Nosferatu (1922) | 31 Days of Horror: Oct 9

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This is the great-granddaddy of vampire films and one celebrating its 100th Anniversary as well.

To be talking about a movie one hundred years later is a big deal. For it to also be an effective horror film might be a crowning achievement. Kicking off Anniversary week on 31 Days of Horror is the vampire film that set a number of genre standards: Nosferatu.

Before Viewing

There was not a trailer for this film 100 years ago, but one was produced for this anniversary. This centenary trailer presents some scenes from the film depicting spooky shadows of the titular Nosferatu, before showing the creature tasting the blood of a human. The intertitles remind viewers that this film changed cinema history and depiction of screen horror. Hop in your wayback machine for this classic vampire tale.

Presented below is the trailer for the film.

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After Viewing

After a three minute overture the film begins. It opens in 1838 Wisborg, introducing Hutter (Gustav v. Wangenheim) and his wife Ellen (Greta Schroeder). He works for Knock (Alexander Granach), a property agent, who sends him to Transylvania to negotiate a deal with Count Orlok (Max Schreck) to buy the property across the street from Hutter’s house. While he’s out of town, Ellen will be staying with his friend Harding (G.H. Schnell), a shipowner, and his sister Ruth (Ruth Landshoff). When Hutter arrives at a local Carpathian pub, the mention of Orlok’s name frightens the clientele. He is warned not to go out, for a werewolf is in the area.

At the local inn, Hutter reads a book about vampires that freaks him out. The next day he catches a coach to Orlok’s castle, but as the sun begins setting the driver says they won’t take him any further. Hutter walks on until he is confronted with a mysterious dark coach and driver that takes him to the castle. At dinner with the odd looking Orlok, he cuts his thumb, which the Count sucks the blood from. The next morning Hutter awakens with two small marks on his neck, which he attributes to mosquitos.

Orlok signs the papers to purchase the property in Wisborg, and spies a photo of Ellen, who he becomes enamored with. That night Orlok comes for Hutter. At the same time, back at home, Ellen has a vision of Hutter and sleepwalks onto her balcony. Hutter, suspecting Orlok may be a vampire, finds him in a crypt inside a coffin. He then watches Orlok load a cart with the heavy coffins, single handedly. That becomes too much for Hutter and he escapes the castle as Orlok’s coffins are put on a raft to be taken to the local shipping port.

Hutter is found in a field by some farmers and admitted to a local hospital. Meanwhile, the sailing ship Empusa is bound for Wisborg with six crates of dirt. Professor Bulwar (John Gottowt) is introduced, teaching his students about carnivorous plants which he compares to vampires. As Orlok gets closer, Knock becomes more agitated and gets admitted to a sanatorium, where he eats flies. Ellen receives the letter that Hutter sent in Transylvania, just before he is released to return home.

The sailors on the Empusa begin to go missing as it makes its way closer. Flyers relate that a plague is striking ships and warns people to be wary. The Captain of the Empusa lashes himself to the wheel of the boat but dies when Orlok attacks him. Ellen feels something getting closer and Knock senses “the Master” coming for him. Orlok departs the boat with one of his coffins and enters the house he bought. Harding reads through the ship’s journal and worries that a plague has been brought to Wisborg. Many townsfolk have been dying since the boat arrived.

Hutter warns Ellen not to read the book he brought back with him, but she does anyway and learns about vampires. It says that a maiden free of sin who gives herself freely to the vampire can make him forget the crowing of the rooster, letting the sun strike him down. Knock is chased by the townsfolk who need a scapegoat for the cause of the plague. Ellen falls into a trance and opens the window allowing Orlok to come for her. As he drinks her blood, she gives it willingly allowing the sun to cause him to vanish in a puff of smoke. Hutter embraces her before she dies. The final shot is of Orlok’s dilapidated castle in Transylvania.

“Of course the price is a little effort…some sweat and perhaps…a little blood.” – Knock

The fact that people still care about a film like Nosferatu after 100 years is pretty amazing. It’s all for good reasons, as the film is still engrossing in both the story, and especially in its design and cinematography. German filmmaker F. W. Murnau directed this unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s seminal vampire novel Dracula, which has now become a prime example of German Expressionist filmmaking. German Expressionism embraced the creation of a mood through lighting, set design, cinematography, and editing, and was typified by films like this one, the sci-fi film Metropolis, and the horror film The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. It can still be felt today in the works of Tim Burton (Edward Scissorhands, Sleepy Hollow) or Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth or Alex Proyas’ The Crow.

The most amazing aspect of Nosferatu is that it’s a film that almost did not survive to be here 100 years later. Stoker’s heirs brought a lawsuit against the film due to its unauthorized similarities to the Dracula novel. A judge agreed with them and ordered all the existing copies of the film destroyed. However, some copies managed to survive, which is fortunate for film preservationists and audiences who can still enjoy this groundbreaking film today. That’s why this film receives the “H-Origins” (horror origins) tag from 31 Days of Horror. It is a seminal horror film that is part of the origins of modern horror as well as a continued influence in the genre.

