cinematic experiences, and reveals their relation to human desires

This chapter discusses early European horror, identifying elements that would go on to become 'monster movie' convention. It looks at Paul Wegener and Carl Boese's Der Golem: Wie er in Die Welt Kam (The Golem: How He Came into the World, 1920). Most discussions of German Expressionism's influence on the horror genre tend to concentrate on stylistic traits such as the distinctive lighting and camerawork, and the break from traditionalist modes of visualisation and representation. Whilst this is certainly an important area, one must not neglect the thematic concerns of films such as Der Golem, Das Kabinett des Dr Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Robert Wiene, 1919), and Nosferatu (F.W. Murnau, 1922), which bind them both to the Expressionist movement and to the horror genre as it would later develop. The movement's pre-occupation with unpredictability, irrationality, chaos and instability found voice in tales of fatalism, alienation, ambiguity, and loss of personal control or identity.