The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

    

     When it comes to old films, they don't get much older then silent films. These films contain music and slides to show words spoken by characters. The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a perfect example of this. The essential story is a man named Francis is telling a story to a friend about the reason he is in this insane asylum. The story goes that there was a murder in town, a  mysterious stabbing at night and no sign of who did it. The next day a man named Dr. Caligari brings out Cesare at the fair, Cesare is a somnambulist who is essentially a sleepwalker that can be controlled through hypnosis. Cesare then is presented as someone who can tell the future, Francis' friend Alan then asks how long he will live till. Cesare responds with “Until Dawn”. Alan then dies that night by being stabbed, this raises Francis's suspicion towards Caligari and Cesare. He then continues to kill, they then realize that Cesare is loose, and they go to find him. Cesare attempts to kill Francis' fiancé, so they race to find where he is. Cesare is found in a field asleep, while Caligari tries to escape. He is then chased by Francis into an insane asylum, where Caligari is the Director of the institute. Francis then tries to get the other doctors to investigate this with him. He is then later found to be insane by everyone. We then reappear in the asylum, where he is finishing up the story, his friend runs away knowing he is crazy. Francis tries to attack Caligari and gets put in a straitjacket and is taken away.

The film uses many strategies to tell its silent story. Starting off with the basics, the characters use large expressions and use a lot of them to convey a point or reaction. Along with that the music would spike or go down depending on the actions or the mood of the film. The music overall creates an eerie tone for the movie, along with the jagged shadows and dark sets. This can also be tied into the cinematic aspect of the film. They made the actors take small steps to make the sets look larger than they really are. We also see the sets more aimed towards wide shots to try and exaggerate the size of the scene when in reality it's very small. The final plot twist is when the flashback ends from Caligari being in a straitjacket to Francis telling a story on the bench. He then tries to attack Caligari and is then restrained himself in the same manner Caligari was in the flashback. The twist helps us realize why all the buildings and sets were distorted during the film. This is all in Francis' mind, so all of the images will be distorted along with the memories themselves. The eerie feeling of the scenes in the story make sense because they all take place in Francis’ crazed mind. 

    The set designs show us how creative they had to be back in the day. Nowadays we can use green screens or even make new sets easily. Back then they had to use limited sets and space to create their films. They didn’t have a CGI or green screen so everything had to be painted on the sets and shown in frame while shooting. As I stated earlier the use of small steps help make the sets seem larger then they were in reality, and it's another way of their creativity showing through. The set designs tell us that the story is used to try and escape our current world. It's taking us to another type of world, a different type of distorted earth. After a little research, these expression films were used to try and show paranoia, fear, and schizophrenia in film. This is to try and get the viewer to feel these emotions from the strange builds and shapes used throughout. The cultural effect is to try and make the viewer feel uncomfortable. The filmmaker is trying to express the weird uncomfortable emotions through his film. This has occurred in art, so it has moved into the art of film through films like these. This relates to the post WWI horror people were dealing with. It was supposed to bring out the darkness in the world at the time. When talking about similar films in the 20th century, I can't get too modern. This is due to the fact that I don’t watch horror. The closest/most modern I can get is the 1963 Film “The Birds” by Alfred Hitchcock. Hitchcock uses shadows and set designs that are similar to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. These are used to make the birds seem more intimidating and larger than they are. The use of music to build suspense, and the use of darkness and shadows make the film eerie. This is a similar style to the way we see the scenes in Dr. Caligari, along with a similar genre of expression. They also both have random attacks, Cesare attacks and kills random people, the birds do the same. No particular target, just people being harmed, this adds to the horror. A narrator's reliability can affect everything when it comes to the meanings, cultural relevance, and the nature of film. This is because the narrator/creator makes the film to bring out emotions or feelings. They can use these feelings to make you feel a certain way about different topics of the time like politics and or wars. They can also be used to control the viewers emotions towards subjects, all with how they direct films. So the reliability of the film maker and their views on certain issues will greatly decide how the film is made, whether it's non biased or heavily biased. This in turn affects the cultural relevance of the film and the meanings of certain designs and shots used to bring awareness to different issues. 

Suspense

 

When we think about older films we think of the Alfred Hitchcock's of the world, the main blockbuster films produced. We think of the movie psycho or more recently the movies like the original Star Wars trilogy. Although those are all time classic films we still have to look prior to that, the true old films. These films are what brought us and inspired the films we love today. The Filmmaker I chose to take a deeper look at was Lois Weber, she was an early innovator and the first American director, male or female, to make a narrative feature film. She was a very innovative director and she helped make large strides in the film industry. The film I took a look at was her Film Suspense, released in 1913. The film is quite an interesting film, it's a good intense story with a very suspenseful ending. 

The story is suspenseful in multiple different ways. It first starts off with the tramp outside of the house and lurking around. While he does this the wife notices and calls her husband at work to come home to save her. The tramp gets inside and cuts the phone line. This causes panic to ensue from the wife and the husband. This is the feeling of suspense we are left with, this then continues when the husband decides to steal a car to get back home to his wife and baby. After this occurs, he is then promptly chased by the police, the cops add to the suspense. “will he get caught, will he escape?”. This helps us feel not only scared for the baby and the wife but also the Husband. The way she adds suspense for both parts of the story is very creative, not only are we scared for the people in danger, we are now scared for the person coming to the rescue. This suspense is then added on when the cops almost catch up to the husband. He then gets a gain on them during the chase, we get a second to calm down for being nervous for him. But just when we think the suspense is over it cuts back to the tramp and the suspense builds back up, we get nervous for the wife and the baby again. He is in the house breaking in the door with a knife, “will she be okay? Will the husband get back in time?”. This then leads to the intense final scene when the husband and cops fight off the attacker and they make sure the wife and baby are safe. The last bit of suspense is relieved when the man who had his car stolen pats the husband on the back when he finds out why he did it. The whole film is based on this suspense and the storytelling uses this in a very good way to depict this emotion. 

