In 1920, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari became a smash hit on the German screen. With its strange sets, the film, a story about murder and madness—and containing a diabolical twist—became known as “the first expressionist film.” But as we know, and as Thomas Elsaesser wrote,

The call for an “expressionist” film existed before Caligari, and if we look hard enough we can find forerunners which share some essential properties with the celebrated masterpiece. Some of the most interesting examples preceding Caligari were produced in Austria, especially one film which is considered to be lost, and another which was recently rediscovered. They not only address the topics of murder and insanity but also contain frame stories foreshadowing the much-discussed Caligari frame. Fritz Freisler's The Mandarin, especially, could very well have provided the inspiration for a revised version of the famous Caligari script which was adapted into the film we know in late 1919.

GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN FILM INDUSTRIES AFTER WORLD WAR I

After World War I, German products were cut off from international markets, leading to, among other things, a growing domestic film industry. Concerns like PAGU (Projektions-AG “Union”) and Ufa (Universum Film AG) expanded rapidly and gained control of the market. Small production companies merged into larger concerns. A good example is Decla (Decla Film-Gesellschaft), a relatively small company controlled by the producer Erich Pommer which, directly after the war, merged with Rudolf-Meinert-Film-Gesellschaft in 1919, then with Bioscop in 1920, and was later swallowed by Ufa. The ultimate aim in the late 1910s and early 1920s was to establish a powerful film industry which would not only be able to supply the complete domestic market with its products, but also could produce films which would succeed in foreign markets as soon as they were open to the sale of German products. The most famous German film of that period, Decla's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, was a product targeting exactly that aim.