Introduced by Marilyn FabeRandy Craig on Piano (Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari). William Nestrick's writing on Caligari was some of his earliest writing on film and widely respected. Here we reprint an excerpt from his notes and analysis for a Film Study Extract: "Much of Caligari's power comes from the designers' willingness to let their work be seen. The horror that one experiences is almost intellectual and abstract because the realities of existence in the film have been visually analyzed. Most horror and fantasy films of the period would have indulged in camera trickery and special effects. In Caligari, however, such technology is not used for the miraculous transformation of reality; the writers wanted us to see the political world as it is. The absurdly high chairs in the town clerk's office?are a valid expression of what we feel in bureaucracies?.The (meaningless) numbers and other mathematical figures on the desks?belong to a system touted as rational, yet they appear as cabalistic, mystical-yet nother aspect of the system which Everyman confronts from the outside without comprehension even though he only exists through its permission." Marilyn Fabe is Lecturer in the Group Major in Film.