The two films that inspired David Bowie to move to Berlin
In the 1930s the Nazis used the phrase ‘Berlinerluft’ to describe what they perceived to be an alkaline chemical present in the air within the blossoming bohemia of Berlin. They saw this as the only feasible explanation for the ‘excessive self-liberation’ apparent in the party city. This absurd belief is a ludicrous truth in the pages of history, however, the evidence was empirical; when you’ve got cultural priestesses like Anita Berber stirring a concoction of drugs with a white rose and eating the petals then a favourable Ph scale must surely come into the madness. And this was long before libertines like David Bowie and Iggy Pop arrived.
When he did in 1976, he would proclaim the city “the greatest cultural extravaganza that one could imagine.” While a myriad of reasons drove him there – not least the prospect of getting sober in relative paparazzi-free peace – two films were also at the centre of his choice.
As he told Uncut in 2001, he was drawn towards the hub of all things unusual because it was “where Metropolis and [The Cabinet of Dr] Caligari had originated.” It was also the place he dubbed the “spiritual home” of expressionism. These films and the movement that begot them were touchstones for his future work that also looked to capture the times without putting too fine a point on it. “It was an art form that mirrored life not by event but by mood,” he explained. “This was where I felt my work was going.”
In truth according to his ex-partner, Amanda Lear, it had already gone there. “We saw Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and David was in awe of it,” she told the Miami News in 1978. “He rented the film and ran it over and over again in his house. And that’s where Diamond Dogs came from—the whole staging and album and everything, Bowie got from Metropolis.” Even prior to that he had originally wanted to call The Man Who Sold the World, Metrobolis in honour of the film.
The film’s otherworldly way of using dystopian sci-fi to reflect the social divides of the time was ingenious. It might not have looked like 1927, but it delved into the future with the current times in mind—this is something Bowie also looked to do with his music. As he famously said: “Tomorrow belongs to those who can hear it coming.”
This coupled with the surrealism of Robert Wiene’s 1920 silent classic The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, is the confluence where Bowie’s own weird and wonderful prescience resides. And what’s more, the story deals with the same murky side of life that Bowie loved to dabble in. As the backstory for the film goes, writer Hans Janowitz was startled while at the carnival one day when he saw a strange man lurking in the shadows of circus tents. The next day, Janowitz read about the murder of a young girl at the same carnival and decided to attend her funeral. Therein, once again, he saw the same suspicious character lurking in the shadows of the graveyard this time.
Spookiness and surrealism like this is a central tenet of Bowie’s illuminated work. He relished portraying the deranged, and he loved predicting the future. Thus, the fact that Metropolis and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari both hailed from Berlin was a magnetic creative pull that he simply could not repel.
