Review: From Caligari to Hitler

A still from “From Caligari to Hitler.”

Dir. Rüdiger Suchsland. 119 minutes.
3/5

Ninety years ago, Weimar Germany was turning out films as edgy, strange and unsettling as anything you’d find on HBO today. Here, Rüdiger Suchsland brings us on a guided tour of early Kino, connecting changes in German society to the careers of German filmmakers, with the occasional detour to Hollywood.

“From Caligari to Hitler” is pretty understated, for a film featuring, by proxy, numerous madmen, giants, vampires and killer robots. Suchsland chooses an intensely traditional style, alternating montages of clips from classic films with interviews with film historians and archival audio from figures like Fritz Lang and Bertolt Brecht. There is little attempt to craft a distinctive style, which at least spares us Michael Moore-style theatrics.

Suchsland’s documentary is probably only suitable fare for film nerds, as it assumes that the viewer has seen films like “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” and “M.” Nonetheless, even as a non-expert on early German film, I found the earnest enthusiasm of “From Caligari to Hitler” infectious. Suchsland shows a heartfelt reverence for the awesome power of the moving image, and doesn’t debase himself with attempts to appeal to everyone. Perhaps a scholar of Nazi cinema knows that grabbing the ear of the masses isn’t always a good thing.

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