In general, imported films do not concern Americans, for we have now a vast range of technique.

All we lack is the sense to use it.
The cabinet of Caligari is indeed a cabinet, and the feeling of being in a cell, and smothered by all the oppressions of a weary mind, does not desert the spectator for a minute.
The play is more important, technically, than in its subject-matter and mood.

It proves in a hundred new ways the resources of the film in making all the inanimate things which, on the spoken stage, cannot act at all, the leading actors in the films.

But they need not necessarily act to a diabolical end.

An angel could have as well been brought from the cabinet as a murderous somnambulist, and every act of his could have been a work of beneficence and health and healing.