The soundtrack on this version (Image) is great! It is an eerily, serialism-esque score written just for this film. Some silent films have been given a "modern treatment" with contemporary scores, but this DVD is judiciouly been given an appropriately "period-feel" in relation to the time and place that this movie was made. The score fits the film extremely well and is a well crafted work.

The DVD also comes with a commentary soundtrack that teaches the viewer about the film and the time in which it was shot in Germany. There is plenty of explanation about Expressionism as an art form in film, literature, and art of that time. A must for any film student!

I highly reccomend this DVD. It was well worth the price! It's literally amazing that an eighty year old film can still entertain and surprise a completely foreign audience, but some things about human beings are just universal and this film encompasses much that is universal in mankind.


Image or Kino?   February 29, 2008
 20 out of 20 found this review helpful

I'd like to add my two cent's worth here. Not going in to the film itself, I just want to discuss the 2 main versions out there, the Image "Special Collector's Edition" disc from about 10 years ago and the new Kino "Restored Authorized Edition". I watched both side to side (2 TVs & 2 DVD players)

Despite some raves about the Kino version (which I can't really understand), the Image version wins hands down. Kino, which normally puts out a superior product whatever movie they are releasing, I believe really dropped the ball with this one. For one, they went totally overboard with tinting...most scenes now appear to be a deep, dark blue, and the black areas have a weird, mottled, speckley, "wavy" look, like TV reception that isn't quite coming in. Granted, this is mostly only really bad during the first reel, in the opening garden scene, improving slightly as the film goes on, but it's still annoying.

The Image disc, by comparision, is brightly lit, scenes being either a "regular" grey like you see on the usual b/w silent film, or an amberish tint that still shows up fine. The entire Kino version just seems too dark & murky. The intertitles of both are in that funky, abstract font, but each has slightly different wording for the same scenes (and I don't know which is actually more accurate to the original, but both convey basically the same information). For example, one may say "Listen while I tell you a story" while the other says "I will now tell you a story" (I made both those up, but it was to get the idea across!). However, the intertitles on the Kino version are, again, much darker than the Image disc. Also, the Image print in general just seems much sharper & clearer than the Kino, and the musical score is much better & more fitting. Kino gives you a choice of 2 musical scorings & both are atrocious and do not seem to fit the "mood" of the story.

On the other hand, Kino does have more extras, particularly a much longer segment of GENUINE: THE TALE OF A VAMPIRE (43 minutes) while Image gives you about a 3-minute snippet. Also, and most important, that annoying horizontal line that cuts across the top of certain scenes on nearly every version out there (including the one shown on TCM) has been removed on the Kino disc. Long considered to be a flaw in the original film, it's most likely a goof in the converting process somewhere, and this shows that we DO have the technology to remove it, which we did not have back when the Image disc was made. Quite frankly, this was the ONLY main advantage I could find in the Kino print, and it does not make up for a blue, murky, dark movie. I'd much rather have a clean, crisp, clear, brightly lit film & deal with the line (it's not in every scene in the movie, just certain ones anyway).

I guess the best of both worlds would be if Image put out a new version, using it's same print but removing the line as Kino did. THAT would really be the "Ultimate Edition" in my opinion.


This is the first time I've ever recommended an Alpha Video release over a Kino Restoration   December 21, 2007
 17 out of 17 found this review helpful

Five minutes into the Kino restoration of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari," I had to stop the movie. Having spent years with the cheap Alpha Video release, I was amazed to see that the quality of this Kino restoration was actually WORSE than the Alpha video release. Just to be sure, I put in the Alpha Video release, and then the Kino release again, comparing them shot-by-shot.

There is absolutely no doubt that the Alpha Video version is MUCH clearer. While it lacks the original color tinting that the Kino version offers, there are no blurs, dark spots, or contrast issues when viewing the Alpha version. The picture is entirely clear.

The Kino release seems to sacrifice everything else for the sake of providing a cut that contains the original color tinting, but the picture is far worse. Additionally, the Kino release contains just as many jumps and scratches as (if not more than) The Alpha Video release. And, while the Alpha soundtrack doesn't always match the action of the film, the modernized brass ensemble soundtrack on the Kino restoration just feels wholly inappropriate.

