Untitled Document

Nosferatu (Eine Symphonie des Grauens) directed by German auteur F.W. Murnau and starring the elusive Max Schreck was originally released in Germany in 1922 and remains one of the most popular silent films of all time. Notable as a prime example of the German Expressionist movement of the early twentieth century it also provides us with an early occurrence of what is now know as “intellectual property theft” as well as one of the most enduring and horrific presentations of the iconic Dracula character.

Born of the post Great War era, The Expressionist art movement arose as a approach to art with the goal of imposing something of the artist’s inner world onto the subject at hand. This movement extended to the early European cinema and is manifest most familiarly in films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, The Golem, Nosferatu, and even later pictures like Metropolis, and Vampyr.

It seems that the inner world of the post war German film artist was a dark one as these pieces are dominated by themes of madness, confusion, and the supernatural often set upon surreal and nightmarish landscapes.

Nosferatu is somewhat uncharacteristic of Expressionist film as it was shot primarily on location and is not inhabited by the sort of other-worldly scenery seen in films like Caligari, Metropolis, or Murnau’s later film, Faust. The terror and supernatural qualities of the film are embodied in the vampire figure himself, a horrifying, part corpse, part human rat figure with spidery talons that lurches from scene to scene.

The film’s script is a loose but nonetheless obvious adaptation of the Victorian horror classic Dracula by Bram Stoker. A number of plot reductions and name changes did little to prevent Stoker’s widow Florence from suing Praha-Film (the film’s producer) and prevailing. The court ordered the film’s negative destroyed but several copies survived and it is thanks primarily to the fact that Bram Stoker never copyrighted his novel in the U.S. that film was able to survive.

Successive adaptations (being primarily Hollywood driven and thus litigation free) have developed the Dracula character as increasingly genteel, sexualized, and even sympathetic. By the time we reach Coppola’s take on it in 1992, the offending vampire is as much tragic hero as villain. Actor Max Schreck’s depiction in Nosferatu is much truer to the novel in that it presents the Dracula figure as more catalyst than character. He is pure malevolence, more force than personality and the central problem that motivates all the other characters. Like a plague or an invasion, he represents the forces that threaten a fragile society.

With his bald pate, rat-like fangs, uber-vulcan ears, and exaggerated claws, the image of Schreck’s vampire remains one of the most ghastly and repulsive bits of visual engineering inspired by Stoker’s novel to this day.

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