The Sound of Silence/Vampire Flicks: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)

I'll never forget the first time I learned of Nosferatu, which, as with a lot of these classic horror movies, was when I was a young kid, reading up on them in various books I found at both my school library and the public library near my aunt's house in Monteagle, which I visited every Friday. Most of these were the old, Crestwood House monster books but there were also some smaller, thinner, more contemporary books that focused on well-known movie monsters like Dracula, Frankenstein's monster, the Mummy, and the Wolf Man. These books went into their most iconic movie versions, along with various others and their origins in folklore, mythology, history, and such. The book on Dracula and vampire movies in general focused on the classic film with Bela Lugosi and most other versions of the story, including Nosferatu, of which it had one single image: that oft-seen publicity photo of Count Orlok standing in a doorway. I can remember being really taken aback by the sight of that hideous vampire, with his crazed eyes, rat-like, buck teeth, and long claws on his fingers, and I always dreaded getting to that page when I would read through the book. Also, not understanding the concept of silent movies at that time, I didn't learn much more about it or even grasp what its title was until I watched the documentary, Universal Horror, on Turner Classic Movies on Halloween night in 1998. As it did with other relevant horror films of the period, it briefly discussed Nosferatu, talking about how Universal acquired a print of it before producing both of its versions of Dracula in 1931. The scenes it showed, such as Orlok rising from the ship's hold and the creepy image of his shadow going across the wall, reaching for the door to Ellen's room, and actually grabbing her over the heart, thoroughly creeped me out, probably even more so than that photo. After that, I saw bits and pieces of it here and there, notably when my aunt's boyfriend watched a recording of it one night, but I didn't actually see it in full until 2007, when I was twenty years old and bought Kino Video's DVD release. On the whole, I think it's a very well-made movie, with great cinematography and plenty of memorable images, an unforgettable villain in Orlok, and I very much respect it for its influence and legacy. That said, it's not one of my favorite horror films, or even one of my favorite vampire movies, as I don't think it's the flawless masterpiece that so many others think it is.

In the year 1838, the small German harbor town of Wisborg is home to Hutter, a young real estate agent and his wife, Ellen. One day, his employer, Knock, a man who's been the subject of many local rumors, informs him that Count Orlok of Transylvania wishes to buy some property in Wisborg. Suggesting he offer the Count the empty house across from his own, Knock then sends Hutter to Transylvania to close the deal. Despite Ellen's apprehension, Hutter sets out on his journey, while she stays with his friend, a shipowner named Harding, and his sister, Ruth. Upon arriving in Transylvania, Hutter stops at an inn, but when he mentions that he intends to go on to Count Orlok's castle, the locals react in terror, with the innkeeper telling him that a werewolf is stalking the countryside. He's forced to stay the night and, in his room, finds a book titled Of Vampires, Ghastly Spirits, Bewitchments, and the Seven Deadly Sins. He glances through it, reading up on the origin and nature of vampires, but pays it little mind. The next day, he heads on to the castle, but when nighttime approaches, the coachman refuses to go any further and makes him continue on foot. Another carriage, driven by an eerie coachman with a covered face, brings him the rest of the way and he arrives at the castle late at night. He's greeted personally by Orlok, who invites him in and gives him a meal, while he looks over the paperwork for the property purchase. When Hutter accidentally cuts his thumb, Orlok attempts to suck the blood, and then has Hutter stay up with him, talking. Hutter awakens the next morning to find two small marks on his neck, which he attributes to mosquitoes, and then writes to Ellen. That night, Orlok officially purchases the house across from Hutter's and also sees a photo of Ellen, whom he says has a "lovely neck." Given what he's seen and read in the book from the inn, Hutter begins to suspect that Orlok is a vampire and is soon proven right when he later pays him a visit in his room. Orlok departs for Wisborg the next evening, leaving a trail of death and suffering in his wake, and Hutter, knowing that Ellen is in danger, frantically races back home.

Like The Golem, Nosferatu was the work of a pioneer of both German Expressionism and German cinema in general: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. Having "directed" small plays put on at his family villa in Kassel when he was only around 12, Murnau studied under prominent stage director Max Reinhardt and, when he became a POW in Switzerland during World War I, participated in a prisoner theater group, as well as wrote a screenplay. He directed his first feature film, The Boy in Blue, in 1919, and had already directed ten films by the time he made Nosferatu. Unfortunately, only three of those movies have survived completely intact, and what especially sucks is that among the lost is Der Januskopf, or The Head of Janus, a 1920 adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde that features an appearance by Bela Lugosi. In any case, while filming Nosferatu, Murnau stuck very closely to the screenplay by Henrik Galeen, which included hand-written instructions about lighting, camera position, etc., but he also rewrote twelve pages when Galeen's text didn't appear in his own working script. A meticulous and well-prepared filmmaker, Murnau, in addition, made sketches which the final scenes corresponded to exactly and even used a metronome to control the pace of the actors' performances. After Nosferatu, he directed other films like Phantom, a very dream-like German Expressionism film, The Last Laugh, and Faust, a large budgeted film with special effects that are still impressive today. Faust was Murnau's final German film, as he then went to Hollywood, where he made Sunrise, which won several Oscars at the first Academy Awards in 1929. His two follow-ups, 1928's 4 Devils and 1930's City Girl, were both shot silent but then re-adapted for sound, which was beginning to gain traction. Neither of them were successful, prompting Murnau to leave Fox, the studio he was working for, and go independent. He made Tabu: A Story of the South Seas in Bora Bora, but when it was released in 1931, it ended up being his last film as, the week before its premiere in New York, he died in a car accident. He was just 42 years old. 

