The Cabinet of Dr Caligari Print

The work shows the central figure, 'Cesare', from the 1920 silent film "The Cabinet of Dr Caligari". The Cabinet of Dr Caligari was perhaps the very first 'horror' film in what was then the fascinating new medium of film. The character Cesare was the prototype of both what we would today term a 'zombie', but more compellingly, the earliest example of the 'misunderstood monster' that rivaled Frankenstein's 'monster' which first appeared on screen in the same year. I had recently been involved in a dramatic production where the central figure hid a guilty secret involving a female casuality whom he was not directly responsible for harming, but unfortunate circumstances and the human propensity to blame made his innocence irrelevant for those who sought to bring him down. I immediately saw the parallels with Cesare in this earliest of visual tales and felt I had to portray that moment when our perception becomes misleadingly simplified and our judgement of complex situations becomes black and white.