What was the first movie to feature a twist ending?
We all love a good plot twist. The narrative technique has been around for a very, very long time. In the 19th century, children’s author Lewis Carroll shocked readers with the revelation that Alice’s various adventures in Wonderland had, in fact, all been the product of a lazy summer afternoon’s dream. Before Carroll, of course, there was A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens’s festive tale of redemption, in which the main character, Scrooge, is shocked to discover that he is the dead man nobody cares for. But even then, just ten years after the ascension of Queen Victoria, the twist ending was a well-worn idea. It’s no surprise, then, that silent film’s most pioneering director’s adopted the technique without hesitation.
On February 26th, 1920, a new film opened in Berlin. Audiences were still mostly unfamiliar with this strange new world of moving images, and many still regarded stepping into the cinema as akin to falling into a waking dream. Of course, The Cabinet of Dr Caligari is more a nightmare than a dream. The film, which shocked audiences on release and quickly became a worldwide sensation, features Werner Krauss as Dr Caligeri, an unhinged hypnotise who employs somnambulist Cesare – played by Conrad Veidt, to commit a series of brutal murders.
But in the world of The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, nothing is quite as it seems. We’re introduced to Caligari at a carnival in Germany, where Francis and his friend Alan bump into the villain, who is showing off Cesare’s ability to look into the future. “When will I die?” Alan asks Cesare. “At first dawn,” comes his chilling reply. By morning, the prophecy has come true, making Cesare a prime suspect in Francis’ investigation of murders committed by the director of an asylum. As it turns out, however, Francis is a patient at an asylum too. The entire story has been a lunatic’s fantasy.
Sound familiar? It should. Martin Scorsese’s 2010 psychological thriller Shutter Island concludes with a similar revelation: that Edward Daniels is, in fact, Andrew Laeddis, the asylum patient that he has been sent to investigate and who was incarcerated for murdering his manic-depressive wife. Countless other directors have relied upon the twist ending, especially those working with the horror and thriller genres. Take The Sixth Sense, for example, Gone Girl or Psycho. A well-engineered twist ending can turn a good movie into a great movie. Long may it reign.