Of course it was not the first horror film made. Horror films had been around since the late 1800s and the birth of cinema. Though modern audiences would probably not recognize many of these stage pantomimes as anything like the scary or horrific films of the late 20th Century or today. But these early cinematic effects shocked and amazed inexperienced moviegoers. Many of these early films are lost or forgotten, but films like Edison Studios 1910 Frankenstein, and multiple versions of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1908, 1912, 1913, and two in 1920) were some of the titles that might be currently recognized. Foreign films like Der Golem (1920), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), and Haxan (1922) provided early stylized imagery that was as creepy then as any modern day films are today. These titles, along with Nosferatu, contributed to the future ideals of both cinema in general, and horror as a genre. As far as the source material goes, Nosferatu is much more like the Dracula novel than the famous 1931 film version.

While the biggest differences from the novel are the change in location and the names of characters, Nosferatu features a number of elements that wouldn’t show up in a filmed version of the story until 1992s Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Scenes like the death of the boat crew is one of the major elements, along with the use of letters and other correspondence between the characters being used to advance the plot. But the film is also important for things that it changed about the original Stoker story, forever altering the way vampires were portrayed in film and media. Count Orlok is shown as being affected by the sun, turning into a puff of smoke by its rays. This was nowhere to be found in the original Stoker story. It was changed by Murnau as proof that the film was not wholly based on the book. Henceforth, sunlight became anathema to vampires and their ilk, and would become a key plot point in almost every vampire film to come, from The Lost Boys and Fright Night to Day Shift.

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of this film is the use of color tinting the black and white print. Many black and white films would create tinted prints for display, which functioned as a way to provide some color to the movie. This is very much like some of the color grading that happens to film nowadays, but in a much more rudimentary way. Murnau’s tints, which followed the process of CMYK dye colors, were not just added into the film randomly. The film begins with yellow tints (the “Y” in CMYK), which are done for all the day scenes or interior scenes with candle light. For night scenes, those pieces of film were tinted cyan (the “C” in CMYK). When a character would blow out a candle, the tint would change from yellow to cyan within a frame, which provides a simple way to delineate lighting changes. Magenta tints were used for sunrise shots or some particularly horrific shots, since they provided a little bit of reddish color to the images. Creatively this provided the director with a lot of freedom to tell the story with limited tools. For example, with one exception, all night shots were filmed during the day (a process called day-for-night in later productions). But with the ability to “cool” those shots with a blue tint, it created a much more night-like scene, and one that audiences could follow without difficulty.

Some of the most amazing elements or shots in the film may be things taken for granted by modern viewers. In 1922 however, film was still a relatively new medium. New ideas and processes were being invented daily. Many productions only used a single camera and the iris-ins and iris-outs (used as scene transitions) often were completed in camera. Meaning that the director and camera person had to plan all of that in advance. There was no such idea as “fix it in post.” Nosferatu makes use of some actual locations (not just studios), including a windy beach, several old castles, and some shots of ships on the water that are quite epic for a film of its time. Murnau also utilized a number of in camera tricks to create the menacing creepiness of his vampire. Double exposure allowed for ghostly imagery of Orlok, which created the illusion of him walking through walls. Stop motion created the illusion that the hold of the ship opened by itself or sped-up the dark coach the character drove, giving it a preternatural appearance. For another shot of the coach, he utilized a negative of the film image to create a spectral horse and buggy.

Topping these elements, is the creepiness of Max Schreck’s Count Orlok. His visage has become an iconic image for this film, and horror movies in general, copied as much as possible for the 1979 remake of the film with Klaus Kinski. His bald head, heavy eyebrows, bat-like ears, slender demeanor, and extra-long fingers all create a character that exudes menace even 100 years later. Schreck, by choice or maybe by accident, doesn’t appear to blink at all throughout the film adding a bigger air of mystique and anxiety. And while much of the film is approached as one might direct a stage play, there were certain elements that seemed to be created directly for the film. Murnau’s use of the shadow of the vampire becomes a strong element of the film’s horror, through which Orlok can grab onto Ellen’s soul/heart with just the shadow of his hand.

Nosferatu is a horror film that fans of the genre should see at least once in their lives. That’s one of the reasons it was chosen to showcase this month. But this week is also a special theme week on 31 Days of Horror, which long time readers might know happens at least once each year. With Nosferatu turning 100 years old, the theme this week is Anniversaries. Besides celebrating 100 years of German vampyres, the remainder of the week will have films celebrating their Fiftieth, Fortieth, Thirtieth, Twentieth and Tenth anniversaries. So stay tuned for a crop of great horror films from 1972 through 2012.

Assorted Musings

• When the innkeeper mentions a werewolf roaming the countryside, footage of a striped hyena is shown, being an obscure and novel creature to depict a lycanthrope.
• A 2000 film called Shadow of the Vampire, starring Willem Dafoe as Max Schreck gave a somewhat fictionalized version on the filming of Nosferatu.
• The film was remade in 1979 as Nosferatu the Vampyre, starring Klaus Kinski and directed by Werner Herzog. The character of the vampire was changed to Count Dracula in that version.