1922
Director- F. W. Murnau
Cast- Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder,
Alexander Granach, Georg H. Schnell, Ruth Landshoff, John Gottowt, Gustav Botz,
This "silent film" is, as far as we know, the oldest surviving attempt to bring the novel of
Dracula to the big screen. There are reports that other films existed but they
are considered “lost.” The makers didn’t acquire the rights to the book, so the
names are all changed, but it is without a doubt Dracula. Some English versions
of the film have the names replaced with their counterparts from the novel. It’s
irrelevant though. You can skip the narration as it sticks pretty close to the plot
of the book and any fan of Dracula will know what’s happening without reading a
single thing.
It
covers most of the high points of the novel; Harker’s arrival at the castle,
Dracula’s trip across the ocean, Mina, sitting on the seaside cliffs, Renfield
with his spiders and flies. There is a weird, and funny, scene of the vampire
walking around carrying his coffin in his arms. I’m not sure what the point of
that scene was but it was re-created in the Klaus Kinski version and was just
as weird then. The only big change is the ending. In this version of the story,
Mina uses herself as bait, luring the vampire to her bedside and keeping him
there with her charms until the sun rises to destroy him.
Another
point of faithfulness to the book is in the look of the vampire. Dracula
wouldn’t become a sex symbol until almost 10 years later when Lugosi played the
character. In Nosferatu they make him more ghoulish looking, though they may
have taken it too far. Christopher Lee in Jess Franco’s Count Dracula probably
looks closest to what Stoker had in mind. As one critic described it, Schreck
looked like a “penis with teeth.” At any rate, Schreck looks so creepy that you
are willing to forgive a little artistic license.
Nosferatu
is the best example of the creepy, creative, and very realistic imagery that
directors were capable of in the early age of cinema. Almost a hundred years
after it was made, Max Schreck;s vampire is more realistic and scarier than
anything that has been done with even the best CGI.
The cast
and crew of this movie seemed to suffer a lot of bad fates, mostly due to the
rise of the Nazis. The director F.W.Murnau died from a car crash at the age of 42.
Schreck himself died of a heart attack at age 56. Alexander Granach, a Jew,
fled Nazi Germany to Soviet Russia and then on to America where he died at age
54 from complications from an appendectomy. Ruth Landshoff , a Jew, fled the
Nazi’s through several European countries before making it to America but at
least she didn’t die until her 60s. John Gottowt, a Jew, was murdered by the SS
in 1942. Gustav Botz died young as well at the age of 49.
As far
as entertainment goes, it may be a little hard for a modern audience to get
into it. Silent films in general moved at a slow pace and would take more time
to show things, not just action but mundane things. Plus there are all the
breaks to show dialogue and narration. A modern audience might feel under
stimulated.
I can’t say that the film is
that important to a modern audience as most people, and a lot of horror fans
haven’t even seen it. However it’s very important to film makers and different
images from this movie keep making their way into vampire flicks, most notably,
the vampire rising from his coffin, back rigid, at a 90 degree angle (this was
used in Fright Night and the Francis Ford Coppola Dracula just to name two).
Nosferatu’s shadow, which seems to have a life of its own, is used to eerie
effect in the Coppola version. Then of course, there is the design of the
vampire himself; bald, pointed ears, sharpened buck teeth. This design has
filtered its way down into vampire pop culture into toys, role playing games
and as the vampire in Tobe Hooper’s adaptation of Salem’s Lot. So, while not a
particularly important movie to most horror fans, I think the film is
indispensable to fans of the vampire genre.
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