This Silent Movie Day, Listening Closely to ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari’
Cinema might not have begun with sound, but that doesn’t mean it began quietly. The silent decades of cinema are charged with movement and rhythm that flicker with life. Each year, we celebrate these quieter achievements of early cinema on September 29th, also known as Silent Movie Day. At the very least, it’s an excuse to revisit the wonderful and wondrous world of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920).
Often considered a cornerstone of German Expressionism, Robert Wiene’s horror classic recaliberates how we experience storytelling and understand silence, and thus remains essential viewing even a century after its release. In Caligari, silence flows like music—it pulses through the set, imbues every frame, and dictates how the characters move.
Even the film’s structure mimics musical composition. The story frames begin in calm, pastoral tones with Francis, the narrator, and an older man talking on a bench. We’re then plunged into the jagged rhythm of Holstenwall before returning to the bench, now with the knowledge that the events may have been an invention of Francis’s mind. This return might be familiar to anyone who’s listened to a sonata where elements repeat, carrying new weight.
We feel the musicality most vividly in one of the central character’s first appearances. Cesare, the somnambulist, is revealed in a wooden cabinet at the town fair, standing perfectly still with his eyes shut until Dr. Caligari theatrically gestures to him to open them. The movement is slow and controlled. He does not blink or flinch and simply unfolds his arms, making the audience gasp in a perfectly timed chain reaction. The motion from Cesare to Dr. Caligari to the audience feels like an orchestrated symphony. There is no sound cue, yet the release is timed so well that it feels like it is being conducted offscreen by an unheard rhythm. Without a single note, the scene lands forcefully and creates an illusion of sound—you can almost hear the drumroll of tension and the creaking of the cabinet when Cesare is uncloaked.
Many scenes later, Cesare attempts to abduct Jane, the narrator’s fiancée, bringing the percussion precision of the film to the forefront again. He enters his victim’s room hypnotically, in a dreamlike ritualistic manner, each step evenly spaced, and approaches her with a balletic tenderness. In this moment, you “hear” the shadows deepening and the air thickening.
These performances are choreographed to an invisible beat embedded in the visuals. The intertitles also act as beats, adding to the visual rhythm. Each card drops into place, then disappears, creating a pocket of silence that fills the space. The absence of sound—rather, the presence of silence—sharpens your expectations. Caligari encourages you to pay attention to the gestures and the pauses and gives the audience space to decipher images rhythmically.
Placing Caligari next to other silent films of the era helps to see how its musicality makes it so unique. Take Nosferatu (1922)—both are horror films featuring iconic monsters and both use light as an expressive tool. But unlike Nosferatu, in which dread is built through long takes and a naturalistic setting, Caligari uses the form itself to build dread. The characters move in a shared spell, the rooms shrink and stretch, and the cuts arrive abruptly, making the world of the film behave madly. Even in scenes with no action, there is exaggeration and syncopated pulse. There is a scene in the film where Dr. Caligari discovers an ancient manuscript. The scene is accompanied by dramatic cuts between the book pages and Dr. Caligari’s eyes. The editing is snappy—speeding up, then slowing down. The visuals are loud enough that sound is not needed to indicate that this is a climactic scene.
The songfulness of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari becomes even more striking when a score is added. Over the years, Caligari has been paired with everything from minimal piano to full-blown electronic scores. Each choice transforms how the film feels and how each gesture operates. Then there’s the option to watch the film in silence, or near-silence—in the hum of your own environment. If this is your choice, you may find yourself filling in sounds from your own imagination, allowing you to compose the film while watching it.
Modern films rarely leave that kind of space for interpretation. Soundtracks swell and the dialogue keeps flowing, not allowing for silence to hold the kind of weight it can. In Caligari, the silence pulls focus to the strange, internal logic of a world where the light behaves like the sound and the walls lean in as if they are listening.
There is a reason The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari continues to inspire many filmmakers, most notably Tim Burton. It operates on a level we will always respond to: rhythm. Its horror lives in its tempo and the silence is filled with sound, if you pay attention to it.
A 4k restoration of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is available to stream now on Kino Film Collection.
Read more for other ways to celebrate Silent Movie Day.