Moving on to my favorite part of analyzing films, the cinematic aspect. This film is very revolutionary for its time, it essentially created the first split screen in film history. It takes place when the tramp is looking around and trying to get into the home, the husband is on the phone with the wife. They are split into triangles, one the bottom and the other two on the sides. Now this doesn’t look like the best editing to us but for film at the time, this had never been seen before. It was innovative, it showed three different emotions and perspectives all at once. The fear was shown at the same time as the action creating the fear, it helps the viewer understand the story. Especially with the inability to have sound on film at the time, the more emotion and perspectives we could see, helped us understand the movie better. This also helps build the suspense of the film, this can be argued that she used shots like these due to trying to build suspense. The film's name is suspense so it does make sense that she would try to do this. The shot of the Tramp when he looks up at the window and the wife is looking down is magnificent, the way they show her looking out, to then him walking in the frame. This shows what she sees right away. Still in frame he looks up at her wide eyed, she then runs to call her husband. The shot of the camera directly above the tramp to show him looking up, is innovative and a whole new perspective for the film. It demonstrates the ability that Weber had to think outside the box. Her creativity of shots and different angles really shows here, and it is highlighted really well in this film. Another shot I liked is the over the shoulder shot of the Husband driving home and it shows him and his side mirror. The side mirror is used very well here to show the cops chasing the man after he stole the car. This helps create the depth that these shots were missing, the depth is important because of the feeling of distance. It feels like he is so distant from his wife and the house, but the cops are so close to him, right behind him. The final shot I really enjoyed is after the husband hits the kid trying to smoke we get to see the distance between the cops and him. The way it goes from the tight shot of him hitting the kid, to the wide shot of the cop car far in the background. It helps us understand how far this journey is and how far they are from each other. This is a perfect use of a wide shot because it sets up our scene so well. 

The cultural relevance is that the man will do anything to protect his kid and woman. He will break the law and risk himself getting caught to be able to save her. This also shows us at the end that people should be able to forgive. The man who got his car stolen forgave the husband due to the man looking out for his family. Sometimes we can help others without even knowing, this is the message they are trying to portray. This is part of that culture of trusting your neighbor, they want people to be able to trust each other. Along with looking out for each other. We also see the woman do anything in her ability to protect her baby, she locks the door to be safe. She proceeds to barricade the door with the heaviest thing she can, all to protect her child. Overall the film was innovative for the film industry as a whole, and it deserves more recognition than it gets. Its use of cinematography to keep the viewer in suspense and glued to their screen was remarkable. And it really lived up to its name, Suspense by Lois Weber. 

Introduction to Me

    Welcome to my blog page, this is the first post, the classic "introduction" post. Now when we were given this assignment I wasn't really sure what I was going to write about. I have plenty of things to write about myself, I mean I do know myself pretty well. However, I am not used to having to go so into depth on parts of my life. This made me think very long and hard about how I wanted to present myself to the class, and to anyone reading this blog. After all that I think I found a good way to do it, so lets get started.  
  

     Hi my name is Matt, I am a business major here at North Central. I grew up in sports playing basketball, baseball and golf, my favorite sport being baseball. This picture is from Tropicana Field in Tampa Bay, the home of the Rays. I am a Cubs fan for life, but whenever I go on a vacation with my family we always try to visit a new ball park and watch a team play that we have never seen play before. Most of the places we visit have been in the National league but I am slowly starting to merge over into American league stadiums as well. There is nothing more enjoyable for me than sitting down and watching a baseball game, preferably the Cubs. Along with sports the most important part of my life is my family, that is also why I chose the picture below. Whenever I need help or something happens I know I can count on my family for support, and they have always been a big part of my life. 

    One of the main reasons I am at North Central is because of sports. I am on the golf team here at North Central, I have been golfing since I was able to walk. It is a very calming thing for me, even though mentally it can be very stressful and it's something I enjoy to compete in. I really liked the small school atmosphere at North Central, and it helps me focus on my work. Over weekends or breaks I like to visit my friends at other schools like UIUC, Marquette and other small schools around the area. I enjoy most genres of music, my favorite are country, rock, blues, and hip hop. I am planning to go to country thunder over the summer along with some other concerts around the area. 

    The thing that attracted me to this class is that I was in some film classes for highschool and I really enjoyed them. The way we learned about the different techniques used in certain films, different shot compositions and even the audio piqued my interest. Know how big of a part all these things plan in film, I knew I had to take this class. Along with that I am a very poor artist so this was the only class in the arts section that I would have a chance to do good in. The way I see it, that's the "excuse" I needed to continue to learn about the art of film making. The short film we watched called Snowy, was composed very well from a cinematic point of view. The way they used close shots to be able to make the turtle seem larger and draw more attention to him throughout the film was very effective. Along with the use of pans, to show the contrast of the two lives that are lived. One in the upstairs family world, and one in the secluded basement turtle world. This causes us to feel bad for the turtle, even though the film seems to be more of a funny/joking film. The use of cinematography to make the story move along and stay interesting was strong throughout the whole film. And I think its one of the main reasons it is so well liked and successful. That's a little bit about me and the way I look at the art of film making.