Director: F.W. Murnau
Rating: 9 out of 10
Sometimes you have to go back to the source. For everyone who loves Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, or those damn kids from Twilight, this is where it all started. It's a loose adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula", an unathorized adaptation I might add, with Max Schreck in the title role of the blood sucking vampire.
If you've seen some of the other versions of the Dracula story then you have a pretty good idea of what the story is: a telegram is received by a real estate agency that a property is being sought in town by a mysterious Count Orlock, who now dwells in Transylvania. So the young real estate agent, Hutter, bids farewell to his beloved wife, Ellin, and heads off on a journey to Count Orlock's castle. Once he gets close to the castle, he starts hearing rumors of evil around, werewolves roaming the land at night, and thumbs through the pages of a book on vampires. Of course Hutter brushes off these warnings and heads to the castle, which he soon finds out is the resting place of quite a freakish looking man who thirsts for blood.
You get how it goes from there. It's a silent movie, which I'm sure would turn lots of people off, but I think makes the film more enjoyable for me. The actors had to convey emotion and feeling in their faces and body language, not just with words, which is no easy task. There's a few things I love about this story. First off, Nosferatu, himself, isn't what we've come to expect as the romanticized, charming vampire that women can't resist, making him as much a sexual predator as anything. In this one, the vampire's power is much stronger than that. He's hideous: long pointy ears, black gothic eyes, two pointy front teeth, crooked gangly fingers, and a tall slender frame that doesn't appear to have a neck. His power is more psychological. As soon as Nosferatu sets his sights on Hutter's wife, Ellin, she falls into a state of delirium, which the doctor's dub insanity. The power he has over the mind is a much more frightening thing than simply physical power and beauty. Once he chooses his pray, you basically lose your mind.
Another thing I love, at least for this story, is the low shutter speed of the cameras. These days camera speeds are so fast they can catch everything, but if you watch an old movie, say a Western, and they show a horse galloping you may notice the legs look like they're galloping much faster than they really are. This is because the cameras were too slow to catch all the movements of the horses legs, so you get a not-so-fluid image of the horse running. Here, we get the same effect, but I think it lends a surreal element to the film. Nosferatu doesn't move like a normal human would on camera. Especially a scene of him popping out of a coffin, it's just so surreal the way it was filmed. Couple his eery movements with his freakish appearance and you have a pretty effective monster.
The third thing I love has actually to do with a simple camera trick they pull twice in the flick. During Nosferatu's long voyage aboard a cargo ship, the crew starts getting sick and dying. The crew finds rats below deck, so they assume it's an outbreak of plague. Eventually they start feeling the presence of the vampire, who sleeps in his coffin by day. There's a scene where one of the crew goes below deck to look around, and he sees a superimposed image of Nosferatu sitting on some boxes that disappears after a few seconds. Just a cool shot, especially considering the era this film was shot in.
The last thing I love: this film was banned in Sweden for it's horrific images until 1972. 50 years! Anyone that watches this movie would agree that there are some pretty creepy images in the flick, but not nearly enough to ban the movie from public viewing. And for 50 years?? It almost feels like they banned it in 1922 and forgot about it. It's simply inexplicable, but adds to the lore of the film.
Next: Hour of the Wolf
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