Remake of Caligari (Review)

Spoilers ahoy!

A friend of mine shared this with me and I had to write a review, share it with folks who might appreciate it as I do.  The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920) as a milestone of German expressionistic cinema, one that seriously influenced nearly all that came after it.  One can see in it a lens through which a traumatized society began to see the world.  Recall this was immediately following the First World War, a social upheaval whose reverberations included the Nazis, Lord of the Rings, Prohibition, the rise of new and startling artforms as well as the end to most of the ancient monarchies of Europe.  We still feel it today.

In 2005 a sound remake not only recreated the story but by filming on green screen managed to use the actual background of the original, placing new actors against the same eerie nightmare landscape.  Ah the wonders of the personal computer!

A old man tells a spooky story to a young one, Francis (Judson Pearce Morgan) who scoffs at belief in devils or ghosts.  Then, a beautiful young woman passes (Lauren Birkell) without answering their salutation.  Francis, grief-stricken, identifies her as his fiancee.  He says her sanity was destroyed in a terrible series of events...

From there the flashback begins, telling of Francis and his best friend Allan (Neil Hopkins) who both love Jane (the aforementioned beautiful young woman).  Allan drags Francis off to see the local Carnival, where on a whim they go see the exhibit of one Dr. Caligari (Daamen J. Krall) -- a somnambulist named Caesare (Doug Jones of Hellboy fame) who can be made to wake then foresee the future.  Allan asks how long he has to live.  The answer "Until dawn tomorrow!"  Sure enough, within twelve hours he has been stabbed to death in his sleep.  Francis, suspicious of Caligari and perhaps guilt-ridden over loving the same woman as his murdered best friend (and neglecting him in the wake of Allan's mental illness), spurs city officials to investigate.  But in doing so, he becomes the target of Caligari's revenge--aimed squarely at the lovely Jane!  Caesare, under his master's hypnotic commands, goes to kill her.  But then, entranced by her beauty, he stays his hand.  Seeking to kidnap her instead, Caesare is chased down.  Jane, alas, is so traumatized she becomes almost catatonic.  Francis is the one who tracks down Caligari to his lair--an insane asylum where the man turns out to be the director!

As the story concludes, we return to the present.  Francis bemoans his Jane's continued state-of-mind while continuing to insist there are no ghosts, no demons, only the physical world.  Then comes the twist.  We learn all three of them--Francis, the old man, and Jane--are inmates at the very asylum of the flashback.  Caesare is another inmate.  More, the man identified as "Caligari" is indeed the asylum's director.  As Francis attacks him and is put into a straight jacket, the Doctor believes he now understands and may be able to cure him.

Such a simple plot description doesn't capture what makes both films--original and remake--so powerful.  A lot depends upon the strange look of the film and its world.  There's hardly a vertical or horizontal line anywhere.  Instead curves and angles abound.  Like film noir decades later, shadows frame so many shots  and likewise the acting has a stylized quality.  Almost stage-theatrical.  More, the acting itself isn't simply creepy for the sake of effect, but informed by the subtext.  We can see how even in the flashback Allan, Francis and Jane all seem fragile.  Each seems potentially the victim of mental illness.  The easier, cheaper choice would have been to play them as already mad in some way.  "Fragile" works much better, and is also harder to pull off.  This cast did it, though!  Likewise, in this world-within-a-world passions simmer under the surface but bound by social rules.  How appropriate that here, a wedding proposal between two young people who clearly love one another is enacted with neither looking the other in the eye!

But what helps make this such a success is not only the fine performances or stunning look, but the fact the script by David Lee Fisher (who also directed) presses the button of fear and uncertainty we all feel.  How can we be sure?  Might not everything we believe be wrong?

Consider--in 1920 the world was reeling from the most vast and destructive war in history, one that devastated Europe and saw startling new forms of death wielded in ways no one seemed to have given serious thought to before.  More, that war had seemingly accomplished little good.  A dictatorial regime in an aggressive nation was replaced by an unstable democracy, rendering the heart of a vital part of the world uncertain of its future.  At the same time a dictatorial movement had seized power in a resource-rich nation and sought to expand that movement's sway.  That this movement was ill-understood by most only made things worse.  On top of all that, a terrible disease had come out of nowhere and wrecked havoc across the globe (the 1918 Spanish Flu).  All this in the wake of disasters involving what we'd regarded as the crowning achievement of our technological world of wonders (the Titanic).  The wealthy of the world saw their fortunes rise to dizzying heights while the poor in many ways got worse and worse.  Scientific breakthroughs were questioning our foundations of what we believed about reality (this was the heyday of Freud and Einstein) while new forms of communication ushered in social movements and changing gender roles that puzzled/threatened those unable to cope.

Sound familiar?  Is it any wonder that final scene in Caligari still moves us, still confuses and resonates?  Because we still are on Francis' side.  We still want Jane to love him, even though we now know she doesn't even know him.  We distrust the Doctor, even though he has done nothing wrong we know of--quite the opposite.  Francis screams at the end.  Don't we feel a little like screaming as well?

Dream Casting: "The Mummy"

Kindly indulge my fight of fancy for a few moments, will you?

One of my favorite "classic" horror films is 1932's The Mummy with Boris Karloff. It is also a pivotal film in some surprising ways, not least because it began the whole "lost love reincarnated" trope which has become almost ubiquitous in horror films ever since (probably done best in Bram Stoker's Dracula, but present many times elsewhere, usually involving vampires).

About a decade ago, after many years in development, Stephen Sommers directed his own version of The Mummy amid massive special effects--the result being a grotesque mess of a motion picture. Among other things, it is a perfect example of an "idiot plot." Quite simply, the story only makes sense once you realize every single character in it--including all of the ones off-screen--are idiots. The cast is good, but they are doing their best to rise above utterly wretched material designed for maximum cheap humor coupled with spectacular fight scenes.

No, I didn't like it. Not one little bit. And yet, it is Sommers' best movie. Don't get me started on the mess that is Van Helsing.

I do not mind special effects, not at all. Expanding the story makes plenty of sense to moi. But I simply don't buy that either one necessitates a terrible screenplay. The original has the essence of something great, something that so struck a cord it has been replayed again and again. Barnabas and Josette in Dark Shadows is an obvious example--the search by a supernatural being for his lost love, now reincarnated (or so he believes).

Let us start with the characters. At the heart of this story is Imhotep, the Egyptian priest buried alive and brought back to life by the careless recitation of words from a magical scroll by an archeologist who goes mad at the sight. I suggest Alexander Siddig in the title role, an actor best known in this country for his work on the t.v. show Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. But he's always shown considerable more ability than that particular show allowed, even if it was my favorite Star Trek. Besides, with him as Imhotep (later masquerading as the egyptologist Ardath Bey) one can see the heroine actually tempted to join in living death. It helps methinks if at least some of the audience ends up on the Mummy's side!

Helen Grosvenor is the love interest, reincarnation of the Princess for whom Imhotep was sentenced to a horrifying death. My choice is an actress I've admired ever since she appeared in "Five Little Pigs" for Poirot. Her name is Sophie Winkleman and she's been increasingly busy. She even played a princess in the now-defunct series The Palace. One thing lost in the remake was the notion that Helen is half-Egyptian herself, but methinks that offers a marvelous source of drama. Racism rarely came under attack in 1930s films, it too-often being regarded as the status quo. But seems to me that the knee-jerk reaction of many Europeans (and natives) to a "half breed" would create greater tension. Were Helen a strong young woman living with a certain amount of loneliness, as a semi-pariah she is both more vulnerable yet also more likely to make surprising decisions. In other words, we might more easily believe she would choose Imhotep over her contemporary love interest.

That contemporary love interest is Frank Whemple, son of the man who discovered Imhotep and who now (with Ardeth Bay's help) uncovers the lost tomb of Princess Ankh-es-en-amon. Honestly, in my version it would be Whemple's father who went mad after seeing the Mummy come to life. Imagine if you will a young Englishman with something to prove, someone only too willing to buck social trends by falling for Helen. Methinks a good choice for this role is frankly Robert Pattinson. Methinks he is a very good, very intense actor and it would be a nice stretch for him to play an English gentleman struggling with defying social conventions, a rational view of the world now challenged by the supernatural, and haunted by the tragedy of his father's madness. Besides this triangle now makes plenty of sense in terms of chemistry!

Dr. Mueller is the "Van Helsing" character of the piece, the one who figures out what is going on. In the original, he was even played by Edward van Sloan (who was indeed Bela Lugosi's nemesis in the first Dracula). I'd cast Toby Stephens in the part. A fine actor who looks almost excessively Anglo-Saxon (all the more to highlight Helen's race), he has a sense of the sinister which is more believable in someone who sees an inexplicable events and considers "the living dead" as a possible solution! Recall this story is contemporary with Aleister Crowley and the rise of nationalist occultism in Germany.

Honestly, I also feel the story needs another female character, so I'd give Frank a sister--let us call her Anne. She can be a confidante of her brother, a voice of reason (dead people coming to life?) and of propriety (falling for a half-Arab girl?) and maybe even something of a not-quite-friend to Helen. An actress I very much admire is Kelly Reilly, best known in this country probably as Mary Morstan in the new film Sherlock Holmes. One can also imagine her taking some kind of terrible chance amidst the supernatural events, blithely not seeing the full scope of the danger.

Methinks expanding the "action" of the story makes perfect sense, but one needn't include armies of zombies to the mix. Let us keep, for example, the plot device that Imhotep learns that resurrecting his beloved won't work because she has been reborn. He then seeks out strange occult means of learning her identity, and in the process stirs Helen's memories of past lives. Thus her interest in him grows, part of her recognizing this strange man as someone important to her... But the choice of precisely what to do remains her own. (Parenthetically, I hated that this character in the remake ended up nothing more than a tool for Imhotep to use in bringing back his love--jeopardy replacing drama, an obstacle course of physical dangers replacing human conflict). Methinks the spectacle of such a story can be reflected in all sorts of things, not least the weather and reactions of official authorities as strange events mount (the theft of ancient treasures, for example--needed by Imhotep for his work). Ritual magic requires all kinds of specifics, including the exact positions of stars so that can provide the "ticking time bomb" aspect of the story. A sumptuous use of flashback imagery from Ancient Egypt could help the film even more visually exciting. But at its heart we need to care about the characters, and the story needs to be about that.

Okay, rant over. My delving into wish-fullfillment is done. Thanks for your patience.