(out of 5)
directed by: F. W. Murnau
starring: Max Schreck, Gustav von Wangenheim, Greta Schröder, Ruth Landshoff, Georg H. Schnell ,Gustov Box, Alexander Granach
Format: Personal Collection NTSC: Region 1
F.W. Murnau's chilling classic Nosferatu 1922 is hands down my favorite vampire film of all time. I have seen it compared to Dracula (1931) and even it's remake but there are no "talkies" that compare at all in any way with the silent era. The silent era and it's filmmakers gave birth to what we see today and for me just don't even sit in the same realm with anything else. This was filmmaking when no one had any idea what "horror" films were. It was filmmaking before big explosions and big time million dollar actors and directors. Hell it was filmmaking before television.
Max Schrek plays the count in this silent classic and he plays it in my opinion the best of all Draculas or in this case Orlok. The film was based on Bram Stoker's Dracula and was ordered to be destroyed by the courts because of copyright infringement by Stoker's widow. But the film lucky for us survived unlike London After Midnight a silent film starring Lon Chaney that was destroyed in a film vault fire never to be seen again.
The shrill
silent film music and grainy quality are so nostalgic to me I've watched old
horror films since I was a kid and Nosferatu was the first silent film I ever
saw probably around the age of ten and have been in love with it ever
since. Max Schrek is scary as hell or
at least he was when I first saw the movie way back when. The expressions, the old school effects of
his teeth, ears, and fingers created quite the eerie looking vampire. His shadow racing up the stairs is a classic
shot and it was that moment during the film in particular that I remember being
scared the most as a kid. I kept seeing
that image floating up the stairs in my childhood home.
The stop
motion camera tricks are and always will be my favorite kind of effects hands
down. In this there are several
including the count building coffins full of earth to be carried away by his
team of horses. Just makes me smile ear
to ear. The land scapes in the 20s and
in the 30s era were spectacular and for me just magical. Not to mention the inside atmospheres of the
castles and buildings they shot in. I
just try and think about how things were then on set. How they did lighting and dealing with the lack of sound as
filmmakers. Sound is such a big deal
when putting together a movie the lack of it and the addition of a sort of
narrating style of music and phrase cards would just be so different from the
way things are done now.
The story
here pretty much follows the other film versions of Dracula. We have Renfield the crazy slave of the
count who gets locked up in an insane asylum and Harker follows up where he left off business wise with the count in Transylvania. The outfits and hair styles of the time period are classic and Renfield was quite scary looking with his white crazy clown hair. Makes me laugh now but at the time when I first saw it I was petrified that Renfield was going to break into my room at night and try and bite me. Harker becomes a prisoner of the count and the count crates up some earth and heads off to London to seduce Mina. While on the way the count kills off an entire crew of a cargo ship including the ship's captain who binds himself to the ship's wheel.
Obviously I love this movie and to me it's the best vampire film of all time and the best silent picture of all time and I for one am glad Bram Stoker's widow didn't get her way by destroying this film. It spawned a legion of great vampire films and directly influenced a remake as well as the film Shadow of the Vampire which was kind of a mockumentary of the original, plus the vampire design for Salem's Lot which was in homage of Max Schrek.
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