It's interesting to note that Murnau's earlier film, Der Januskopf, was an unauthorized adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. the same way in which Nosferatu was adapted from Dracula without the consent of Bram Stoker's estate. Unlike the family of Robert Louis Stevenson, who didn't raise any fuss about Der Januskopf, Stoker's widow, Florence, famously sued Prana Films, the small production company behind Nosferatu, for breach of copyright. This proved to be the death knell for the short-lived company (Nosferatu is the only film they ever produced) and the courts ordered all prints of the film destroyed, but fortunately for horror fans, copies had already been distributed around the world; were that not the case, Nosferatu may have been yet another lost Murnau film. Exactly why the filmmakers went ahead without the Stoker family's approval is up to debate, with some sources claiming that, at that time, the idea of copyright wasn't completely understood and it just never crossed their minds to ask for permission, and others suggesting they tried, were rebuffed, and decided to do it anyway. Support for the latter theory has been cited in how the characters' names were changed from the novel and the main setting from London to a fictional German town, suggesting it was done to make it different enough in order to avoid legal problems. That would make sense, except that the opening credits in the original German version blatantly say, "After the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker. Freely adapted by Henrik Galeen," defeating the purpose. In the end, it doesn't matter, as the film is here for the taking, but I was surprised when I did research and found that, despite how well-known the controversy is, the exact scenario behind it is unclear.

The most iconic part of the film by far is Max Schreck as Count Orlok (when the film was first released in America, the intertitles, which were translated from German into French and then into English, gave the characters the names from Stoker's novel, including referring to Orlok as Count Dracula; these intertitles are retained in the public domain copies). That's especially amazing when you consider that he doesn't make his first appearance until 21 minutes in and his total amount

of screentime is less than ten minutes, a testament to the impact he leaves and how much his presence is felt throughout the story. Like in most adaptations of Dracula, you first see Orlok when he appears as a menacing coachman who picks up Hutter after his initial coach abandons him and takes him on to the castle. Once there, both Hutter and the viewer meet Orlok formally and, although he initially acts as a gracious host, the moment you first see him, you can't help but be put off and repelled by him. Not only is he absolutely disgusting, with his rat-like teeth, pointy ears, beady eyes, long clawed fingernails, but the stiff rigidity in his gestures and movements feels very inhuman, almost artificial. This was a direction F.W. Murnau gave Schreck in order to make Orlok come off as completely alien to the other characters in the film, who all act naturally (at least as much as you could expect in a silent film), and in his first couple of scenes, as he tries to come off as friendly and accommodating to Hutter, his gestures and movements help belie his monstrous nature just as much as his appearance. He's also unable to keep his monstrous craving for blood in check when Hutter cuts his thumb with a knife, prompting him to lurch towards him, proclaiming his blood to be "precious," and suck on it. Despite Hutter's repulsion at this, Orlok then asks to sit up with him for a while, saying he sleeps during the day, allowing him to bite the man's neck for the first time. And the next night, when he prepares to sign the paperwork and finalize the sale of the property in Wisborg, Orlok spies a small picture of Ellen that drops out of Hutter's pocket. Picking it up and leering at it, he comments on how lovely her neck is before signing the deed.

Like Christopher Lee in his first portrayal of Dracula in the 1958 film from Hammer, after these initial scenes, Orlok drops all pretense of humanity and remains a silent, ravenous monster for the remainder of the film. Trapping Hutter in his room and feeding on him once more, he then appears to sense Ellen and her premonitions of the horror that's befalling her husband. He then no longer bothers with Hutter and, instead, focuses on making his way to Wisborg so he can hunt her

down. He leaves a trail of disease and death in his wake, as the boxes of earth he brings with him are revealed to be teeming with rats that seem to carry a deadly plague that spreads throughout Transylvania and ports along the Black Sea. This plague then spreads throughout the Empusa, the schooner that brings him to Wisborg, and into the town itself after Orlok arrives and makes his way to the abandoned house across from Hutter's. Granted, this could all be Orlok's doing directly, with him feeding on people on his journey and the

