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Nosferatu

             
This jewel of silent films came out in 1922 and shocked the world even though it was a German film. Directed by F.W. Murnau this movie along with the 1910 Frankenstein was the start of horror movies. The movie is based on Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula" but the name was changed because Bram Stoker's widow charged that "Nosferatu" was a rip off of the book.

The movie comes across as a man suffering from a dreaded curse, not a flamboyant actor. The Art Direction made Orlok, the vampire of "Nosferatu" pictured as an animal. With rodent-like teeth he was truly a cursed man.


The Plot of Nosferatu

Murnau's story begins in Bremen, Germany. Knock (Alexander Granach), a simian little real estate agent, assigns his employee Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) to visit the remote castle of Count Orlok, who wishes to buy a house in town--"a deserted one." A clue to the story can be found in Orlok's letter, which we see over Knock's shoulder. It is written in occult symbols; since Knock can read it, we should not be surprised later when he calls Orlok ``Master.''

During Hutter's trip to Orlok's lair in the Carpathian Mountains, Murnau's images foretell doom. In an inn, all of the customers fall silent when Hutter mentions Orlok's name. Outside, horses bolt and run, and a hyena snarls before slinking away. At Hutter's bedside, he finds a book that explains vampire lore: They must sleep, he learns, in earth from the graveyards of the Black Death.

Hutter's hired coach refuses to take him onto Orlok's estate. The count sends his own coach, which travels in fast-motion, as does his servant, who scurries like a rat. Hutter is still laughing at warnings of vampirism, but his laugh fades at dinner, when he cuts himself with a bread knife and the count seems unhealthily interested in ``Blood--your beautiful blood!''

.......As fear of the plague spreads, ``the town was looking for a scapegoat,'' the titles say, and Knock creeps about on rooftops and is stoned, while the street is filled with dark processions of the coffins of the newly dead.

              Ellen Hutter learns that the only way to stop a vampire is for a good woman to distract him so that he stays out past the first cock's crow. Her sacrifice not only saves the city but also reminds us of the buried sexuality in the Dracula story.Orlok and his victim
              Bram Stoker wrote with ironclad 19th century Victorian values, inspiring no end of analysis from readers who wonder if the buried message of Dracula might be that unlicensed sex is dangerous to society. The Victorians feared venereal disease the way we fear AIDS, and vampirism may be a metaphor; the predator vampire lives without a mate, stalking his victims or seducing them with promises of bliss--like a rapist, or a pickup artist. The cure for vampirism is obviously not a stake through the heart, but straight-laced familes and pure ideals.

Next, we see Orlok advancing on Hutter while, in Bremen, his wife, Ellen, sleepwalks and cries out a warning that causes the vampire to turn away. (He advances and retreats through an archway shaped to frame his batlike head.) Later, after Hutter realizes his danger, he escapes from the castle and races back to Bremen by coach, while Orlok travels by sea, and Murnau intercuts the coach with shipboard events and Ellen restlessly waiting.

The shots on the ship are the ones everyone remembers. The cargo is a stack of coffins, all filled with earth (from the nourishing graveyards of the plague). Crew members sicken and die. A brave mate goes below with a hatchet to open a coffin, and rats tumble out. Then Count Orlok rises straight up, stiff and eerie, from one of the coffins, in a shot that was as frightening and famous in its time as the rotating head in ``The Exorcist.'' The ship arrives in port with its crew dead, and the hatch opens by itself.

-Roger Ebert "Chicago Sun Times"


The Links of Nosferatu

The plot of Nosferatu
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