© Jenny Carboni

Music and Cinema
The cabinet of Dr. Caligari
(1919)

DAS CABINET DES DR. CALIGARI

direction Robert Wiene
script Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz
set design Hermann Warm, Walter Reimann, Walter Rohrig
Decla Film – Berlino, 1919
(versione restaurata in 4K)

live computer soundtrack Edison Studio
Mauro Cardi, Luigi Ceccarelli, Fabio Cifariello Ciardi, Alessandro Cipriani

production Edison Studio
with the contribution of
International Computer Music Conference
Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Singapore
Goethe Institut – Rom
Cineteca Nazionale di Bologna

digital master copy from the restored version by
Cineteca di Bologna in collaboration with Munchener Filmmuseum – Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique

with the contribution of SIAE within the project “SIAE – Classici di oggi”


The quintessential work of Expressionism and the first cult in cinema history, Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari looks back to the most advanced experiments conducted at the beginning of the last century in the literary and artistic fields. Denouncing the suffering of human condition, whose freedom is but an illusion, Wiene’s film carefully balances truth and fiction, and is charged with surprising historical premonition. Now a new electro-acoustic live soundtrack by Edison Studio restores the tradition of silent films: with the thrill of live invention, its soundscapes and verbal language turn to music, flexibly and dynamically developing the intricate relationship between the film’s sounds and the expressive/symbolic world of its setting and characters.