The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari

A welcome 4K restoration of Robert Wiene’s 1920 expressionist masterpiece, with the angular painted sets, skewed perspectives and grotesque make-up now scrubbed and polished to take us deeper still into a nightmare in a hurt brain.

The tale of a carnival barker (Werner Krauss) who uses a somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) to commit murder, it captures the gloom of a Germany emerging from WW1 and is cited as boasting cinema’s first twist ending. Additional areas of innovation and influence are often overstated, but its silent scream still registers.