No doubt everyone knows about the Expressionist film, "Dr. Caligari" (above). What you may not know is that a monumental new restoration has been done which will soon be on sale in America. I saw it over the weekend at Steve's and it was an experience that I'll never forget.
The architecture in the film is shown to such advantage in the restored print that I think I'll confine myself to talking about that. The film's planted a fantasy in my mind that a real town could be made to look like the place where Caligari lived. I'd consider living there. Wouldn't you?
For starters, how do you like this staircase (above)? The patterns of light are painted on. In a real house you could achieve a similar effect with tiles.
The sets were full of diagonals.
Of course diagonals are only a theatrical effect but you find yourself wondering, could a town like this actually be built? Would you be able to find people who would live there? I think so. It would be a town with a unique character.
I'm not a fan of sheer concrete exteriors but I have to admit that they might work in narrow, conspicuously designed corridors like this one. The Futurist wall detail helps, as does the costume Caligari is wearing. Humans crave complexity and embellishment and if they find themselves in flat environments my guess is they'll dress flamboyantly to compensate.
I like the bridge (above) in Caligari. The film reminds us that bridges for foot traffic, tunnels, terraces, balconies, towers, solariums, awnings... all belong in architecture because they're fun.
How would you like an office (above) like Caligari's? In real life the atmospheric cones and pillars would take up a lot of room and so would need some purpose to justify them. Maybe they could be book shelves.
Of course you'd want to retain the cluttered look of the books in the film. That wouldn't be hard to do, in fact in recent years it's been possible to buy ready-made "clutter" shelves. Above is a clutter shelf used in the film "Don't Look Back."
The spaces are deliberately odd-shaped to retain the appearance of clutter. They're nice halfway containers for books and papers that haven't been organized yet but will eventually end up on neater shelves elsewhere in the house. Caligari's cone shapes could become "clutter cones."
Even the Expressionist trees could be made real. Lots of trees look that in the Winter when they've lost their leaves.
When I researched this post I stumbled on lots of student projects that were inspired by the Caligari film. Here's one (above) by "Starchild 07." Hmmm... do you suppose something like that could be a porch decoration for Halloween?
Here (above) a contemporary artist has added to Caligari's famous rooftop layout.