sickness being a symptom of it (in his rush to get home, Hutter is placed in the care of a doctor and is said to have had a fever), while the presence of the rats is just a coincidence. However, there does seem to be a connection between Orlok and the actual rats of the Black Death, both in his own rat-like physical appearance and how, according to the book on vampires Hutter finds at the inn, Nosferatu, "Doth dwell in ghastly caves, sepulchres, and coffins, filled so with God-cursed earth from the fields of the Black Death,"

suggesting he himself died from the Black Death and became a vampire afterward. As such, he could literally be the plague incarnate, with the rats being a separate incarnation of him altogether, both explaining his appearance and why, as reported in the newspaper, the plague victims, "Exhibit the same peculiar stigmata on the neck."

There is an intangible, ethereal quality to Orlok that makes him come off as more than just a blood-sucking, undead ghoul. Even before he makes his first appearance, his presence is felt in how terrified those at the inn are when Hutter mentions his name, and how it feels the entire countryside is his domain once the sun goes down, with the innkeeper informing Hutter that a werewolf roams the woods at night (which could possibly be Orlok in another form) and how the carriage meant to

take him to the castle refuses to go on when sundown quickly approaches. It's also described how, as he gets closer to the castle, Hutter begins to have "eerie visions" and that the shadows of the night seem to be all around him within the castle, dispersed by the morning sun but returning just as quickly after sunset. Speaking of shadows, right before Hutter has his second frightening encounter with Orlok in his room, he reads from the book, "Take heed that his shadow not encumber thee like

an incubus with gruesome dreams." Indeed, throughout the film, Orlok's shadow has a malevolent power all its own, stretching across Hutter as he sits in the corner of his room in complete terror, awaiting the vampire's attack, and in the iconic moment at the end where his shadow enters Ellen's room and grabs her by the heart before he feeds on her blood. Orlok has other supernatural powers, like the ability to make doors open and objects move at his command, such as when he gets in his coffin and makes the lid slide up and close on its own, and he can also create a spectral projection of himself and pass through walls, as he does when he finally arrives in Wisborg.

Not only is Count Orlok the antithesis of the popular suave and romantic depiction of Dracula, but there's nothing remotely sexually alluring about his biting and feeding on people's blood. From his perspective, he does note that Ellen has a lovely neck, targets her specifically, and probably does get some perverse satisfaction from feeding on her at the end, but for the most part, sucking the blood of others is a means of sustenance and nothing more. In addition, he's not interested in reproducing

himself through the curse of vampirism, as his bite does not turn others into the undead but rather, either sickens or kills them outright. He's truly only interested in spreading sickness and death, as well as satisfying his bloodlust, and once he arrives in Wisborg, he spreads the plague throughout the town before closing in on Ellen. Unbeknownst to him, Ellen deliberately offers herself as a sacrifice to keep him out when the sun rises, having read in Hutter's book that only a pure maiden can do this. This notion of a vampire having to avoid sunlight

by sleeping in a coffin by day is Nosferatu's biggest contribution to the "lore" and one of the major deviations from Bram Stoker's novel, where Dracula was merely weakened by sunlight. (Oddly, though, despite Orlok's demonic origin and nature, the trope of vampires being repelled by Christian symbols such as crosses never comes up here.)

It's quite remarkable to watch these old films and see what filmmakers were able to come up with in a time where makeup was at its most basic and special effects were virtually non-existent. Case in point: the look for Count Orlok, which is one of the most iconic and influential vampire designs in film history. According to the book, Horror Films, published by Virgin Books in 2004, Albin Grau, an occultist who was one of the co-founders of Prana Films, as well as the film's production and costume

designer, was responsible for Orlok's makeup. Others claim that Max Schreck himself did the makeup because, at the time, both stage and film actors did it themselves. Whatever the case, there isn't much information about the materials used, though it's theorized that it may have consisted of little more than a bald-cap, greasepaint and putty, fake fangs and eyebrows, and ear and finger extensions to create this legendary, and still creepy, look.

One possible thematic reading of Nosferatu is that Orlok is meant to be a representation of possible anti-Semitic attitudes on the part of the filmmakers, with his appearance, particularly his hooked nose and bald head, seen as akin to stereotypes of Jews, and his rat-like features corresponding to how Jews were viewed as vermin themselves, compounded by the plague-carrying swarms of rats that come in his wake. Also, Prof. Tony Magistrate of the University of Vermont suggests that the notion of 

an evil, outside entity like Orlok invading a small town in Germany can be seen as very analogous to the attitudes of antisemitism that were brewing in Northern Europe around that time. However, Magistrate has said that, since F.W. Murnau was, as a homosexual, someone who undoubtedly knew what it was like to be persecuted, he probably would've had a lot of sympathy for the Jews living in German society of the time and thus, anything potentially anti-Semitic in the film is probably just coincidence. Moreover, one of the actors in the cast was himself Jewish, and Murnau was known to have been friendly and amiable to many Jewish men and women throughout his life.

