THE CABINET OF CALIGARI (1962; d. Roger Kay, w. Rbt Bloch)

Car heads twd light in tunnel (birth canal/death for character dying into new life), consecutive lap dissolves on face the multifaceted personality about to splinter into various types (+ dream’s cubist approach to self-examination à la Citizen Kane) leading to blowout (interrupted journey both midlife crisis + indication Self on wrong course; also, breakdown of body on descent into sleep/death) + subsequent walk (natural progress vs car-mechanical/artificial) into gathering night (vs opening light: her true destiny/ation); reaches secluded estate (deeper Self, POV approaching peephole again à la end-of-tunnel light [looking outwd aka in-], clamping shut further nod to Kane’s frustrated perspectives [maker Welles sent up in Macbeth-cast Ham O’Herlihy’s similarly VanDyked Cali]) + tells shadowed resident (the animus, whose purpose to guide fem to her spirit-self/core reality) "I’ve walked hours. Ages" (she primal messenger to superego, as well, from immemorial past: anima similarly suffered bkdwn at crucial juncture [birth, when men make 1st break from unity w/t fem – reason i.d. obscured till emergence, as is estate owner’s now – adolescence 2nd; each metaphor for atomic sundering of masc persona on horrors of WWII]) + he responds "I’ll take over" (transference of identity from self to not-the-self to Self, he diabolical demon-lover allied w/ house à la sim’y neurotic-wmn-finding-true-self-in-gothic-funhouse Haunting ’60 + ’59 Labyrinth; echoes/premonitions also of Twilight Zone "Hitch Hiker", Paul Bartel’s "Secret Cinema," + Lady in a Cage, theme hailing back to postwar Snake Pit, 3 Faces of Eve, and Lizzie - both emerging wmn’s profile in anticipation of Liberation 70s + men’s developing anima [+ their attempts to tamp down her inevitable healer-w/i]).

Assistant Christine (not-wife: "Plain" Jane’s sublimated self + counterpart to her absent, never-mentioned husband) goes w/ "brilliant" mechanic Eddie (also never seen: physician to Cali’s psych + the body shunted in beginning) to retrieve car (not seen again till ending: transcendence of old-self unable to take her where she's really going) while Cali + J jaw (latter commenting on C’s "symbolic" fish tank – ie movie, her POV addressing audience, she mouthpiece thru which author/mastermind speaks to us, "helpless creatures in a glass prison" film means to liberate awa characters themselves on similarly wide/screen under his/Bloch’s control - gift of "wmn who decorated room" ie Jane/imagination) till Chris announces problem w/ J’s "steering linkage" (sundering aka fission causing loss of agency/direction); after snooze (non-REM sleep creating further loss of narrative "linkage" + allowing info stirred up in 1st dream-cycle to sift back into unconscious, were processed into next cycle’s material), visits Cali's study (thru door onto revolving door which "neither invites nor repels" – semi-permeable consciousness + fluidity of personality) + bolts on being shown offensive Rorschachs (not seen till Psycho-style wrapup: film similar inkblot for interpretive viewer) + faints on stairs (to process, again, new info; complaints of "drugged coffee" à la revolving door – things going "both ways" the ambiguity o/t unconsc).

Downstairs (lower level of consciousness, vs topmost Cali office), meets dinner guests (à la Labyrinth, of which this practically uncredited remake: facets of personality ["they are all Martin’s type"] sundered in beginning + fleshed out as mind acquires more information) Ruth (feisty crone the undefeatable anima/libido) + her apparent paramour Martin (Hitchcockalike J Pat O’Malley, 58 to Estelle Winwood’s 79 hint at closing revelation), joined by senior Paul (emerging from door behind J à la Labyrinth: from back of mind, he positive animus + bright side of therapy) + meets loverboy Mark in backgarden (Edenic womb-site of rebirth, he actually her son + Cali god meaning Eve Adam’s mom in enclosed oedipal world aka family; not-Martin in similarly ambiguous relationship w/ older wmn); gives her music box prompting her childhood reminiscence (box memory itself, coded + stamped for dream-replay in unconscious garden-amphitheatre) of when pigtails cut (loss of fem power; also son's lost placental connection to the mother-fem) before he must go (timelocked gate mind’s inevitable non-REM disconnection again from outside world/consciousness).

