SOURCE: "Dr. Caligari's Cabinet: A Cubist Perspective," in The Comparatist, Vol. VIII, May, 1984, pp. 7-13.

In the following excerpt, Ketchif argues that The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is more significantly Cubist than Expressionistic and suggests that the film's manipulation of space mirrors its main themes.

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is an early example of a rejection of early cinematic tradition with its stress of illusion and narrative. The film attempts to maintain a sequential unfolding of narrative while introducing the self-conscious mode of self-reflexion. Narrative had previously demanded illusion, and the makers of Caligari were forced to face the dilemma of modernist painters. A dialectic arose in which the thingness of the film as medium was juxtaposed to the reality of the sequential narrative. To articulate this dialectic Caligari's makers were forced to deny illusion, and they did so in a way that has affinities with...