“No one can escape his destiny.”
★★★★★
Despite being a blatant work of plagiarism, F.W. Murnau’s unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is truly a triumph of the silent horror genre, a masterful classic of German Expressionism, and still a fairly horrifying film. At the time, the German studio Prana Film simply could not afford the rights to Dracula, yet under the guidance of producer Albin Grau, they decided to release a heavily revised version of the novel anyway (the inspiration came from Albin Grau’s wartime experience in Serbia when he met a farmer who believed his father had become an undead vampire). Stoker’s family later sued for copyright infringement (at the time, Bram Stoker’s widow Florence Stoker was struggling financially on the meager royalties paid our from Stoker’s only novel still in publication Dracula), and a court ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed. Luckily, a handful of rare prints survived this purge and it has since been preserved in order for us to view the film today –and what a marvel it is! Nosferatu, the sole production of the Prana Film company (which declared bankruptcy shortly after the film’s release). It was produced by Enrico Dieckmann and occultist artist Albin Grau, and stars Max Schreck as the lanky and lurching Nosferatu vampire named Count Orlok who hunts down his victims. An impending sense of dread and foreboding hangs over the whole film. In many ways Nosferatu, along with The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), has set the standard for all future horror films to follow. Still today, in this contemporary age of flashy special effects and lazy writing, Nosferatu remains a chilling symphony of horrors –a film that manages to leave a far greater impact with a lot less pomp and circumstance.
The story is framed by a narrative told by Thomas Hutter (played by German nobleman Gustav von Wangenheim). Thomas lives with his wife Ellen in the fictitious German city of Wisborg (whose name is derived from a combination of Wismar and Lubeck, two shooting sites for the film). Thomas works for a disturbed little man named Knock, about whom many rumors have circulated in town. One day, Knock sends Thomas on a long journey to meet a new client in Transylvania, a mysterious aristocrat named Count Orlok. Thomas entrusts his wife to a friend named Harding while Ellen remains skeptical and distraught over his business trip.
On the road, Thomas stops in the Carpathian Mountains at an inn near his destination. The people there are horrified at the mere mention of Orlok’s name and they warn him not to go near the castle because a werewolf is on the loose (the creature shown on the screen is actually a hyena). In his room, Thomas finds a book about the mythical Nosferatu that frightens him. The next day, he takes a coach that refuses to carry him any further past a bridge to the castle where Count Orlok lives. From here, a much darker, black-cloaked carriage appears to take him the rest of the way.
Upon arrival, Thomas is then greeted by Count Orlok and he is invited to dinner. At dinner, Thomas accidentally cuts his thumb and Orlok pounces at the drop of his precious blood. Thomas then goes to bed frightened of this strange Count. He awakens the next day to find an empty castle and two strange mosquito bites on his neck. He writes a letter to his wife, reassuring her of his voyage, but privately he begins having second thoughts. In the evening Orlok signs documents to purchase the property across the street from Hutter’s home in Wisborg, but Thomas quickly begins to suspect that Orlok is actually a fearsome Nosferatu, a “Bird of Death.” He runs frightened to his room but there is no way to bolt his door and the door hauntingly opens with the Count slowly approaching Thomas. He falls unconscious on the floor as the infamous shadow of the Nosferatu closes in all around him.
The next day, Thomas ventures down to the castle’s crypt where he finds the Count’s coffin (according to his research, the Nosferatu sleep in the soil of their homeland). Thomas then dashes back to his room and he peers out the window to see the Count piling coffins into his carriage and Orlok climbs into the final coffin before the carriage departs. Now alone, Thomas, terrified and thinking of his wife Ellen, later escapes out his window and falls to the ground. Injured and unconscious, he awakens in a hospital.
Upon recovering, he hurries home while the coffins of the Count are shipped downstream. They are transferred to a larger boat, but the crew are skeptical after they see rats crawling out of the coffins. One by one, each of the crew members gets sick and dies until only the captain and the first mate are left alive. The first mate goes below deck to inspect the coffins and he mistakenly awakens the Count who scares the first mate into jumping overboard. Count Orlok then kills the captain and sails the boat into the Wisborg harbor and leaves the boat undetected with his coffin.
Doctors visit the mysterious ship, and after reading its logbook, they conclude that the plague has been brought forth by rats and the town is stricken with panic. In many of these scenes, Count Orlok is closely associated with nature and the natural world –nature and the occult represent a fearsome, chaotic force. At the same time, Thomas’s boss Knock has been committed to a psychiatric ward but he escapes after strangling a guard, and he apparently serves his leader, the Nosferatu.
Meanwhile, Orlok watches Ellen through the window in his newly purchased home, and Ellen reads the book on Nosferatu against her husband’s wishes. She learns that the way to defeat a vampire, is for a beautiful woman to distract him all through the night until daybreak. That night, she opens an inviting window for Orlok to enter, but Thomas thinks she has gone mad and goes to fetch Dr. Bulwer. While he is gone, Orlok enters her room (in another famous scene of his looming shadow), and he drinks her blood. Orlok becomes enamored and loses track of time, and as the sun rises he vanishes in a puff of smoke at daybreak while standing beside the window. Ellen and her grief-stricken husband embrace just before she dies. Apparently, F.W. Murnau carefully constructed this closing scene using a metronome for the actors.
The final scene portrays the ruins of Orlok’s castle seated amidst the Carpathian mountains –a lingering reminder of the menace that once dwelled within.
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Credits:
- Directed by: F. W. Murnau
- Screenplay by: Henrik Galeen
- Based on: Dracula by Bram Stoker
- Produced by: Enrico Dieckmann and Albin Grau
- Starring:
- Max Schreck…..Count Orlok
- Gustav von Wangenheim…..Thomas Hutter
- Cinematography: Fritz Arno Wagner, Günther Krampf (uncredited)
- Music by: Hans Erdmann (1922 premiere)
- Production Company: Prana Film
- Distributed by: Film Arts Guild
Other Notes:
- The term “nosferatu” was borrowed from Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula where it was used as a generic term for vampire. Stoker may have simply mispelled the Romanian word “nosferat” which refers to a shape-shifting incubus and illegitimate child who drinks blood.
- Some of the changes from Dracula to Nosferatu included changing the setting from London to the fictional town of Wisborg in Germany, the time period from 1897 to 1838, changing a few characters and their names (including Count Dracula being changed to Count Orlok),
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