NOSFERATU aka Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) Starring: Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder. Directed by F.W. Murnau. Screenplay by Henrik Galeen. Inspired by Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
Produced by Enrico Dieckmann and Albin Grau. Run time: 94. Color tinted black and white. Germany.
Horror, Silent
With Halloween later this month, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at some horror
films, the most appropriate genre at this time of year. It might interest you
to know that the horror film dates back to 1896 with Georges Melies’ Le
Manoir du Diable (aka The Haunted Castle). While Melies made the film to
amuse viewers, it is still considered to be the first horror film and the first
vampire film to boot. What’s old is new again.
But while a French magician/filmmaker may have
invented the genre, it may have taken German Expressionism to make them
actually scary. While no one wants a film history lesson, it is important to
know that German Expressionism had a major influence on not only horror films,
but also film noir. The movement which had been around before World War I,
reached its peak in the 1920’s. German Expressionism was part of a larger
European expressionist movement in not only cinema, but also in architecture
and painting.
Following Germany’s defeat in World War I, cinema
began to explode in that country. However, with inflation on the rise in the
Weimar Republic at an almost geometric rate, costs were of a great concern. To
save on lighting, as an example, the sets featured exaggerated shadows painted
in on the walls and floors. Like their sets, the films dealt with heavy and
heady issues like madness, insanity and betrayal, as opposed to action and
adventure or romantic films. Directors like Fritz Lang and F.W. Murnau would
bring this style of filmmaking with them to Hollywood, which saw an immigration
of talent from Germany as Hitler came to power.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula was first published in 1897 to good
reviews, but was not considered to be a best seller when it was released.
Still, in 1921, Albin Grau wanted to make a vampire movie, based in part on his
own experience from World War I. In the winter of 1919, a Serbian farmer told
him that his father was not only one of the undead, but also a vampire. When
Grau and Enrico Dieckmann founded Prana Film, they couldn’t afford to buy
rights to Stoker’s novel, so instead, they hired Henrik Galeen, an experienced
screenwriter [The Student of Prague (1913) and The Golem (1920)] to write one
inspired by the novel. Galeen changed character names, dropped the Van Helsing
vampire hunter character and changed the setting to a fictional German seaport, Wisborg.
It is in Wisborg that Thomas Hutter (Gustav
von Wangenheim)
lives with his wife Ellen (Greta Schroder) and works for Knock (Alexander
Granach), a real estate agent. Knock sends Hutter to visit a potential new
client, Count Orlok to sell him the house that is right across from Thomas’.
Before leaving for what promises to be a long business trip, Thomas puts Ellen
in the care of his good friends Harding (Georg H. Schnell) and sister Annie.
After a journey of
several months, Thomas arrives in a village near Orlok’s castle. At the village
tavern, Thomas mentions his business with Orlok, which sends fear throughout
the inn. Everyone warns him not to go. But Thomas does not heed their warnings.
But a wolf has come down from the mountains and scared away Thomas’ horses, so
he is forced to stay the night. The next morning he hires a coach, but the
driver will only go as far as a bridge in a high mountain pass. As night is
falling the driver refuses to go further. Getting out of the coach and walking
across the bridge, Thomas is approached by an eerie looking black coach that
moves surrealistically fast. In what is no doubt a cheap special effect, the
journey on the coach is shown in reverse. Black is white and white is black as
the coach races to Orlok’s castle.
Finally, Thomas meets Count Orlok (Max Schreck), a bat-like
man with long fingers, pointy ears, sharp teeth, bugged out eyes and no hair. That
night at dinner, Thomas accidentally cuts himself and Count Orlok tries to lick
up Thomas’ “precious blood”. This, naturally, scares Thomas, but he spends the
rest of the night talking to Orlok in front of the fireplace. After Thomas
falls asleep, he wakes up with two small bite marks, which he blames on
mosquitoes. The next night, Thomas finalizes his deal with Orlok, selling him
the deserted house across from his own. Accidentally, Orlok sees a photograph
of Thomas’ wife, Ellen, to which he comments about her “beautiful neck.”
From then on, Orlok starts to plague Ellen’s dreams. After
that, Thomas wakes up to find he’s alone in the castle. He comes across the
coffin in which Orlok is lying in state. Horrified, Thomas cowers in his room.
He has been reading The Book of Vampires, a book he took from the tavern and is
now convinced that Orlok is Nosferatu, the Bird of Death. He tries but there is
no way to bar the door to his room. At midnight, the door opens by itself and Orlok
enters the room and Thomas falls unconscious.
