This was the first silent feature film I ever watched. At the time it was obviously a little strange as I was only used to "talkies" however Nosferatu has haunted me ever since. I don't mean to say that I wake up at night, sweating and riddled with terror – however part of the movie stayed with me since then.
Of course there are the technical aspects. Murnau had been a director for 3 years when Nosferatu was made, yet he commands the technical aspects like he'd been at it an entire lifetime. With him he has an entire toolbox full of visual devices: Deep focus (screw you Citizen Kane!), time-lapse, stop motion, shadow-plays, low angles, etc. And then there's the cutting compared to other movies made at the same time, the movie is actually cut quite fast. However it's not cut chronologically and some of the things make little sense seen only in the context of the story. For instance we are shown a random scene of a professor showing his students a flytrap when none of the characters features before or after. The narration is truly impeccable and entirely unique. It adds up better as a dream than as a story...
Now the story, that's a peculiar case It's an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula which wasn't all that known back then. So the production team simply got at it without acquiring the rights. They changed a few names and settings, omitted a few characters and then went on to work with the story which stayed largely the same (one of the major differences is the ending of course). As it stands it's really simple: Graf Orlock (aka. Nosferatu) orders a guy named Hutter to his castle to sell him a house in Wisborg (a fictional German city). Hutter goes there but is captured by Nosferatu who travels to Wisborg and takes at Hutter's wife (obviously this is omitting some major plot points). While the movie resonated well with critics and audiences at the time, there was one major problem - Bram Stoker's widow was yet alive and apparently she wasn't very amused so she dragged the production company, Prana-Film, to court. Nosferatu became their first and last film and it was ordered to be destroyed. However that effort ultimately proved to be pointless as the film existed in too many copies already. So the film remained, Bram Stoker's novel received renewed interest (ultimately leading to a stage adaptation and the Lugosi film in 1931), Murnau became a big name and Prana-Film vanished.
People like to talk about Nosferatu in relation to expressionism. Of course it makes sense given the cinematic movement at the time (German expressionism), Schreck's makeup, the dark theme, the connections to nature (e.g. the aforementioned flytrap) and Murnau's use of shadows. However personally I think it links much, much better to romanticism. For Nosferatu Murnau used mainly natural settings, shooting mostly on location (he even went as far as Slovakia for the exterior shots of Transylvania). He uses wide establishing shots, showing us nature which is either void of humans or renders them insignificantly small. The entire movie is in vein of a strangely melancholic mood that culminates whenever Murnau (a former art student) copies the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (one of the leading painters in romanticism and a personal favorite) in still shots (Consider Friedrich's Moonrise at the Sea and Hutter's wife, Ellen, waiting for him by the sea, Friedrich's Woman at the Window and the symmetric shot of Ellen opening the window or Friedrich's The Abbey in the Oakwood and Nosferatu's destroyed castle at the end).
Although Nosferatu is (in my opinion) the most terrifying portrayal of Dracula, it's also possibly the most daring, complex and human. The movie stresses nature (as evident in the large establishing shots) and above all doing as one's nature bids one. The movie shows arrays of living creatures (wolfs, horses, rats, flytraps, flies, spiders, cats and even bacteria, amplified by a microscope). They all do as their nature bids them, the wolf stalks horses, the spider devours its prey and the flytrap eats flies
If we relate this to Nosferatu, what is he? The manifestation of evil or merely an outsider who doesn't fit in by nature? Given he's a vampire him sucking blood is only natural. He follows that urge that defines him - and he dies. He dies by the sunlight, he can't withstand. Is this a "happy end"? Is it a tragedy? Is it neither? Personally I found the death to be very sad: The sun shines through and Nosferatu clutches to his heart and slowly dissolves into nothingness.
It is debated whether or not Bram Stoker was gay. We're certain about Murnau. Given the disdain for homosexuals at the time, I think the ambivalence is very much intended.
