r o b e r t   w i e n e  :   b i o g .

Although few of this German director's films have survived today (nor, according to most writers, do many deserve to), he did create one picture that lives on in our nightmare - The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. The beginnings of so many other paths of the horror film can be found in this one story, with its expressionist sets - all crooked and unreal, as if in the vision of a madman - grotesque make-up and story of a sinister doctor whose exhibit at a local fair, a somnambulist, commits brutal murders by night, terrorizing the township. As the framing story comes to its conclusion, it becomes evident that this is indeed the vision of a madmam, told by a lunatic in an asylum, where the curator is the sinister doctor himself.

No film since has ever illustrated this world of nightmares and lunacy so vividly, installing into its audience a fear of going to bed and dreaming such things themselves.

The star of that film was Conrad Veidt, who also featured in the only other Wiene film to approach the power of Caligari, The Hands of Orlac, which has Veidt in demented form as the classical pianist who loses his hands and has the hands of a murderer grafted on.

Wiene began his career as an actor, but it was as a writer that he began working in German films at the age of 32. His career was virtually brought to a halt with the Nazis' rise to power, and he fled to France, where he died during production of the film Ultimatum, which was completed for him by his friend Robert Siodmak.