Analyzing Kracauer's Analysis and Love Woes

In reading Kracauer’s From Caligari to Hitler, a number of questions were raised. Not by him – no, to Siegfried, everything was ‘obvious’ and transparent in its message. But for me, not everything seemed so crystal clear. I wasn’t ready to just accept the conclusions he drew form his analysis of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.

He described the ‘inherent nihilism’ of Germany mentioned throughout the reading, prominent on pages 52 and 53, as a blend of “cynicism and melodramatic sentimentality”, and concluded that this national trait “characterized history as meaningless.” Did they though? Did Germans generally feel that history was meaningless? Or did they, unintentionally through their actions, make it seem as if it was so? If we take this opinion to be true, then another question is raised: Is this nihilism still present today?

After World War II, most can agree that Germans have been altogether overly conscious of the effects that their nation had on the history of the entire world. While I acquiesce that it is possible that they may be an extremely skeptical nation, it doesn’t mean that they are unaware of the meaning and consequences of their ancestors’ actions.

If they were indeed a nation nihilistic by way of deeming life to be meaningless, then this disposition may have been a strong underlying factor in the carrying out of the atrocious actions nder the Nazi regime.

A second quote that caught my eye in the book was on page 54, and is as follows: “crowds were to develop from an element of [the] stage into one of German everyday life – a process that reached its climax after the war, when no one could avoid encountering them on streets and squares.”

Oh really? The phenomenon of a crowd only occurred after they were a fixture on the stage?
Understandably, the size and disposition of the crowd shifted after the war. But I found this observation of Kracauer’s to be somewhat far-fetched. It seemed a little too convenient, and a little too coincidental.

Moving away from the book, I wanted to bring up a comparable film I saw last year. A French film under the title He Love Me…He Loves Me Not deals with a psychological instability in the same way, telling the story first through the eyes of the affected before revealing the true nature of events.

In this film, Angélique is in love with Loïc, a cardiologist who happens to be married with a child on the way. She’s perfectly infatuated however, and talks often of him with her friend, mostly about how he plans to leave his wife for her. The scenes consist of instances where she is unable to reach him, or she just came from seeing him, or he is peering into her darkened window at night. Yet, you never see the two of them together. Things become more and more intense, and Loïc’s home life starts to deteriorate as he recieves all of these anonymous gifts of affection (from Angélique).
So at this point in the film, the viewer is feeling sorry for Angélique for falling for such an uncaring, unresponsive guy, and ticked off by proxy at Loïc for acting as such.

Suddenly, the film’s perspective switches, and the entire previous story is now seen through Loïc’s eyes. Warning: Spoiler Alert. If you plan on watching this (which I suggest you do, it’s really very good), then do not read the rest of this post. Trust me.

As it turns out, Loïc didn’t even know her, they were just neighbors, and she began stalking him after a chance encounter. She tried to commit suicide over his lack of attention towards her.
She was diagnosed with erotomania, a condition described by Webster as “a delusion in which a person believes that another person is in love with them.” It ends on quite a haunting note. The similarities though, in the delusions of Angélique and Francis and in the way that these films were shot, make them interesting to compare.