The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is a German silent horror film, first
released on 26 February 1920. It was directed by Robert Wiene and
written by Hans Janowitz and Carl Mayer. Considered the quintessential
work of German Expressionist cinema, it tells the story of an insane
hypnotist (Werner Krauss) who uses a somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) to
commit murders. The film features a dark and twisted visual style. The
sets have sharp-pointed forms, oblique and curving lines, and structures
that lean and twist in unusual angles. The film's design team, Hermann
Warm, Walter Reimann and Walter Röhrig, recommended a fantastic,
graphic style over a naturalistic one. With a violent and insane
authority figure as its antagonist, the film expresses the theme of
brutal and irrational authority. Considered a classic, it helped draw
worldwide attention to the artistic merit of German cinema and had a
major influence on American films, particularly in the genres of horror
and film noir.
Read more: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cabinet_of_Dr._Caligari>
_______________________________
Today's selected anniversaries:
1606:
Dutch explorer Willem Janszoon made the first recorded European
landing in Australia, although he believed that he was on New Guinea.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janszoon_voyage_of_1605%E2%80%9306>
1936:
Imperial Japanese Army troops attempted a coup d'etat,
occupying parts of Tokyo, and killing several politicians, including
Finance Minister Takahashi Korekiyo (pictured).
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/February_26_Incident>
1995:
Barings Bank, the oldest merchant bank in London, collapsed
after its head derivatives trader in Singapore, Nick Leeson, lost £827
million while making unauthorized trades on futures contracts.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Leeson>
_____________________________
Wiktionary's word of the day:
haul:
1. (transitive) To transport by drawing or pulling, as with horses or
oxen, or a motor vehicle.
2. (transitive) To draw or pull something heavy.
3. (transitive) To carry or transport something, with a connotation that
the item is heavy or otherwise difficult to move.
4. (transitive, figuratively) To drag, to pull, to tug.
5. (transitive, figuratively) Followed by up: to summon to be
disciplined or held answerable for something.
6. (intransitive) To pull apart, as oxen sometimes do when yoked.
7. (transitive, intransitive, nautical) To steer (a vessel) closer to
the wind.
8. (intransitive, nautical) Of the wind: to shift fore (more towards the
bow).
<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/haul>
___________________________
Wikiquote quote of the day:
The mind's eye can nowhere find anything more dazzling nor more
dark than in man; it can fix itself upon nothing which is more awful,
more complex, more mysterious, or more infinite. There is one spectacle
grander than the sea, that is the sky; there is one spectacle grander
than the sky, that is the interior of the soul. To write the poem of
the human conscience, were it only of a single man, were it only of the
most infamous of men, would be to swallow up all epics in a superior and
final epic.
--Les Misérables
<https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Les_Mis%C3%A9rables>