Product Description

A nightmare realm in which light shadow & substance are abstracted a world in which a demented doctor & a carnival sleepwalker perpetrate a series of ghastly murders in a small community. Studio: Kino International Release Date: 10/05/2004 Starring: Conrad Veidt Lil Dagover Run time: 75 minutes Director: Robert Weine

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #12202 in DVD
• Released on: 2002-09-24
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Black & White, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: German
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 67 minutes

Amazon.com
A milestone of the silent film era and one of the first "art films" to gain international acclaim, this eerie German classic from 1919 remains the most prominent example of German expressionism in the emerging art of the cinema. Stylistically, the look of the film's painted sets--distorted perspectives, sharp angles, twisted architecture--was designed to reflect (or express) the splintered psychology of its title character, a sinister figure who uses a lanky somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) as a circus attraction. But when Caligari and his sleepwalker are suspected of murder, their novelty act is surrounded by more supernatural implications. With its mad-doctor scenario, striking visuals, and a haunting, zombie-like character at its center, Caligari was one of the first horror films to reach an international audience, sending shock waves through artistic circles and serving as a strong influence on the classic horror films of the 1920s, '30s, and beyond. It's a museum piece today, of interest more for its historical importance, but Caligari still casts a considerable spell. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

Prime example of German Expressionism
I had watched many poorly-made VHS tapes of this film and was very happy a restored version came out on video. There's probably no better way to see this film. This visual stunning silent German film tells the story of a mad doctor who trains a sleepwalker to kill people in order to study the effects of somnambulism. Filled with images resembling one's nightmare (or the mind state of a mentally-ill) -- distorted views, deformed spaces, bizarre lights and shadows -- this film in 1919 helped usher in a new era of German Expressionism, a period that produced such classics as The Last Laugh, Nosferatu, and Metropolis.

This DVD is identical in content to the laserdisc from Image a few years ago, with the exception that the LD included a detailed letter explaining why there is a faint horizontal line near the top of the screen in certain scenes (it's a misplaced "frame line" that is supposed to mark the edge of a frame). The DVD merely mentions on the jacket case that this is a "defect" on the film negative. Like the LD, this DVD also presents the film in a "windowbox", ensuring every frame can be seen in full.

The audio commentary on the alternate sound track is thoughtful and insightful, but the commentator reiterates much of what appears on the jacket essay. Other extras include a few comtemporary photographs related to the film, and a short silent film from the Expressionist era.

a note to confused amazon users...
Amazon does NOT differentiate its reviews of titles (be it book/DVD's/vhs etc) by this or that edition by any of the many companies that release them....so your review of the cheapy public domain Alpha dvd(to name just one of the several CRAP distributors of old movies)and the words you write about the restored fine print Kino International(to name one of the very excellent distributors of old movies)will be all on the same page, WHATEVER version you have selected!!

Having said that , my review is of the KINO dvd release , a very fine one as this company does not distribute anything less(you pay more, but if you know anything about silent and classic movies it will be no secret to you that if you pay peanuts that is exactly what you will get....)...it is however disconserting to see that even the best available dvd release still hasn't been cleaned up to the degree that other classic silent masterpieces have..surely with todays technology a digital "hoovering" of this film is not too much to ask.

Wonderful film of course, but you know that otherwise you wouldn't even be reading these reviews, and the KINO version is , so far, the best you can get for your money.

Edition selection tips
I'm not going to spend time raving about the movie, because I'm going to assume that if you've got this far you already know how wonderful it is. What I think could be far more useful (as this is an area where I have been burned) is some comparison between the two DVD editions I know of.

I have copies of both the Kino Video edition and the Image Entertainment edition. My preference is for Image Entertainment for the following reasons:

(1) The print seems slightly cleaner (and most helpfully, the DVD packaging warns you about the horizontal line across the top of some scenes which is a defect on the original film)

(2) The intertitles on Image use the correct expressionistic style as per the 1920 release. from what I recall, Kino's are the 'normalised' printed intertitles from 1923.

(3) The Kino version has possibly the most insensitive layer transition location I have ever come across. For reasons of their own Kino put an intertitle before the final sequence in the asylum, and it would have been a natural place for a layer transition. Instead they put it a few seconds into the final sequence (and only a couple of minutes before the end of the film!). Image has no layer transition.

(4) Both scores on the Kino version are dreadful. One consists of strange electronic noises, while the 'orchestral' one is pretty inappropriate. Instead Image chose a very nice specially composed score by Timothy Brock which is a remarkably effective pastiche in the style of Alban Berg (very appropriate for an expressionist film).

(5) Image has a commentary track; it's not clear that Kino does (I can't remember, but certainly it isn't mentioned in the blurb on the back).

Just about the only plus of Kino is that there is considerably more bonus material (43 minutes from 'Genuine: the tale of a vampire' as compared to about 3 on Image). However, if the price for that is the awful layer transition, then I know which I prefer.


So that's why I prefer the Image version and wish I hadn't bought the Kino version.