Robert Wiene's expressionist horror film about a series of gruesome murders is a milestone in film history and, alongside ‘Metropolis’, one of the most famous German silent films ever made. The bizarre sets, somewhere between cubism and surrealism, and the virtuoso play with light and shadow lend the morbid story of the mysterious Dr Caligari (played by Werner Krauss) and his somnambulistic companion Cesare (Conrad Veidt) a nightmarish quality that became the stylistic model for later expressionist films by Paul Wegener, F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang.