CALIGARI
169
After a thorough propaganda campaign culminating in the puz–
zling poster "You must become Caligari," Decla released the film in
February 1920 in the Berlin Marmorhaus. Among the press re–
views-they were unanimous in praising
Caligari
as the first work
of art on the screen-that of
Vorwiirts,
tho leading Social Democratic
Party· organ, distinguished itself by utter absurdity. It commented
upon the film's final scene, in which the director of the asylum
promises to heal Francis, with the words: "This film is also morally
invulnerable inasmuch as it evokes sympathy for the mentally diseased,
and comprehension for the self-sacrificing activity of the psychiatrists
and attendants." Instead of recognizing that Francis' attack against
an odious authority harmonized with the Party's own antiauthorita–
rian doctrine,
Vorwiirts
preferred to pass off authority itself as a
paragon of progressive virtues. It was always the same psychological
mechanism: the rationalized middle-class propensities of the Social
Democrats interfering with their rational socialist designs. While
the Germans were too close to
Caligari
to appraise its symptomatic
value, the French realized that this film was more than just an ex–
ceptional film. They coined the term
ucaligatisme"
and applied it
to a postwar world seemingly all upside down; which, at any rate,
proves that they sensed the film's bearing on the structure of society.
The New York
premiere
of
Caligari,
in April 1921, firmly established
its world fame. But apart from giving rise to stray imitations and
serving as a yardstick for artistic endeavors, this "most widely dis–
cussed film of the time" never seriously influenced the course of the
American or French cinema. It stood out alone like a monolith.
Caligari
shows the "Soul at Work." On what adventures does
the revolutionized soul embark? The narrative and pictorial elements
of the film gravitate toward two opposite poles. One can be labeled
"Authority," or, more explicitly, "Tyranny." The theme of tyranny,
with which the authors were obsessed, pervades the screen from be–
ginning to end. Swivel chairs of enormous height symbolize the su–
periority of the city officials turning on them, and, similarly, the
gigantic back of the chair in Alan's attic testifies to the invisible pres–
ence of powers that have their grip on him. Staircases reinforce the
effect of the furniture: numerous steps ascend to police headquarters,
and in the lunatic asylum itself no less than three parallel flights of
stairs are called upon to mark Dr. Caligari's position at the top of
the hierarchy. That the film succeeds in picturing him as a tyrant
figure of the stamp of Homunculus and Lubitsch's Henry VIII is