That evening, Thomas wakes up in time to see Orlok loading coffins
into a carriage. Orlok crawls into the last one before the carriage starts
away. Thomas tries to escape from the castle by climbing down a rope made of
bed sheets, but falls and loses consciousness. He later wakes up in a hospital
and immediately leaves for Wisborg, hoping to beat Orlok. Meanwhile, the
coffins get loaded onto a ship, the Empusa. Orlok manages to kill off the crew
except the Captain (Max Nemetz) and the First Mate (Wolfgang Heinz). When the
First Mate goes below to destroy the coffins, Orlok frightens him into jumping
into the ocean. The captain becomes the last victim after he lashes himself to
the wheel to maintain course and dies there.
Ellen by now is under Orlok’s spell and is just waiting for
him to arrive. When the boat lands in Wisborg, Orlok and some rats depart. Unobserved,
Orlok carries the coffin to his new house. Thomas returns to Wisborg and heads
for Ellen. She feels better now that her husband is back with her. Authorities
board the ship and find the Captain’s dead body. They assume that the boat has
brought the plague and people start dying in town.
Knock, who has been institutionalized for having gone insane,
presumably because of his own connection to Orlok, escapes after killing the
warden and is chased by townspeople. Orlok stares from his window at a sleeping
Ellen. Against Thomas’ instructions, she had read the Book of Vampires, and
knows the only way to defeat a vampire is for a woman who is pure in heart to distract
the vampire with her beauty all through the night. She opens her window and
invites Orlok to come over and then faints. Thomas tries to revive her and then
heads out to get the town doctor (Gustav Botz). While he’s gone, Orlok comes
into Ellen’s bedroom.
But Orlok is so engrossed by drinking Ellen’s blood that he
doesn’t see that morning is coming. When the rooster crows, Orlok realizes it’s
too late and he vanishes. At that moment, the great death that was plaguing
Wisborg stops and as the film tells us “and the shadow of the vampire vanished
as if overcame by the victorious rays of the living sun." Ellen lives only
long enough to die in Thomas’ arms.
Nosferatu was the first film adaptation of Stoker’s Dracula
and it wouldn’t be the last one. However, since it was made without permission,
the Stoker estate sued Prana Film and won, leading to the company’s bankruptcy.
A judge ordered the destruction of all the prints of the film, but one print
had already been distributed around the world and other prints have been made
from that. Otherwise, the film might have been lost forever.
For many, the definitive Dracula adaptation was made nine
years later by Universal starring Bela Lugosi and directed by Tod Browning. But
while that film relied on Lugosi’s powerful personality, it is not even the
scariest Dracula released by Universal in 1931. For those that have seen it,
the Spanish language version, Drácula directed by George Melford and starring Carlos Villarìas as the Conde, made at night
using the same sets of Lugosi’s Dracula, is scarier.
But I would say that Nosferatu is even scarier than that. To
illustrate this opinion, let’s look at the main characters:
Count Orlok (Max Schreck) Nosferatu (1922)
Count Dracula (Bela Lugosi) Dracula (1931)
Conde Drácula (Carlos Villarìas) Drácula (1931)
Of
these three, I would say the one at the top is nightmare fuel. Count Orlok does
not have the style or seductive powers of his American cousins. Rather he is
more of a monster, his long sharp fingernails and sharp teeth (more than a
couple of fangs). And Orlok is a serial killer, bringing with him the
plague, killing hundreds. Dracula on the other hand probably has killed his
fair share of victims, but he is not death incarnate the way Orlok is.
The
special effects, which are dated, include using a negative image and sped up
projection do give certain scenes an intended unrealistic look. And at the
time, Nosferatu was considered so scary that it was banned in Sweden and
Turkey. While I don’t think jaded modern audiences would be shocked by the
film, Nosferatu is both a masterpiece and accessible example of German
Expressionism.
This
is also an example of director F.W. Murnau’s mastery of filmmaking. While
Murnau’s career was short, lasting only twelve years from 1919 to 1931, he did
leave behind four classic films: Nosferatu (1922); The Last Laugh (1924) with
Emil Jannings; Faust (1926) and Sunrise (1927), made after he emigrated to
Hollywood to work for Fox.
October
is the time of the year to watch horror films and if you haven’t ever seen
Nosferatu, you are surely missing out.
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