If you look beyond the shadows you might see something beautiful - Nosferatu is one of the most visionary examples of artistic realization I have ever witnessed and maybe the best horror movie of all time – 10/10
Of course there are the technical aspects. Murnau had been a director for 3 years when Nosferatu was made, yet he commands the technical aspects like he'd been at it an entire lifetime. With him he has an entire toolbox full of visual devices: Deep focus (screw you Citizen Kane!), time-lapse, stop motion, shadow-plays, low angles, etc. And then there's the cutting compared to other movies made at the same time, the movie is actually cut quite fast. However it's not cut chronologically and some of the things make little sense seen only in the context of the story. For instance we are shown a random scene of a professor showing his students a flytrap when none of the characters features before or after. The narration is truly impeccable and entirely unique. It adds up better as a dream than as a story...
Now the story, that's a peculiar case It's an adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula which wasn't all that known back then. So the production team simply got at it without acquiring the rights. They changed a few names and settings, omitted a few characters and then went on to work with the story which stayed largely the same (one of the major differences is the ending of course). As it stands it's really simple: Graf Orlock (aka. Nosferatu) orders a guy named Hutter to his castle to sell him a house in Wisborg (a fictional German city). Hutter goes there but is captured by Nosferatu who travels to Wisborg and takes at Hutter's wife (obviously this is omitting some major plot points). While the movie resonated well with critics and audiences at the time, there was one major problem - Bram Stoker's widow was yet alive and apparently she wasn't very amused so she dragged the production company, Prana-Film, to court. Nosferatu became their first and last film and it was ordered to be destroyed. However that effort ultimately proved to be pointless as the film existed in too many copies already. So the film remained, Bram Stoker's novel received renewed interest (ultimately leading to a stage adaptation and the Lugosi film in 1931), Murnau became a big name and Prana-Film vanished.
People like to talk about Nosferatu in relation to expressionism. Of course it makes sense given the cinematic movement at the time (German expressionism), Schreck's makeup, the dark theme, the connections to nature (e.g. the aforementioned flytrap) and Murnau's use of shadows. However personally I think it links much, much better to romanticism. For Nosferatu Murnau used mainly natural settings, shooting mostly on location (he even went as far as Slovakia for the exterior shots of Transylvania). He uses wide establishing shots, showing us nature which is either void of humans or renders them insignificantly small. The entire movie is in vein of a strangely melancholic mood that culminates whenever Murnau (a former art student) copies the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich (one of the leading painters in romanticism and a personal favorite) in still shots (Consider Friedrich's Moonrise at the Sea and Hutter's wife, Ellen, waiting for him by the sea, Friedrich's Woman at the Window and the symmetric shot of Ellen opening the window or Friedrich's The Abbey in the Oakwood and Nosferatu's destroyed castle at the end).
Although Nosferatu is (in my opinion) the most terrifying portrayal of Dracula, it's also possibly the most daring, complex and human. The movie stresses nature (as evident in the large establishing shots) and above all doing as one's nature bids one. The movie shows arrays of living creatures (wolfs, horses, rats, flytraps, flies, spiders, cats and even bacteria, amplified by a microscope). They all do as their nature bids them, the wolf stalks horses, the spider devours its prey and the flytrap eats flies
If we relate this to Nosferatu, what is he? The manifestation of evil or merely an outsider who doesn't fit in by nature? Given he's a vampire him sucking blood is only natural. He follows that urge that defines him - and he dies. He dies by the sunlight, he can't withstand. Is this a "happy end"? Is it a tragedy? Is it neither? Personally I found the death to be very sad: The sun shines through and Nosferatu clutches to his heart and slowly dissolves into nothingness.
It is debated whether or not Bram Stoker was gay. We're certain about Murnau. Given the disdain for homosexuals at the time, I think the ambivalence is very much intended.
If you look beyond the shadows you might see something beautiful - Nosferatu is one of the most visionary examples of artistic realization I have ever witnessed and maybe the best horror movie of all time – 10/10