If there's a problem with Max Schreck's performance as Count Orlok, it's simply that he's so awesome that much of the rest of the cast suffers. For instance, Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim), the young real estate agent and our Jonathan Harker here, is very, very bland. He comes off as happy-go-lucky and clearly loves his wife, Ellen, but he also seems rather oblivious to her feelings, as seen early on when he picks some flowers for her and doesn't seem to get that she's sad he killed them by doing so. He also eagerly travels to Transylvania to meet Orlok with little hesitation, but as excited as he is for the opportunity and the money, ostensibly doing it all for Ellen's sake, he doesn't seem to comprehend that she's rather nervous about him going off to a strange land and leaving her in the company of some friends of his. Upon arriving in Transylvania, Hutter is eager to have a meal at the inn and head on to Orlok's castle, and is as skeptical as can be when it comes to vampires and the villagers' superstitions. He pays them no mind whatsoever, even after first reading in the book he finds in his room, and laughs it all off when he awakens the next morning. But, when he approaches the castle, driven the last leg of the way by an eerie coachman, and meets with Orlok, he starts to feel uneasy and is repulsed when the Count attempts to suck his blood after he cuts his thumb. The next morning, when he awakens after staying up with Orlok, Hutter is much more at ease, especially since the castle isn't as creepy during the daytime, and writes off the two marks on his neck as mosquito bites. It's only late that night, when he glances at the book on vampires, having accidentally taken it from the inn, and looks in the next room to see Orlok in all his undead glory, that Hutter realizes he is a vampire. Awakening with a start the next morning after the terrifying encounter he has with Orlok in his room, Hutter searches the castle and, to his horror, finds him sleeping in his coffin. After the sun goes down, he sees Orlok load various coffins onto a coach and get in one for his journey to Wisborg. Realizing he'll likely go after Ellen, judging from the comment he made about her neck while looking at her picture, Hutter nearly kills himself trying to get back to save his wife. But, in the end, he proves in effectual in doing so, and is not even the one who destroys Orlok.

Ellen (Greta Schroder) is a lovely young woman who loves her husband but also has an affinity for nature and life in general, as shown when Hutter gives her the flowers he picked and she sadly responds, "Why did you kill them... the lovely flowers?" When he later tells her that he's going to journey to Transylvania, a feeling of dread clearly washes over Ellen, a feeling that Hutter himself is rather dismissive of, as he nonchalantly leaves her in the care of Harding and Ruth. In the scene where Count Orlok enters Hutter's room after having proven himself a vampire, Ellen awakens from her deep sleep, appearing to sense it. She then walks across a balcony railing in a trance-like state, with Harding running and catching her when she almost falls. He calls for a doctor and, after he arrives, Ellen, having been put back in bed, again awakens. As Orlok's shadow falls over Hutter, she calls her husband's name, which the Count appears to sense. Later, as she sits by the seashore, pining for Hutter's return, she finally receives the letter he wrote to her. Though momentarily relieved, when she's read the part about him being bitten by "mosquitoes" and how, "One dreams so heavily in this desolate castle," she, once more, fears for him. She has more strange episodes at night as Orlok gets closer and closer to Wisborg, but she also senses that Hutter is on his way and prepares to meet him. Shortly afterward, he does finally return, and later, as the plague claims numerous lives in town, Ellen, despite her husband's warning not to, looks through the book about vampires. Reading that a vampire can only be stopped by a pure woman sacrificing herself to him so he doesn't take cover from the dawn's light, she decides to offer herself to Orlok, whom she can see in the window of the abandoned house across from hers. She also makes sure that she's the only person there when he comes, sending Hutter out to get a doctor for herself. She succeeds in destroying the vampire and lives long enough to see her husband one last time when he returns.

Knock (Alexander Granach), the very bizarre and sinister estate agent whom Hutter works for, is not only this film's version of Renfield but is also the equivalent to Mr. Hawkins, Jonathan Harker's employer in the book. Right before he's introduced, we're told that Knock was, "The subject of all sorts of rumors," but that he paid his people well. Sure enough, when he commissions Hutter to travel to Transylvania to meet with Count Orlok and finalize the sale personally, he promises him a nice sum of money for a little bit of sweat and blood. But there's a sinister undercurrent to this, as Knock is a servant to Orlok, receiving a letter from him written in astrological and cabalistic symbols that only he understands, and before he sends Hutter on his way, he comes up with the idea of having him offer the Count the abandoned building across from Hutter's own home, likely knowing that his master will enjoy feeding on Ellen. Later in the film, as Orlok is on his way to Wisborg, Knock is institutionalized and proceeds to feed on insects while raving, "Blood is life!" However, he's not a totally mindless madman, as he feigns complete insanity in order to get close enough to attack the asylum director, and when a janitor is sweeping up his cell, he takes a newspaper from his pocket and reads up on news of the spreading plague, knowing that it means Orlok is drawing closer. When he finally arrives in Wisborg, Knock escapes by killing a guard. When the plague hits the town and there are rumors of a vampire, Knock becomes the scapegoat and is chased by the frenzied townspeople through the streets and the nearby countryside. Eventually, he's recaptured and placed back in his cell, where he senses that Orlok is in danger during the climax and mourns him when he knows he's been destroyed by the rising sun.

