Director: F.W. Murnau
Genre: Costume Horror, Gothic Film, Horror
Summary:
The film that brought one of German cinema’s masters to international attention, F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) is also one of the best screen versions of -Dracula, even if the Bram Stoker source received no credit. so much so that Stoker’s widow went to court, demanding in vain that the Murnau film be suppressed and destroyed. The character names have been changed to protect the guilty (in the original German prints, at least), but devotees of Stoker will have little trouble recognizing their Dracula counterparts. I cite this movie not because it is one of the best 100 films but because of its influence on later generations of film- makers. Eschewing the elaborately artificial studio-bound sets that gave most German Expressionist films their luridly somber mood, Murnau used actual central European locations for his vampire tale, thereby he anticipated neo-realism of Renoir and Rossilini. Murnau created a foreboding atmosphere through such cinematic techniques as negative exposures and stop-motion photography. Shot by Fritz Arno Wagner, the dramatic shadows and low angles that made Max Schreck’s vampire tower over his environs. The effect of the low angles was not lost on Orson Welles and Gregg Toland when they made Citizen Kane (1941). Though some critics have noted that the stop-motion effects have not aged particularly well, Nosferatu’s air of almost apocalyptic doom remains timeless, and Murnau’s combination of real locations and a superhuman monster is a key precursor to, among others, Alfred Hitchcock’s horror of the everyday and familiar.
The film begins in the Carpathian mountains, where real estate agent Hutter (Gustav von Wagenheim) has arrived to close a sale with the reclusive Herr Orlok (Max Schreck). Despite the feverish warnings of the local peasants, Hutter insists upon completing his journey to Orlok’s sinister castle. While enjoying his host’s hospitality, Hutter accidently cuts his finger-whereupon Orlok tips his hand by staring intently at the bloody digit, licking his lips. Hutter catches on that Orlok is no ordinary mortal when he witnesses the vampiric nobleman loading himself into a coffin in preparation for his journey to Bremen.
(Murau shot this scene in fast motion in order to indicate the villain’s supernatural powers but succeeded only in making it amusing rather than frightening. Moral of the above? Think cinematically. Whether attempting supernatural or a poetic evocation of lost childhood for example the film must draw audience emotionally along.)
By the time the ship bearing Orlok arrives at its destination, the captain and crew have all been killed-and partially devoured. There follows a wave of mysterious deaths in Bremen, which the local authorities attribute to a plague of some sort. But Ellen, Hutter’s wife, knows better. Armed with the knowledge that a vampire will perish upon exposure to the rays of the sun, Ellen offers herself to Orlok, deliberately keeping him “entertained” until sunrise. At the cost of her own life, Ellen ends Orlok’s reign of terror once and for all. Rumors still persist that Max Schreck, the actor playing Nosferatu, was actually another, better-known performer in disguise. Whatever the case, Schreck’s natural countenance was buried under one of the most repulsive facial makeups in cinema history-one that was copied to even greater effect by Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake – Nosferatu the Vampyre. Yet in the Herzog version, the crucial difference is that Nosferatu becomes more and more decayed and desiccated as the film progresses. Essentially a retelling of Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Herzog traces the blood-sucking progress of the count as he takes over a small German village, then attempts to spread his influence and activities to the rest of the world. All that prevents Dracula from continuing his demonic practices is the self-sacrifice of Lucy Harker, played by Isabelle Adjani. Director Werner Herzog used the story to parallel the rise of Nazism. The film was lensed in the Dutch towns of Delft and Scheiberg. Nosferatu the Vampyre was filmed in both an English and a German-speaking version; the latter runs 11 minutes longer.
( ack:Hal Erickson, Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide)
Cast:
Max Schreck – (Graf Orlok, Nosferatu)
Alexander Granach – (Knock)
Gustav von Wangenheim – (Hutter, His Employee)
Greta Schroeder – (Ellen Hutter)
G.H. Schnell – (Harding, Shipowner)
Compiler: benny thomas
