Cesare - Slime

CESARE //

✋glossy variant (similar to silky fatty)
👃lightly scented like costume-linen, dusty plaster, aged cut paper, soot)

In German expressionist film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), a young man, Franzis, recounts a strange story of a traveling fair that has come to town, featuring the mysterious Dr. Caligari, a squat, menacing man with round spectacles & a top hat. He parades around his “somnambulist” Cesare, a lanky, gaunt, hollow-eyed sleepwalker who, for 23 years, has been kept in a coffin & awakened only to predict the future. 

Mysterious deaths plague the town. When Cesare predicts Franzis’s friend’s death, he becomes suspicious of Cesare. But we learn that Caligari, obsessed with control & power, has been hypnotizing Cesare & making him commit the murders. Cesare attempts to target Franzis’s love interest, Jane, but is chased & captured. Caligari is discovered.

But…as Franzis finishes telling his story, the carnival-like world disappears. We realize he is actually an asylum inmate, and “Dr. Caligari” is a doctor who says he can cure Franzis of his delusions. The film ends.

What do you think…were Franzis’s tellings truthful?

The twisted, jagged sets of this film beautifully reflect the themes of mental distortion, authoritarianism, control, & unease – an externalization of Franzis’s inner psychological state. Sharp black paint streaks across canvas while buildings, walls, & doors tilt at exaggerated angles. Chiaroscuro lighting creates extreme contrast & shadow. It’s dreamy but threatening, with actors’ movements mirroring the environment & a static camera emphasizing the strange backdrops.

This slime is nestled in a jar streaked with dramatic black that will gradually tint the base like a foggy memory. The base’s fragrance evokes elements of theatrical construction and represents the “reality” dripping into Franzis's memories.