Like Orlok himself, Knock's appearance is startling in that he's so overtly bizarre and sinister-looking; in fact, he closely resembles his master in that he's balding, has beady eyes, and, mostly notably, huge eyelashes, much bushier and fuller than Orlok's already very wild ones (like with Max Schreck, I'm sure this was a fairly extensive makeup job, as Alexander Granach was only in his early 30's at the time). While he doesn't have Orlok's distinguishing rat-like features, what similarity there is suggests that, how ever it happened to Knock himself, this is what happens when one becomes the vampire's slave.

Knock is the only other character in the film who stands out, as the rest of the cast is quite unmemorable. Hutter's friend, Harding (Georg H. Schnell) and his sister, Ruth (Ruth Landshoff), the Arthur Holmwood and Lucy Westenra equivalents (and who do act more like a married couple than siblings), and Professor Sievers (Gustav Botz), who's meant to be Dr. Seward, have nothing substantial to do at all. Harding and Ruth are particularly bland, doing nothing more than

looking after Ellen, and while Ruth comes down with the plague late in the film, it doesn't seem like anything ever becomes of it. As for Sievers, he just observes Knock and helps with both the examination of what happened to the crew of the Empusa after the ship drifts into Wisborg's harbor and the ensuing plague. We do have a Van Helsing equivalent in the form of Professor Bulwer (John Gottowt) and he's introduced in a manner that suggests he's going to be significant, as he's described as having been, "Studying the secrets of

nature and their unifying principles." When we first actually see him, he and his students watch a Venus flytrap devour a fly and he comments, "Like a vampire, isn't it?" Shortly after that, he shows his students a tentacled polyp feeding, saying it's almost like a phantom. But, in the end, he does nothing. After those two scenes, he appears inexplicably at the end when Hutter goes to fetch him under Ellen's pleading but he has no part in destroying Count Orlok. You could completely remove him from the film and nothing would be lost at all.

Besides changing the setting and the characters' name, another manner in which F.W. Murnau and Henrik Galeen differentiate their film from the novel of Dracula is by drastically simplifying the narrative. While Bram Stoker's novel is told from various perspectives and sources such as diary entries, letters, and the like, Nosferatu focuses primarily on the main characters of Hutter and Ellen and how this horrific experience impacts them. In the film's second half, more perspectives do come about, like those of the doomed crew of

the Empusa, Knock as he anticipates Count Orlok's arrival, the brief business with Prof. Bulwer and his students, and the town authorities as they try to figure out what happened to the ship's crew and deal with the plague, but even so, it's still all about the havoc Orlok wreaks on his journey to Wisborg and builds to the climax of Ellen sacrificing herself in order to destroy him. In spite of this, it must be said that the first two acts and much of the third and fourth are, more or less, quite faithful to the plot of Dracula, and it's only as the movie draws

closer to its conclusion that it becomes wholly different, especially in its climax. Also like the book, unfortunately, there are aspects of the story which I think are wholly superfluous. One is the source of the narrative itself: entries in a journal called Chronicle of the Great Death in Wisborg, authored by some unnamed resident of the town who met with and took statements from the main characters in the story. Definitely an influence from Stoker but ultimately unnecessary, as we don't ever

learn who this narrator is and these numerous bright blue intertitles constantly tell us stuff we can either figure out for ourselves or describe something we just saw. Also, not only is Prof. Bulwer a totally pointless character but so is the escape and pursuit of Knock after he's lost his mind. That portion of the movie accomplishes nothing, as he's placed right back in the asylum after he's caught, rather than getting lynched, as you might expect. While it does help to show the hysteria that's gripped Wisborg as a result of the plague, I think reactions to the plague itself and rumors of a vampire would've been more than enough.

