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THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE FILM
Wiene's film was used purely because the audience were asked to imagine themselves thinking a madman's thoughts.
As a document of cinematic progress, the value of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari increases year by year. Since its first showing, over ten years ago, it has been mentioned and referred to, criticised and revived, times without number. It has become celebrated. Practically all those who were connected with its production have become famous. There is no need to trace their course and recent successes, for they are too well-known. Only one word need be added, Robert Wiene has never repeated his achievement. It is his sole work of genuine merit.
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Although the appearance of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari set working the brains of people both in and out of the film industry, and although it was a clear finger pointing the path for the cinema, one film, however great, cannot change the output of vast producing concerns. With its new ideas on the use of the camera as an instrument of expression, Wiene's film certainly influenced some of the more advanced American directors, but taken as a whole the productions of Hollywood remained on their former level. What The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari did, however, was to attract to the cinema many people who had hitherto regarded a film as the low watermark of intelligence.
Not until 1925 did a film appear which wholly justified the position of the cinema. During the intervening period many remarkable films were realised, chiefly in Germany and in Sweden, which evidenced that brains were at work in Europe, but these were of less significance than would first appear. They naturally have their place in the gradual development and will be found dealt with more fully at a later stage. In 1925 The Last Laugh, the joint product of Murnau, Mayer, Freund, and Jannings, definitely established the film as an independent medium of expression. Unlike The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, it had nothing in common with the theatre, but made full use of the resources of the cinema as known at that date. It was a remarkable example of filmic unity, of centralisation of purpose and of perfect continuity. It was made without titles, with the single exception of a director's note, which changed the natural sad ending into a happy one, a superbly handled concession to the public. Everything that had to be said in this thematic narrative of
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