Reel Classics: Nosferatu

A recent­ly released movie called Nosferatu is now play­ing in the­aters. It stars Lily-Rose Depp (daugh­ter of Johnny Depp) and Nicholas Hoult. It is a remake of the clas­sic silent film of the same name from 1922 and has received four Oscar nom­i­na­tions. Our Reel Classic review is not of this cur­rent film but of the orig­i­nal that many crit­ics see as a work of art and the kick­starter to hor­ror films as a genre. Seeing and read­ing the pro­mo­tions for the cur­rent movie made me want to revis­it the orig­i­nal. The orig­i­nal title of the 1922 release was Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror.

The famed direc­tor was German film­mak­er F. W. Murnau. The sto­ry is an adap­ta­tion of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but the title and the names of the story’s char­ac­ters were changed as Murnau did not have legal rights to the sto­ry from Stoker’s wid­ow. It was the first film released fea­tur­ing the vam­pire char­ac­ter and, need­less to say, has inspired many, many more retellings of the tale. 

The sto­ry­line fol­lows the basic one of Stoker’s nov­el. The agent who vis­its the Count about the prop­er­ty sale is named Hutter and works for a real estate agent named Knock. The sto­ry begins in 1838 in Bremen, Germany, where Knock’s office is locat­ed. The Count, named Orlok, has com­mu­ni­cat­ed to Knock that he wants to relo­cate to Bremen, and Knock deploys Hutter to Count Orlok’s cas­tle in the Carpathian Mountains to close the deal. We soon learn that Knock is under the spell and influ­ence of his “mas­ter” Count Orlok. 

Hutter leaves his wife Ellen with friends to make this trip. Stopping at an inn along the way, he is warned by the innkeep­er to not pro­ceed to the cas­tle: “You must not go fur­ther; the were­wolf haunts the woods.”  Hutter ignores the warn­ing and pro­ceeds on to the cas­tle. When meet­ing with Count Orlok, Hutter shows him a pic­ture of his wife. The Count is imme­di­ate­ly intrigued and tells Hutter, “Your wife has such a beau­ti­ful neck.”  The house that Orlok wants is a desert­ed house near the Hutter’s home. 

Hutter becomes trapped in the cas­tle as Orlok pre­pares for his jour­ney to his new home. Hutter sees him load­ing coffins onto a wag­on and becomes con­vinced that Count Orlok is a vam­pire. As the sto­ry pro­gress­es we find Orlok on a ship sail­ing to his new home and rats emerg­ing from the coffins. The death of the sailors aboard the boat is attrib­uted to the plague, and fear strikes the town where the boat has land­ed. In the mean­time, Hutter escapes the cas­tle and tries des­per­ate­ly to return home to his beloved wife before Count Orlok reach­es her. 

Given that this film is over 100 years old, it is not like­ly that any­one will rec­og­nize the names of the actors and actress­es. But, I will men­tion the lead­ing names: Count Orlok was por­trayed by Max Schreck, Hutter by Gustav von Wangenheim, Ellen by Greta Schroder, and Knock by Alexander Granach. 

As men­tioned above, the direc­tor was F.W. Murnau. He made a total of 22 films, and three are con­sid­ered by crit­ics as mas­ter­pieces: Nosferatu (1922), The Last Laugh (1924) and Sunrise (1927). His efforts got him a Hollywood con­tract with Fox, and he moved to the United States in 1926. His last film, Tabu (1931), was released after he died in an auto acci­dent at age 43.

Part of what makes the film a work of art is the use of shad­ow and the fram­ing of the scenes. The char­ac­ters’ move­ment, the camera’s posi­tion­ing, and the use of dark and light all lend to the movie’s fas­ci­nat­ing and haunt­ing ambiance. We see sem­blances of sim­i­lar efforts with cam­era angles and light­ing in the Alfred Hitchcock films.

