Fifty Before '50: NOSFERATU (1922)

 by JB

I regard this Count as an old friend.

I used to scare the bejabbers out of myself and my friends when I was a lad with this fine silent film. I had been gifted with a Super 8mm projector for Christmas, and my local library had full-length silent films that patrons could check out just like a book.

Nosferatu was one of my favorites.

I used to project these films in my basement onto a bedsheet that I had clumsily hung in front of the furnace. The basement was convenient because family members never went down there to bother me, and the bedsheet was necessary because I did not yet own a proper screen. The film print was truly silent so the only sound was the clickety-clack of the projector. I remember one of my friends getting particularly scared during the scene where the Hutter character is terrified in his bed. We were twelve.

THE PLOT IN BRIEF: Thomas Hutter (Gustav Von Wangenheim) is sent by his eccentric employer Herr Knock (Alexander Granach) to sell some real estate to reclusive Count Orlock (Max Schrek) in Transylvania. Hutter willingly leaves his new wife Ellen (Greta Schroeder), who believes something bad will happen. Silly, silly Ellen!

Hutter sells Orlock some property in Wisborg, but soon finds himself a prisoner in Orlock’s castle. From his window, he sees Orlock loading boxes of dirt onto a horse cart. Hutter cannot escape. Orlock makes the ocean voyage to Wisborg and brings with him some sort of contagion. Locals start dying by the dozens. The citizens suspect an outbreak of plague. Ellen, with the help of Professor Bulwer (John Gottowt) interprets these unfortunate deaths correctly, and dreams up a fantastic plan to end them.

Nosferatu's director, F.W. Murnau, pulls out all the stops here to makes the world’s first vampire film memorable: the film uses impressive makeup, astounding locations, speed ramping, parallel editing, and reverse printing to create its creepy atmosphere. Notice the attention to detail in the scene where Orlock’s coach carries Hutter through the woods. A cursory look reveals a negative image, but Murnau was more clever than that; he completely cloaked the coach in white, so that the negative image would portray the woods reversed, but the COACH RETAINS ITS ORIGINAL GREY COLOR. Freaky.

As you can tell from the synopsis above, Nosferatu is Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula by another name. Stoker’s widow successfully sued the film’s producers, and the court ordered all prints of the film destroyed. Film history and horror fans are thankful that several prints survived this harsh verdict. The film entered the public domain in 2018 and was the beneficiary of an extensive restoration by Luciano Berriatua for the Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau Foundation in 2007. This is the source of Kino-Lorber’s 2013 Blu-ray disc, which also contains a reconstruction of Hans Erdmann’s original score. Where, oh where, is this seminal film’s 4K release? I own The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and The Cat and the Canary in 4K, why no Hi-Def Nosferatu?

I had become so used to near-bootleg VHS copies and indifferent, bargain basement disc transfers that the Kino disc was a revelation: it looks amazing, has plenty of restored footage that I had never seen before, and came as a two-disc set so that you could choose whether to enjoy the subtitles in their original German or in English. The musical score is impressive and eerie as hell.

There are many reasons to make room for this film on your viewing list this month. It is the first filmed version of Dracula. F.W. Murnau was a genius who died young and only made 22 films, only two of which were horror films. The scare sequences in Nosferatu are among the most atmospheric and memorable in all of silent cinema. The performances of Max Schrek and Greta Schroeder are iconic. The direction is lively and the cinematography is groundbreaking. The recreation of the original score on the Kino disc is a must-listen. It is superior to the later Herzog and Eggers remakes.

I have been watching this film for 52 years. A corner of my condo contains what my wife Jan and I have come to call the “Nosferatu Nook,” containing a life-sized bust of the antagonist and William Stout’s amazing poster treatment. Though I practically have it memorized, I still enjoy breaking out my copy every year during Scary Movie Month, and remembering my friend Tim whispering from behind the ping-pong table to “please turn the projector off?”

Horror fans, I hope you'll join me in the darkness to watch this seminal film during Scary Movie Month.