The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari was more focused. Scorsese takes that source and bloats it with tedious backstory and exposition, even after the movie’s big structural twist. Like Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express, economic storytelling is exchanged for tedious pandering. Better nowadays to indulgently show the audience every imaginable image, rather than pare the story into a shape. We’re robbed of the movie’s twist, and instead given a boring litany of brutal holocaust imagery and an extended infanticide sequence— this bloats the narrative and shows how heavily Scorsese is relying on mood to carry the movie.
