Film
Several unsuccessful attempts were made to produce sequels and remakes in the decades following Caligari's release. Robert Wiene bought the rights to Caligari from Universum Film AG in 1934 with the intention of filming a sound remake, which never materialized before Wiene's death in 1938. He intended to cast Jean Cocteau as Cesare, and a script, believed to be written by Wiene, indicated the Expressionist style would have been replaced with a French surrealist style.[208] In 1944, Erich Pommer and Hans Janowitz each separately attempted to obtain the legal rights to the film, with hopes of a Hollywood remake.[68][209] Pommer attempted to argue he had a better claim to the rights because the primary value of the original film came not from the writing, but "in the revolutionary way the picture was produced".[210] However, both Janowitz and Pommer ran into complications related to the invalidity of Nazi law in the United States, and uncertainty over the legal rights of sound and silent films.[68][209] Janowitz wrote a treatment for a remake, and in January 1945 was offered a minimum guarantee of $16,000 against a five-percent royalty for his rights to the original film for a sequel to be directed by Fritz Lang, but the project never came to fruition.[209][211] Later, Janowitz planned a sequel called Caligari II, and unsuccessfully attempted to sell the property to a Hollywood producer for $30,000.[211]
Around 1947, Hollywood agent Paul Kohner and German filmmaker Ernst Matray also planned a Caligari sequel; Matray and his wife Maria Solveg wrote a screenplay called The Return of Caligari.[211] That script would have reimagined Caligari as a former Nazi officer and war criminal, but the film was never produced.[209][211] In 1960, independent Hollywood producer Robert Lippert acquired the rights to Caligari from Matray and Universum Film AG for $50,000, and produced a film called The Cabinet of Caligari, which was released in 1962.[211] Screenwriter Robert Bloch did not intend to write a Caligari remake, and in fact the title was forced upon his untitled screenplay by director Roger Kay.[212] The film had few similarities to the original Caligari except for its title and a plot twist at the end,[209][213] in which it is revealed the story was simply the delusion of the protagonist, who believed she was being held captive by a character named Caligari. Instead, he was her psychiatrist, and he cures her at the end of the film.[209]
The 1983 film Caligari's Cure, directed by avant-garde filmmaker Tom Palazzolo, was an experimental updating of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari that featured extensive clips from it. While Caligari's Cure remains obscure, it was generally well-received.[214][215]
A quasi-sequel, called Dr. Caligari, was released in 1989,[216] directed by Stephen Sayadian and starring Madeleine Reynal as the granddaughter of the original Caligari, now running an asylum and performing bizarre hormonal experiments on its patients. The sex-driven story ultimately had little in common with the original film.[212][217] In 1992, theatre director Peter Sellars released his only feature film, The Cabinet of Dr. Ramirez, an experimental film loosely based on Caligari. However, the storyline was created as the film was being made, so it has few similarities with the original film.[218][219] The film was screened only at the 1992 Sundance Film Festival and never theatrically released.[218] An independent film remake of Caligari edited, written and directed by David Lee Fisher was released in 2005, in which new actors were placed in front of the actual backdrops from the original film. The actors performed in front of a green screen, then their performances were superimposed in front of matte shots based on the original sets. Doug Jones played the role of Cesare.[220][221][222]
Music and stage
Numerous musicians have composed new scores to accompany the film. The Club Foot Orchestra premiered a score penned by ensemble founder and artistic director Richard Marriott in 1987.[223] The Israeli Electronica group TaaPet composed a soundtrack for the film and performed it several times through Israel in 2000.[224] The British composer and musician Geoff Smith composed a new soundtrack for the film in 2003.[225] The Dutch psychedelic band Monomyth composed a new score and performed it during a screening of Caligari at the Imagine Film Festival in the Netherlands in April 2016.[226] Bertelsmann/BMG commissioned Timothy Brock to adapt his 1996 score for string orchestra for a 2014 restoration; Brock conducted the premiere in Brussels on 15 September 2014.[227] In 2012, the Chatterbox Audio Theatre recorded a live soundtrack, including dialogue, sound effects, and music for Caligari, which was released on YouTube on 30 October 2013.[228] Two new scores were recorded for a 2016 DVD release of Caligari: a traditional score by Timothy Brock performed by the Brussels Philharmonic, and an electroacoustic score by Edison Studio, a collective of composers.[229]
In 1981, Bill Nelson was asked by the Yorkshire Actors Company to create a soundtrack for a stage adaptation of the film. That music was later recorded for his 1982 album Das Kabinet (The Cabinet Of Doctor Caligari).[230]
In 1983, the German TV station ZDF commissioned composer Peter Michael Hamel to create a new score for a restoration of the film, based on a 1921 print. The version with Hamel's music premiered on ZDF in May 1983, and was subsequently broadcast during the 1980s and 1990s on TV stations in a number of European countries, including Spain and Poland.
Caligari was adapted into an opera in 1997 by composer John Moran. It premiered at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a production by Robert McGrath.[231] Joseph Kahn and Rob Zombie directed a music video for the 1999 single "Living Dead Girl" with imagery directly inspired by The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,[232][233] with Zombie's wife Sheri Moon Zombie playing the Cesare part.[234] In 2015, Indian scenographer and director Deepan Sivaraman adapted the film into an hour-long mixed-media piece with the performance studies students at Ambedkar University Delhi as part of a course entitled "Space and Spectatorship".[235] Scottish Opera's Connect Company commissioned composer Karen MacIver and librettist Allan Dunn to produce an opera based on The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari,[236][237][238] which was first performed in 2016.[236][237] Though it shared the same story as the film, the setting was changed to Glasgow Green and Gartloch in Glasgow, Scotland.[236]
In 2020, Spanish post-rock band Toundra released their own soundtrack to the movie.[239] It was released exactly 100 years after the original film premiere. The album consists of 7 songs, which match the film structure - opening title sequence, plus six film acts. The songs are also the same length as the acts, so the music can be synchchonized to the film.[240]
In 2024, German musician and Ex-Kraftwerk member Karl Bartos released a new soundtrack for the movie.It premiered on February 17 at the Alte Oper in Frankfurt am Main.
Audio adaptations
In 1998, an audio adaptation of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari written and directed by Yuri Rasovsky was released by Tangled Web Audio on audio cassette. The cast included John de Lancie, Kaitlin Hopkins, and Robertson Dean.[241] The dramatization won the Independent Publisher Book Award for Best Direct-to-Audio Production in 1998.[242] In 2008, BBC Radio 3 broadcast an audio adaptation by Amanda Dalton entitled Caligari, starring Luke Treadaway, Tom Ferguson, Sarah McDonald Hughes, Terence Mann, and countertenor Robin Blaze as Cesare.[243][244] Caligari was an entirely silent character in this adaptation.[245]
