The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

[AndrewMeronek]

Any fans of classic silent films here? Doing a small bit of searching, I ran across this restoration of this film, which has an original score that was added as part of this particular restoration, as far as I can tell. Credits are added (in German) at the very beginning and end. For an English translation of the German text cards, activate Youtube's closed captioning.

This film (and may others from this era) had no "official" score, and the most effort these got was to provide a sequence of already-existing classical works which could be performed by whoever was the musical director at local theaters. Thus, there was an awful lot of variations, from just following the recommendations, to massive improvised accompaniments. But, it makes many of these films fertile ground for re-imagined scores, as is done here. I like this particular version. It's for a small chamber orchestra, and in theory, performable in relatively small theaters, and fits the tone of this film pretty well.

And of course, this particular restoration looks great, too.

Does anyone have a different version of this film that they like?

[11561man]

In my undergrad, I went to a performance of the composition studio who scored for this film in roughly 7-10 minute increments. I wasn't expecting much, but they captured the mood really well. Too bad that I did not record it

[IanDeterlingComposer]

I love this movie! I actually wrote my own score for the film a few years ago when I was getting my Masters Degree. I wasn't able to get an entire orchestra to perform it, so I had to resort to using sound libraries to create an orchestral mockup.
I was trying to recreate the moody atmosphere that a lot of the older horror films had from the 1930s and 40s. Hans Salter and Frank Skinner are two of my favorite film composers! They scored films like The Wolf Man, Son of Frankenstein, and a lot of The Mummy films.
Here's a short clip of the film where Jane gets abducted by Cesare:

[AndrewMeronek]

Very cool!

Ambitious, too. That mockup definitely needs to get a full orchestral treatment.

[IanDeterlingComposer]

Very cool!

Ambitious, too. That mockup definitely needs to get a full orchestral treatment.

Thank you! Yes - especially with 2020 being the 100th anniversary