While we're on the subject of the storytelling, I must confess that my biggest issue with Nosferatu is that I think it really drags at points. This mainly starts to happen around the halfway point, after Orlok has begun his journey to Wisborg and Hutter has escaped the castle and is racing back home. Much like with the first act of Tod Browning's Dracula, I think the first half of Nosferatu, especially the section in Transylvania, is awesome, thanks to the great location footage, the art direction of the castle interiors, and, of course,

Orlok himself. I also do kind of like the scenes back in Wisborg of Ellen sensing that her husband is in terrible danger, but it's mostly the stuff with Orlok and his castle menacing Hutter that make this great. But, once the third act begins, I start to feel really antsy. While with Dracula, it's mainly due to how stagey and confined the rest of the movie often feels, here it's because it seems like it takes forever for Orlok to finally reach Wisborg. I wouldn't have minded if the middle of the film focused entirely on what happens aboard the

Empusa, perhaps intercut with Hutter's journey back home, but instead, it's mixed in with those pointless scenes with Prof. Bulwer, Knock's raving in the asylum, and Ellen growing concerned when she reads Hutter's letter when they arrive. Finally, near the end of Act IV, both Orlok and Hutter arrive and the movie starts to get back on track, only for us to then have that further distraction of Knock escaping from the asylum, being blamed for the plague in the town, and ultimately getting recaptured. It sucks, too, as many of the movie's most iconic moments occur during this latter section, but by the time we do get to them, I'm kind of ready it to be over.

Nosferatu, if nothing else, is a testament to what a talented and innovative filmmaker F.W. Murnau was in a photographic sense, as he knew how to shoot a movie. As so much of the film was shot on location, he made sure to get every bang for his buck and show off the locations in all their glory, with big wide vistas, sometimes shot from very high vantage points. For example, the very first actual shot, an establishing shot of Wisborg, was shot from a tower overlooking the marketplace in the city of Wismar, and the sequence where the

townspeople are chasing after Knock was shot from another vantage point in the city of Lubeck. And as for the location footage in Slovakia, meant to represent Transylvania, there are far too many great shots to name, but I've always been very keen on this high-angled shot of a river carrying the raft transporting Count Orlok's many coffins. Murnau also proved adept at creating images and scenes that were just unnerving and plain unforgettable, like the shot of Orlok in the sitting room across from Hutter's doorway, his walking into Hutter's

room, the shot of his face in the hole in his coffin's lid before Hutter throws it open, that shot of him rising up out of the coffin onboard the Empusa, his stalking of the captain, his emerging from the hold upon reaching Wisborg, the shot of the dead captain, tied to the wheel in the ensuing investigation, the various shots of the rats that follow in Orlok's wake, and the iconic climax which features his shadow going up the stairs towards Ellen's room, reaching for the door, and 

then actually grabbing her over her heart. Speaking of the climax, Murnau came up with it completely on his own, as it was what was missing from his working script. Moreover, according to Dark Corner Reviews in their video, The Horror Films of F.W. Murnau (I highly recommend checking out their YouTube channel if you're a fan of classic horror), that shot of Orlok's shadow going up the stairs, which is so etched in the minds of people when they think of Nosferatu, was not in the original script, Murnau's personal notes, or in the shooting schedule, suggesting it was something he created purely on the fly. To quote Dark Corners in regards to this moment of innovation, "Murnau was a cinematic director in the purest sense of the term; he understood the power of an image."

Murnau also used numerous photographic tricks to create the look he wanted, sometimes adding shadows through matte cutouts, like in the shot when Hutter formally meets Orlok at his castle, and using negative photography in one shot when Orlok, disguised as the coachman, brings him the rest of the way to the castle. For that latter shot, he had Max Schreck dress in a white robe so he would look eerily dark. While Dark Corners describes that effect as being poorly dated by today's standards, I think it's effectively strange and unexpected, as are

the instances of stop-frame photography, creating a stop-motion-like effect of Orlok's coffin lid creeping up and closing by itself and the hatch to the Empusa's hold opening under his command when he arrives in Wisborg. What is badly dated, though, are the instances of sped-up photography in scenes like when the carriage first picks up Hutter and arrives at the castle, and when Hutter watches Orlok loading up his coffins in the carriage before departing for Wisborg. It was likely

meant to make things come off as all the more otherworldly but it just looks silly, and in some releases of the film, the music that plays during those sequences have made them feel totally cartoonish. And, despite their attempts to make it seem otherwise with the blue tinting, you can tell that the nighttime exteriors were shot during the day, with the sole exception being the shot of a man lighting street lamp in Wisborg during the final act. In some instances, it doesn't really matter, but there are others where it's painfully obvious, like in Orlok's arrival in Wisborg where he walks through the streets, carrying his coffin.

