SOURCE: "Social Mobility and the Fantastic: German Silent Cinema," in Wide Angle, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1982, pp. 14-25.

Elsaesser is an English film scholar and educator who has done extensive research on German cinema. In the following excerpt, he examines the various ways in which The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari can be interpreted.

In Dr. Caligari, … the initial situation contains a social aspect involving class and status differences. Caligari, asking deferentially for a permit to put up his tent show, is treated by the town clerk and his subordinates in a brusque, humiliating and insulting manner. There can be little doubt that this scene transmits to the spectator an identifiable, realistic experience of the arbitrary and haughty behavior that a militarist bureaucracy (which is what the civil service was even during the Weimar Republic) displayed towards civilians. What we all at some stage of our lives have murmured under our...