In short, I see absolutely no reason to spend more for the Kino restoration of this film. I own both the expensive Kino release and the cheap Alpha Video release, and I'll be watching my Alpha copy from now on. Besides, Kino just made their "Restored Authorized Edition" of Nosferatu obsolete last month by creating an Ultimate edition that is far cleaner and contains the original score. Considering the popularity of Dr. Caligari, I'm sure an Ultimate edition is on the way for this film, as well. Don't waste your money on this edition.


As artsy-fartsy as yesteryear........and still accessible   December 12, 1999
 16 out of 17 found this review helpful

To simply say that Weine's film represented a fork in the road of cinema would be as much an understatement as it would be a cop-out to coin here. The latter statement is all-too true, though: 'Das Kabinett von Dr. Caligari' has been so often accredited as being the parent of pre-modern film-making that the cliche can sadly never be defeated without daring to challenge the veracity of the claim. At 52 minutes in length (6 reels), the movie is a veritable carousel ride of thrills, chills and stark surprises, all presented in a chilling set of surreal art, made even more chilling by the early Expressionists' love of shadows. The plot is convoluted but not so much so as to be confusing and a turn-off. A sideshow act comes with a fair to the German town of Holstenwall. The act is a mountebank (later revealed to be the head of the local asylum) and his somnambulist prophet (later revealed to be one of the patients at said institution). No sooner have they begun to work their concession than a string of murders occur. The protagonist's friend's is one of them and soon a detective story unwinds within the parameters of the main story. Behind the killings is none other than the thinly-masked mountebank, Dr. Caligari, proving for scientific purposes that he can make his sleepwalker kill upon suggestion. Director Robert Weine inserts a sharp twist in the story at the end, rendering the plotline as unreal as any of the scenery in the film. Loaded with imagery that challenges the sanity but which delights the soul, 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' is streets ahead of being classifiable just as being a horror movie ancestor. This is high art - the sets being hard evidence of Weine and co.'s ardent desires to make a break with cinematic dogma and go three steps beyond recreating realism for the lens. Here, in a film shot eighty years ago, can be found suspense of such intensity that it makes the picture seem more sinister than it really is. Conrad Veidt's sleepwalker is terrifying and demonic: the viewer knows intuitively that this type of killer cannot and will not listen to reason or mercy pleas. Werner Krauss's portrayal of the bad doctor is splendidly done and is more demonic-looking at times than his zombie-tool. The protagonists - a student, his would-be girlfriend, her father and the police in Holstenwall have to go to great pains to try and smoke Caligari out as the villain. The crags and jagged diagonals of the set augment the fear factor and lend a soporific heaviness to the characters and their doings. Even so, the actors merely lie on the periphery of the film's power. The axis here is formed by the silent, evil lucidity in the movie which serves to remind the viewer that not only do the actors appear to be dead and otherworldly, they would have to be dead and otherworldly by now. If I was allowed to watch but one picture for the rest of my life, this would be it.


You may be interested in knowing...   November 2, 2000
 15 out of 18 found this review helpful

I agree with many of the comments by previous reviewers. The film is something of a museum piece, but continues to fascinate largely due to its strange, painted sets and other visual elements. Those interested in this film, either as an important work of German cinema, or as a curiousity, may like to know the rest of Caligari's story...

The original screenwriters wrote a story of an insane doctor controlling a sleepwalker and using him to do his evil bidding. This could be considered a warning to the Germans not to "sleepwalk" into the control of an evil Caligari-like dictator. But then, the film was turned over to another German filmmaker who added a "framing story" that places the story of mad Caligari as a fantasy in the head of a patient in an asylum. Intentional or not, this frame reverses the meaning of the film. Instead of a warning against following authoritarian leaders blindly, the finished film positions Caligari as a compassionate doctor who can cure the patient now that the meaning of his insanity has been revealed.

A curious bit of film trivia, given where the world was heading.