I also have to give Dark Corners credit in how they made me realize something about Nosferatu that I'd never thought of before: for a movie that's considered a quintessential example of German Expressionism, the only thing about that's wholly expressionistic is Count Orlok, both in his appearance and Max Schreck's performance. Otherwise, everything about the film is wholly naturalistic, notably in its extensive use of real locations, rather than going for the bizarre, artificial, off-kilter look of films like The Cabinet

of Dr. Caligari. As noted earlier, the cities of Wismar and Lubeck doubled for the exteriors of Wisborg, with some notable locations in the former being the Heiligen-Geist-Kirche yard, where Hutter departs on horseback, and the city's harbor, while in Lubeck, they used the six brick buildings known as the Salzspeicher for Orlok's new home in Wisborg, the Aegidienkirche for Hutter's home, and the Yard of Fuchting for when Knock gives Hutter his assignment. I'm not sure where they shot the scene on the beach where Ellen sits staring at

the sea, pining for her husband (it might've been in the vicinity of either of those two cities), but it's another knockout location and is shot beautifully by Murnau. However, the most striking locations come during the section in Transylvania, which were in northern Slovakia, in places like the Tatra mountain range, Vratna Valley, and the Vah River. There are big sweeping vistas of rolling hills with mountains in the background, impressive shots of the Tatras themselves, dirt, rock paths along the

mountain range, dotted by long abandoned pieces of human architecture here and there, dark, eerie forests, and those impressive shots of the river that I mentioned before. Count Orlok's castle was also a real location, Orava Castle, and they used it for both the immediate exterior, the interior behind the gate, and the exterior ledges and stairways, and for the distant exterior shots; at the end of the movie, when it seems as though the castle has been destroyed along with Orlok, they used the ruins of another castle in the area, Stary hrad. And as for the ship, the Empusa, Murnau actually filmed a ship out in the Baltic Sea, rather than recreate it as a miniature, and even shot on its deck.

The actual interior sets were done at JOFA studio in Berlin and, like with so much of the movie, they were work of Albin Grau. The interiors of both the Hutter and Harding households are of a considerable size and very well-furnished, indicating that they're people of some wealth, with Hutter apparently making quite a lot from his job as a real estate agent. The most notable room in both sets are the bedrooms, with Ellen's bedroom at the Harding house having the balcony she gravitates towards when she's acting strange in the

night and the bedroom in her own home, of course, being the spot where both she and Count Orlok meet their demise. It's the more sinister sets in the film, however, that are the most memorable and more traditionally expressionistic, such as Knock's cell in the insane asylum, which is a barren, dungeon-like room with a pitiful cot, a small table over to the side, and a small, barred window high up on the wall, which casts some warped shadows. Also, just like he did with Knock's letter from

Orlok, Grau provided the same astrological symbols you see scrawled on the cell's wall. Similarly memorable are the claustrophobic interiors of the Empusa, especially the hold, where Orlok's coffin is kept and where the first mate encounters him when it's just him and the captain left alive. The setting of the inn that Hutter stays at on his way to Orlok's castle is notable, one, for being such a familiar trope of these types of Gothic horror films, and two, for how threadbare and confined its interiors are, such as the small room where Hutter sleeps. 

But the most memorable sets, by far, are the interiors of Orlok's castle, which are the most expressionistic sets in the movie. The place has an eeriness about it that comes down to how contradictory Murnau makes it look and feel towards itself in his cinematography. For instance, the first shot of the inside is a big, wide one of the dining room, itself a big room but containing nothing except the table and a mantel housing a clock with a little skeleton that strikes the bell with a hammer (a nicely Gothic touch). But, the

closeups of Hutter eating at the table, while Orlok reads through the paperwork, make them feel as though they're floating in a void due to the iris effect around them. A similar effect occurs when Orlok backs Hutter into the sitting room beyond, as the room, which looked fairly big in the wide shots of the dining room, now looks like there's nothing except the central figure of the fireplace and the chairs on either side of it. Hutter's room, which we don't see until the following night, is a small and

shadowy one, lit only big a single candlelight, and what everyone is bound to notice about it is the doorway, which seems to be the exact same shape as Orlok's body, fitting him perfectly as he walks though. And the crypt, which is accessed through a large door at the bottom of an exterior stairway, is nothing but a flight of stairs leading to a small room containing Orlok's coffin, which sits in a large alcove in the wall. Simplistic, yes, but memorably unusual in its own way as well.

As you watch the film, you may notice that there's a lot of nature and animal imagery and it's all connected in some way to the idea of vampires. Around the halfway mark, you see a shot of spiders feeding on insects caught in their webs in Knock's cell, just after you've seen a Venus flytrap ensnare a fly and before you see a tentacled polyp feeding on a microscopic organism. The parallel with Orlok should be very obvious, with Prof. Bulwer spelling it out to his students and Knock pointing the spiders out to a guard after having been observed

feeding on flies and raving about how blood is life. The numerous rats that emerge in Orlok's wake also parallel the Count himself in how he resembles them and also how the plague they carry basically feeds on people in the same manner he himself does. According to the Horror Films book I mentioned earlier, this imagery is meant to ground the idea of vampires in nature, saying they feed on humans just as much as nature feeds on itself, and also that, given how strange nature can be, they may not be all that fantastical.