After peeped-on by Cali above her tub (echo of Norman Bates [his film also featuring wmn leaving main road (as novelist Bloch to Hollywood California) + rooming at insane domain; cf also Night o/t Living Dead + Outer Limits’ "The Guests"], seeing her naked/as she is her exposure to own "higher" self-regard), attempt to kill him on stairs (where fainted: passage from one conscious level to another + Freudian sex-symbol, stopping his descent into mind as into similar "privates") halted on recognition shadowed form not he but Mark (sorting out each’s sexual attraction to other, his "You’re soaking wet" surprise to only them); rouses from next reverie to discover (viewed à la Cali/tub: she seeing metaphorical version of what he saw) balding David (doc’s phallic-consciousness partner) beating Ruth (Freudian fantasy demonstrating both societal gender inequities…) as Cali + Chris watch (…and ego’s gaining mastery over weakness via voyeurism: 1 – Mark getting upper hand over crone/mom, + 2 – Jane suppressing awareness [later "shock treatment" explanation therapeutic benefit of revelation] of own agedness crying out for attention + in grief), complaining to Chris, "That’s all he ever does, watching while other people live and die" (trendy Bergmanian epistemological lament + own "Do Not Go Gentle" screed against accepting advancing age), Chris assuring her Cali didn't see her (own in-sight blind to discovery, Chris dream-censor blocking too-sudden shock of dream-material so sleep may continue undisturbed).

Confronts him + submitted to intrusive questioning ("How old were you when you 1st let a man make love to you?" etc: not sexual innocent she claims – Virgin-Mary lie of being-i/t-[sexually innocent]Garden-w/-her-offspring staving off maturity), taking pills to room to commit suicide (laying to rest of false self-img; waking to happy-music after taking sugar pills candycoating issue); sends Mark off ("You don’t need a girl, you need a mother" beginning acceptance of role) + follows maid out (young-self who can come + go, trailing her following own youth to resolution), where lost in hedge labyrinth (another nod to ’59 film; dismissing son/body – à la "suicide" – leaving her to intricate convolutions of mind) w/ dog at center (inescapable animal nature at core of being, beyond religious fantasy-obfuscation), protected + led out by David (beginning mvmt back to consciousness – symbolic Ariadne’s thread which led Perseus from Cretan maze), whom she accuses of "raiding a girl’s room" (seen earlier in her quarters: sexual entendre + resentment of awareness intruding on private matters).

Winds box + fantasizes/flashes back to girl in cage (à la ’64 Lady: America awakening to own repressed fem/ininity [cf ’68 Rachel Rachel]) observed/pushed by wrinkled young wmn (rephrasing of beating fantasy + ½way to assimilating unreachable youth + aged self), mtg in garden w/ not Mark but Paul (step in mature reorientation, realized later when P enters her room/i.d. "thru" mirror) leading to her realization Cali’s impotence her pwr (transferring identification from Ruth to David in beating fantasy: from passivity to agency); puts moves on Cali (courting/seducing own darkside knowledge, his underlit study vs TV-overbright rest of house: latter contemporary society’s attempt to whitewash own weakness/pessimism/self-doubt) + disrobes (rephrasing tub scene: sexual agency over victimhood asserting maturity, trying to break his stoic front son’s own dream-agent + feeling-self leveling father-figure so he too can transcend his + her oedipal hold) till buckling + fleeing, herself (Edenic realization of nudity leaving unselfconscious childhood world).

Dreams that night (sleep after confrontation final non-REM interval) younger Caligari unmasks self as elderly Paul (demonized seniority revealed), she running down telescopic corridor (à la labyrinth: straight path this time the mind finding its way; fantastic reiteration also of opening tunnel) where attacked by revolving door (both trap + decision-time) + vision of disembodied heads regarding bodies (actually sauna: dreamer’s remove f/t physical + dying self/ves transcending body in anticipation of afterlife/rebirth) + man removing babies from furnace (baker + bread: said rebirth, realized when she pulls self out of shaft); meets "Paul" in Cali’s office (snake-insignia on door dissolving into caduceus both healing accomplished + redemption o/t demonized Eden serpent) + acknowledges he not Paul but doctor (never named: healing agent w/i; never-even-mentioned father-of-Mark the Imaginary Father aka masculinity in pure, son her spontaneously-generated offspring aka progressive masculinity [vs Freudian regressive, or mythical "masc" agency in fem past; passivity instead in her history, pwr in Lib-70s future]), who explains all (radical therapy vs partner Frank David’s conventional the therapeutic dream-consciousness vs the rational, "P" btwn Cali + Frank) before releasing her to Mark (leaving together reunion in car-womb w/ masc potential [tho her will ostensibly "broken"]; exit from Eden clarifying myth’s mother-son aspect) as camera cranes over courtyard to find doc surveying kingdom (benevolent New-Testament God to replace uncaring – toughlove – OT Caligari; vs her opening POV suggesting she his agent of cleansing called from unconscious to resolve Jekyll-Hyde dichotomy: maturing of men’s own fem-w/i lost at adolescence + birth-separation).