Change, say the psychologists, is rest. From which basis it might easily be argued that The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is as good as a week in the mountains for any movie fan tired of the conventional picture. Certainly it is a complete change. However relaxing it may be depends greatly upon the susceptibility of the spectator. Being a reasonably calm, ordinary sort of individual we left the theater believing strongly that the author of the picture was a little mad, the director a little madder, the actors engaged quite mad indeed. The American distributors bought the picture from its German owners. Yet we were conscious of having seen a perfect sample of that cubistic art of which we have read so much since the first nude descended the staircase looking like a patchwork quilt in eruption.

(Burns Mantle, Photoplay, Vol. 20, n.2 July 1921, pages 58-59)

The impact of this picture upon the spectator is overpowering. The expressionistic treatment of the backgroung loses its bizarre quality almost at once; it is justified by its appropriateness. The story unfolds swiftly, with an astonishing economy of description. It does not wait for you; it compels you to follow. It baffles you without leaving you at a loss; you try in vain to outguess it. The titles do not usurp the cinematographic function; when they occur they appear merely as footnotes. The actors appear anonymously; their excellence is sufficient introduction. Everything is sacrified to the potency of imaged action.

The picture is not a story told; it is a story moved. Everything is moving and fluid. The background enters into the action. Its bizarre, cubistic design suggest grotesqueness and distortion. These reflect both the character of the story and the mental state of the people in it. The leaning, top-heavy houses and the crooked, winding, cul-de-sac streets seem to crush and overwhelm; they suggest lurking danger and reflect the growing dread of the characters. The effect is sustained throughout. The design on the floor of the insane asylum suggests mental confusion. The girl’s bedroom, with its fleecy draperies and lofty Gothic lines, suggests the very spirit of sleep.

The whole picture is expressive of the eloquence of pure action. The murders are swift, relentless stabs of motion. When the somnambulist breaks into the girl’s room he does not merely break the window. He utterly destroys it with a single movement of his hand. He becomes the spirit of destruction. When he carries the girl out of the room he takes the whole room with him. He gathers up an interior and turns it inside out. He projects us out of the room with him. When he staggers under the burden of the girl, his weariness comes over us like sudden torture. The picture is a continual rush of movement. We feel emotion risin from motiom as an immediate experience. That is the quintessence of cinematographic art.

(Exceptional Photoplays, n. 4, March 1921, pages 3-4)