However, there's one bit of real animal footage that I find unintentionally funny: when the innkeeper warns Hutter that a werewolf is roaming the forests, it cuts to what looks like either a hyena or an African wild dog stalking the villagers' livestock. I don't know what I was expecting when I first watched the movie but it certainly wasn't that, and I just can't help but laugh every time at the sight of something from Africa wandering around the Transylvanian countryside (it makes about as much sense as armadillos roaming around Castle Dracula in the 1931 movie but, at least in that instance, the shot comes and goes without much attention being brought to it). Couldn't they have at least found a real wolf or an animal that kind of looked like one? They probably used this thing because it does feel so out of place but it's just silly. Even a coyote would have been more appropriate.

While you shouldn't expect much gore or violence from a silent film, there are some shocking images and macabre moments in Nosferatu, such as the close-up of Hutter accidentally cutting his thumb while slicing some bread (which looks very realistic) and Orlok attempting to suck it, the shots of the dead captain's corpse after the Empusa arrives in Wisborg, particularly a gruesome close-up of his face twisted in a hideous expression of death when they find him tied to the wheel, and the effects of the plague Orlok brings with him, such

as wrapped bodies being tossed over the side of the Empusa, the doors of infected houses being marked, and a procession of coffins heading down the street. But, when it comes to the vampire attacks, Murnau only alludes to rather than show Orlok continually feeding off of Hutter, attacking and killing the crew of the Empusa, and stalking and killing the captain. It's only when he goes to Ellen at the end of the movie that we finally see him feeding on blood, only for him to then be destroyed by the rising sun.

When Nosferatu premiered in Berlin, it was accompanied by a music score by composer Hans Erdmann, played by an orchestra along with the projection, but much of it is now lost. The copy of the Kino Video DVD I had for many years came with two audio tracks, one of which had a score that was of an eerie, classical sound that fit the film very well, despite some campy bits like a sort of xylophone piece meant to simulate the high-speed of Count Orlok's coach coming to pick up Hutter. It also had some vocals, like a pained grunt for when Hutter cuts himself and a voice for Ellen when she gasps and calls for Hutter. The other score was a bombastic modern one that I didn't feel worked because of the movie's period setting, and there were some really distracting vocals, like a heavy metal-type of voice and a soft, female one speaking Japanese (?). However, in 2020, I swapped that edition out for Kino Classics' Two-Disc Blu-Ray release, which features a restoration by the F.W. Murnau Foundation of the original German version with the appropriate intertitles and also features an orchestral performance of a reconstruction of Erdmann's score. Long story short, this is the version of Nosferatu to go for, both for the amazing restoration and picture quality but also for the soundtrack.

One last interesting footnote in the film's history is that, in 1930, without any involvement from Murnau or even his knowledge, it was re-released in Vienna, Austria in a "sound" version, i.e. with prerecorded sounds accompanying it, similar to what Universal did with The Phantom of the Opera around that same time (although, unlike that version of Phantom, it didn't feature voices for the characters), and with a new version of Erdmann's score. Moreover, it was given a new title, The Twelfth Hour: A Night of Horror, and the characters were renamed yet again! Most significantly, it contained new footage, some of it unused material shot by Murnau (outtakes, unused takes of moments in the original version,  alternate angles, etc.) and some shot by a new director and cinematographer altogether. From what I've read, the new material supplied the more traditional Christian iconography that's now become the norm for vampire movies, with an added character of a priest and Hutter finding a Bible at the inn rather than the book on the occult. They even supposedly re-shot a moment with Count Orlok, using a new actor in makeup similar to Max Schreck's. And the ending was re-edited to make it so Ellen lives at the end, through the use of an earlier scene between her and Hutter. Though the F.W. Murnau Foundation had to use shots from a nitrate print of this version to fill in the gaps of their restoration, The Twelfth Hour itself has never been made commercially available in either Europe or the U.S. It does exist, mind you, as it's been shown on television and at private screenings in Europe.

While I don't think Nosferatu is completely flawless, and it's not even one of my favorite vampire movies, I can't deny its importance in cinema history, as there's no denying that it's the true birthplace of the vampire movie and its history is fascinating to research. (It also turned a hundred years old while I was writing this.) Taking it on its own merits, it's an extremely well-made film, especially on a visual level, with some truly haunting images and moments, spectacular location photography, memorable art direction, and Max Schreck is unforgettable as Count Orlok. However, I do think it's quite slow at points, especially after the halfway mark, few of the other actors are as memorable as Schreck, some characters and subplots are completely pointless to the story, and some aspects of it have, inevitably, not aged well. Bottom line, if you're interested in classic horror and German Expressionism, you've probably already seen Nosferatu, but if you haven't, I would recommend checking it out at least once. Just be prepared for it to not be the airtight masterpiece others have told you it is.