Der caligarische Imperativ'. Schrift und Bild im Stummfilm

Resumo

Against the background of the Ut-pictura-poesis-discussion and the crisis of language at the beginning of the twentieth century, the article shows that silent movies used to integrate letters and writing not only for the obligatory title cards, but also, in a wider sense, as so called 'inserts': notes, letters, telegrams, certificates, testaments, etc.. The article analyses movies such as Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam (1920), Nosferatu (1922), Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1922), Das Wachsfigurenkabinett (1923/24) and above all Robert Wienes' Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920) as examples of a complex and multfaceted mode of relation between picture and writing in the German Cinema of the Republic of Weimar. The famous order You must become Caligari in Wienes' film can be read as a hybrid formula, mixing as well the hypnotic imperative, the rhetoric of persuasion, the language of commercials, combining different discursive energies (medical, political, psychological, economical) of the time.