Thursday, September 10, 2009
I have to say that I was so glad to read Seth's blog entry. After much discussion in class about the framing technique in the movie, the general consensus seemed to be that the framing took away from the message of the movie, and many people didn't like it. I felt kind of silly, in a room of my intelligent and cultured peers, thinking to myself that the framing was one of my favorite aspects of the movie. I was so entranced in the story Francis was telling from the beginning that when the end came, even after it was revealed that he was in the insane asylum, I still believed him. While everyone was commenting and saying "ohhhhhh, so Francis was really the crazy one the whole time?!," I still found myself wanting to believe that he was sane. I felt his pain; one of the most terrifying situations I can imagine would be to be sane and surrounded by all crazy people who thought YOU were the crazy one. Another thing about the framing that I liked was that it left you wondering-kind of like those choose your own destiny books that they had when we were little, the ones where you read the first page and if you decide to go into the haunted house you turn to page 50, but if you decide to walk past it to the field down the street you turn to page 26...remember those? Although the framing changed the message of the movie, I think that ultimately it helped make it more entertaining. If we hadn't been left at the end of the movie saying "what the fuck just happened," the movie would have been much less interesting because, let's be honest, we all knew the murderer was Cesare from the beginning. There would be no element of surprise, no requirement for brain use. The framing in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was a bold "make it or break it" chance for Wiene to make and, in this humble viewer's opinion, it made it.
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As was stated below, I felt that the framing device was a make it or brake it kind of addition to the film. However, instead of enhancing or depleting from the film's quality, I thought its intent to be a way to merge the kind of artificial reality created in Francis' delusion with the mindset of the German people: were they really submitting to an authoritarian rule that had them all figured out?
ReplyDeleteI think that Francis' realization of his "delusion" or when the film returns back to the insane asylum shows that he has in a way made his first step away from merely following authority, but at the same time he is afraid to delve completely into freedom because this could turn out equally as bad for him. I feel like this is the general attitude of the German people at the end of the war... they were willing to escape their previous state but they were unsure of where to turn to next.
-allison kanner