"In the Grip of an Obsession": Delsarte and the Quest for Self-Possession in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari

Abstract

In this article, Julia Walker challenges the current critical consensus among film scholars that the expressionist style of the German silent-film classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari bears no relation to its seemingly conventional romantic narrative. She begins by offering an allegorical reading of the film, showing how the well-established Freudian model of self that is figured in the Caligari / Cesare dyad is set in conflict with an older, moral-philosophical model of self represented by the trio of friends, Francis, Jane, and Alan. In Walker's reading, the narrative conflict between these two models of self encodes a fear of Freudian "depth psychology" that is figured visually in the shallow, painted perspective of the film's expressionist design. But what is more, Walker argues, the expressionist acting also functions to encode this narrative conflict insofar as it draws upon the Delsarte method that, itself, was based upon a moral-philosophical model of self that is strained to its limits. As she shows, the recurring motif of grasping hands stylistically figures the narrative quest for self-possession—a quest that the Freudian model holds to be impossible.