This definitive work of German Expressionism turned the screen into a mirror of a fractured mind. Its painted shadows, jagged angles, and distorted sets rejected realism to visualize the chaos of post-war Germany and the madness of its characters. By introducing the unreliable narrator and the twist ending, it revolutionized narrative structure. As the grandfather of horror and film noir, influencing everyone from Hitchcock to Burton, it remains a chilling reminder that cinema can project internal psychological states onto the external world.