The story begins with two men sitting on a bench as a girl who seems to be a ghost passes by them. It seems to me that the man is telling the other a story which I think is the entire film. Dr. Caligari applies for a permit to show off his spectacle at the fair, which seemed like the main attraction for everyone in the town. Caligari showed off Cesare the Somnambulist to everyone and I could tell by not knowing what Somnambulist meant that it was like ventriloquism in a way. Mysterious crimes began to occur in the town, murders, of choking and or strangling it seems like and then the victim gets stabbed. An important piece of information was that Cesare is 23 years old and has been sleeping for 23 years consecutively and Caligari awakens him. Cesare knows the past, present, and future, it kind of reminds me of scrooge a little bit, because of the different ghosts in that movie. He told Alan who later on dies, I believe that same night that Cesare tells him that they only have till dawn to live. The town Clerk was killed the same way Alan was, and another important part was that Alan and Franzis made kind of a pact that no matter what happened between them and the girl that they both liked they would be friends. Franzis keeps a close eye on Dr. Caligari and Cesare failed to kill the woman as he strangled her, but the woman fought him off and was dragged/carried as Cesare was chased, but then escaped as he dropped her. Franzis followed Dr. Caligari into the asylum to see what was really going on and he was right about Dr. Caligari that he was behind everything.
The film told its story through the scripture that we had to read as the movie played and through the nonverbal communication because there wasn't any dialogue during the film. The film also tells a story through the screen spanning out and closing into the frame and even close ups of faces expressing emotions that lead us onto the next scene. The plot twist was at the end of the movie taking us back to the two men sitting on the bench and then the woman walks past again. I think that the plot twists meaning was that this movie was meant to be imaginary, but really this happened as he told the story. They thought it was some beautiful girl going past them randomly, but they spoke her death into an actual existence. She is actually a ghost and what they saw the first time was no joke and actually was a real story that already happened. That is how I interpreted it. What the sets say about early film making tell me that they were like plays rather than actual real life places and kind of like cartoons with realistic people in them. They didn't have the technology that we have now obviously so they made what they had work for the time. There was different editing techniques back then too because we don't see the graphics in film like the ones here in films today or the types of scene changes. The set designs tell me that we are focused in on the characters and their emotions rather than what is happening away from the main scene, because from what I could tell there were stationary backgrounds, there wasn't much movement with the cameras, everything was moving within the frame. The cultural relevance for today is that emotions and nonverbal communication are still key in how a movie can be portrayed by the audience. Music is also very useful as well to tell us the scary parts or sad parts or action packed parts of the movie as well and this film did a great job of bringing all types of music to provide the audience with certain emotions as they watched the film. If I had to think of a movie to relate to this, it would be Psycho, I know that movie is from 1960, but there is a similar story of a mysterious killer in the Bates Motel because it was a shadowy figure during the classic shower scene we all may be familiar with, like the people didn't know who was behind all of the killings until the third time. There was a lot of close-ups in Psycho like there were in Dr. Caligari and the use of music played a key role in each scene. Also, the lighting in both movies told us where to pay our attention to most and the color schemes in each film were alike as well, telling us what was evil or good/safe. For the last question, I think having a narrator during this time period where film may not have much dialogue would be very helpful for the audience to understand what is happening during the film, because I know if there wasn't one, I would have been slightly lost. I think if there was dialogue there wouldn't be a need for a narrator, but for a film where there isn't dialogue it helps steer the story. I think the nature of this film was more for emotional connection and nonverbal communication because we can understand actions without words having to be said. Melodramas were also common during the 1920s and these kinds of films are narrated by music and Dr. Caligari was very reliant on music telling the story. I enjoyed the film, I didn't know what to expect, but I liked how the story was told, and some of the music was humorous.