The Cabinet of Dr Caligari

The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari

The ITN CORPORATION are set to release a new soundtrack score by IN THE NURSERY. The specially commissioned score for the classic silent film 'The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari' will be the first in an occasional series titled Optical Music. The 60 minute soundtrack presents a distinct and modern accompaniment inspired by the startling expressionistic imagery of the 1919 German movie directed by Robert Wiene. A mixture of harsh and subliminal sound textures are used to convey the film's distorted symbolism and bizarrely-angled design.

IN THE NURSERY presented the new score by way of selected 'live performance' screenings of Caligari at film theatres throughout the UK [Glasgow, Sheffield, London, Edinburgh & Manchester], after which it is hoped that the shows will be extended to German theatres early in 1997.

CD Foreward

"As someone both immersed in movie culture and invigorated by contemporary instrumental music, I found the prospect of Dr Caligari meeting In The Nursery intriguing and exhilarating. The results are immensely satisfying. Significantly, the Humberstone twins have combined (in maybe that extra-sensory way that twins can) to both contemporise and enrich a silent classic that (dare I say?) would have appeared somewhat dated now.

"Much has been made of this movie masterpiece, in that it advanced cinema as art, influenced the future of the fantasy/horror genre, and that it still stands today as a work of great Expressionist imagination, in conveying character emotion and mental state through its symbolically distorted design, to the extent that John Willet - in his book 'Expressionism' - contends that "nothing was more influential in bringing the (Expressionist) movement to the notice of the outside world, or in deciding how we now use the term". Dr Caligari is also cited by critic David pirie as an expression of "the gloom and fear that prevailed in Germany as it emerged from World War 1", with the added suggestion by Siegfried Kracauer in his book 'From Caligari to Hitler' that the film's pervasive atmosphere of horror even played its part as a forewarning of the terrors of National Socialism. "Caligari" writes Dr Kracauer, exposes the soul wavering between tyranny and chaos". Indeed, at the heart of Dr Caligari is the theme of authority turning the populace into dutiful zombies.

"Although The Cabinet of Dr Caligari can lay claim to being cinema's first 'cult' movie (it played in one French film theatre for seven consecutive years), it is still uniquely bewitching for its odd, painted backdrops and bizarrely-angled sets, the film has been unavoidably ravaged by time. To anyone other than a cineaste or film sociologist, Caligari might reasonably seem a strange, crude, flickering antiquity. This is why In The Nursery's score is to be welcomed, because as I sat in a packed Derby, Metro for ITN's debut performance, this jerky, age-old picture crackled into new, accessible life. ITN's intuitive grasp of sound and powerful sense of drama imbued Caligari with a dark, mesmeric ambience, and somehow their vital, complementary and modernistic score had given this otherwise crusty epic fresh impact with the psychological horror of the drama particularly more pronounced."

Ashley Franklin
BBC Radio Derby

click on a track below to hear an extract in mp3,
or preview entire album.

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Score commissioned by Metro Cinema, Derby
Film still courtesy of Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung/Transit Film GmbH
Thanks to the British Film Institute

Film representation: Ocean Park Music Group
1861 South Bundy Drive, Suite 109, Los Angeles, CA 90025, USA
Tel: (310) 315 5266 Fax: (310) 315 5256 e-mail: OPMG@aol.com

The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari
Directed by Robert Wiene
Germany 1919