Sunday | June 6, 1999 7:00 pm

The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Live Piano Accompaniment Composed and Performed by Yakov Gubanov
Screening on Film

Directed by Robert Weine.
With Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Lil Dagover.
Germany, 1919, 35mm, black & white, silent, 35 min.
German intertitles with English subtitles.

Weimar Republic hysteria translates into Expressionism run murderously wild, at the edge of a traveling carnival featuring a spooky somnambulist (Krauss) and his macabre walking-dead companion (Veidt). Wondrous set design, but is that dubious hypnotist really Caligari, the fascist head of an asylum?

PRECEDED BY

A Corner in Wheat

Directed by D.W. Griffith.
With James Kirkwood, W. Chrystie Miller, Frank Powell.
US, 1909, 16mm, black & white, silent, 17 min.

D.W. Griffith’s most "leftist" short, showing how a business tycoon controls the wheat market and forces farmers into poverty. Later, a Soviet favorite.