Kino Lorber has just issued a new, restored version of the great German Expressionist silent horror classic The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The film captured the imagination of Germany in 1920, and it’s not hard to see why: With its conspiracy-theory plot and — above all — its stunningly memorable off-kilter sets, it created a striking metaphor for a country and a world that had lost their bearings in the World War and its immediate aftermath. Much has been written on the question of whether and to what extent the film presaged the rise of Nazism; one influential postwar book was titled “From Caligari to Hitler: A Psychological History of the German Film.” A 52-minute documentary included on the Kino disc offers a good introduction to the issue.

A second rediscovery is occasioned by the release — at long last! — on DVD and Blu-ray of the 1960s TV series Batman. Here, as with Caligari, we have a masterpiece of art direction and set decoration that manages to capture the spirit of its time: in Batman’s case, the part of the Sixties that came before what we now think of as “the Sixties” took hold. Let’s call it the Innocence of Camp, the tongue-in-cheek celebration of what’s good in an order that is about to vanish. These Blu-ray discs are a riot of color, even better than the original as I remember it — and therefore they will be able to convey that beauty to a new generation. A note to that new generation: This will not be the dark, brooding Batman with which you are familiar, but give it a chance — it may end up delighting you as it did people of all ages 50 years ago.