To quote a review­er for Collider, “Watching Nosferatu for the first time from a mod­ern per­spec­tive is an extreme­ly eye-open­ing expe­ri­ence as it’s noth­ing like the many CGI-heavy, fast-paced hor­rors of today. The char­ac­ter design of Count Orlok is strik­ing and will haunt you long after you fin­ish the film . . . If you dim the lights and allow your­self to be ful­ly immersed in the world of Nosferatu, you will see why it is such a cor­ner­stone of the hor­ror genre.” 

As men­tioned above, the wid­ow of Bram Stoker had not giv­en per­mis­sion to use the sto­ry and filed a suit against the stu­dio. Murnau changed the story’s end­ing (along with the char­ac­ters names) to argue that it was not the same, but to no avail. She won that legal suit, and the courts ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. Fortunately, copies have sur­vived in oth­er coun­tries, and we still have the movie today. It was restored and re-released in 2005, with the orig­i­nal score record­ed by a sym­pho­ny orches­tra. (If my mem­o­ry serves me well, I saw that re-release at the Kentucky Theater in Lexington). 

There have been oth­er remakes besides the cur­rent one. Another well-received ver­sion was released in 1979 (Nosferatu The Vampyre) star­ring Klaus Kinski. An inter­est­ing note about the film is that it was the first Dracula film to be released. Dracula’s Death (1921) was filmed before Nosferatu but was not released until 1923. Another inter­est­ing note—Nosferatu is not the name of our vam­pire. His name is Count Orlok.  Nosferatu is report­ed­ly an ancient Romanian word for vampire. 

Upon its ini­tial release, reviews in Germany were pos­i­tive. Critics here in the United States were mixed. Critics saw the film as a form of German “expres­sion­ism.”  (A the­o­ry or prac­tice in art of seek­ing to depict the sub­jec­tive emo­tions and respons­es that objects and events arouse in the artist—Webster’s Dictionary). Variety praised the “extreme­ly effec­tive sym­bol­ism,” but The New York Times crit­icde­scribed it as a “would-be spine-chiller.” 

Critics today iden­ti­fy it as a mas­ter­piece. Roger Ebert wrote, “It knows none of the lat­er tricks of the trade, like sud­den threats that pop in from the side of the screen. But Nosferatu remains effec­tive: It doesn’t scare us, but it haunts us. It shows not that vam­pires can jump out of shad­ows, but that evil can grow there, nour­ished on death.”

Ebert includes Nosferatu on his “Great Movies” list. It is also includ­ed in Steven Schneider’s “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die.” Rotten Tomatoes Critics Consensus states, “One of the silent era’s most influ­en­tial mas­ter­pieces. Nosferatu’s eerie, Gothic feel—and a chill­ing per­for­mance from Max Schreck as the vampire—set the tem­plate for the hor­ror films that followed.” 

Rotten Tomatoes gives Nosferatu a Critics Score of 97% and an Audience Score of 87%. The Internet Movie Database (IMDb) gives it a score of 7.8 out of 10. 

In search­ing my Roku device, I found it avail­able on sev­er­al chan­nels, includ­ing Kanopy and Hoopla (avail­able with your library card), Roku Channel, Tubi and Fawesome. Also, a copy of the DVD is on the shelf at the Clark County Public Library. 

I would encour­age you to check out this silent-era mas­ter­piece if you are a fan of hor­ror movies, vam­pire movies, or clas­sic silent films. This was art and film-mak­ing before the com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed images and when act­ing was essen­tial to pro­vide the message. 

Information for this Reel Classic review was gath­ered from Internet Movie Data Base (IMDb), Rotten Tomatoes, Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Wikipedia.

I’ll be back soon with the next Reel Classic, but before I leave you with the trail­er below, let me remind you that if you enjoy these clas­sic movies, please join me on the sec­ond Tuesday of each month at 6:00 PM at the Clark County Public Library for “Ron Kibbey’s Comedy Classics.”  I present a clas­sic com­e­dy film, usu­al­ly accom­pa­nied by a vin­tage car­toon. Popcorn and drinks are pro­vid­ed. More infor­ma­tion about the next movie is avail­able on the library’s web­site, Facebook page, and WinCity Voices Facebook page.