The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920): trivia & fun facts

Fun facts

• Mayer wrote the part of Jane for Gilda Langer, but by the time the film was cast Langer's interests had moved on from Janowitz and Mayer to director Paul Czinner, leaving the role to be played by Lil Dagover.
• Through film director Fritz Lang, Janowitz and Mayer met with Erich Pommer, head of production at the Decla-Film studio in Weissensee, on 19 April 1919, to discuss selling the script.
• Janowitz also believed he had witnessed a murder in 1913 near an amusement park on Hamburg's Reeperbahn, beside the Holstenwall, which served as another inspiration for the script.
• In his 1947 book From Caligari to Hitler, Siegfried Kracauer argued, based largely on an unpublished typescript written and provided by Janowitz, that the film originally included no frame story and started with the fair coming to town and ended with Caligari becoming institutionalised.
• Caligari played in one Paris theatre for seven consecutive years, a record that remained intact until the release of Emmanuelle (1974).
• Bertelsmann/BMG commissioned Timothy Brock to adapt his 1996 score for string orchestra for a 2014 restoration; Brock conducted the premiere in Brussels on 15 September 2014.
• Caligari was adapted into an opera in 1997 by composer John Moran, that premiered at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a production by Robert McGrath.
• A two-act musical adaptation premiered at the 2001 Midtown International Theatre Festival.
• Joseph Kahn and Rob Zombie directed a music video for the 1999 single "Living Dead Girl" with imagery directly inspired by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, with Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie playing the Cesare part as the titular character.
• The filmmakers were so nervous about the release that Erich Pommer, on his way to the theatre, reportedly exclaimed, "It will be a horrible failure for all of us!"
• Robinson wrote, "The German critics, almost without exception, ranged from favourable to ecstatic".
• Caligari premiered at the Marmorhaus theatre in Berlin on 26 February 1920, less than one month after it was completed.
• On the contrary, Robinson said the premiere was highly successful, showing at the theatre for four weeks, an unusual amount for the time, and then returning two weeks later.
• With input from 117 film critics, filmmakers and historians from around the world, it was the first universal film poll in history.
• The film's design was handled by Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig, who recommended a fantastic, graphic style over a naturalistic one.

Source: Wikipedia

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