☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ☆
Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) – F. W. Murnau
Gilberto Perez’s
essay in The Material Ghost (reprinted in the Eureka blu-ray booklet) has
deepened my appreciation of Murnau’s first silent filming of Stoker’s Dracula (with
names and other details changed). On previous viewings, I unconsciously interpolated
the typical interpretations of the vampire film, not quite realising that
Murnau had almost completely removed any sort of erotic theme and much of the
plot featuring Lucy and Mina. Instead, Perez suggests that Nosferatu represents
death itself and that each character’s reaction to him shows us one way that
humans might deal with the knowledge that we are all going to die. For example, Hutter (Murnau’s name for
Jonathan Harker) is happy just to go through life ignoring/denying that death
will come; as played by Gustav Wangenheim, he seems rather ridiculous in his
wilful neglect of the warnings of the townsfolk and the tome of vampiric
legend. His wife, Ellen (Greta Schroeder), is much more anxious and on her
guard (as she should be). Knock/Renfield (Alexander Granach) is, of course,
driven insane by his thoughts. But, Perez argues, Murnau’s focus was less on
one’s personal death and more on the calamity of multiple deaths that resulted recently
from WWI and depicted here as the result of Nosferatu’s move from Carpathian
outlands to Baltic city, bringing the plague with him. Hard not to think about
the current plague, and war, and the growing notifications of deaths of friends
or friends’ parents on facebook. However, Nosferatu can also be enjoyed as
escapism, a way to distract oneself (from thoughts of death or other things) by
observing Murnau’s growing cinematic technique, the location sets, Max Schreck’s
ominous rat-like portrayal of Count Orlok (later imitated to good effect by Klaus
Kinski in Herzog’s 1979 remake), and the haunting downbeat ending where both
Orlok and Ellen die. No answers are provided about what comes next and Murnau
offers no salvation in the form of religion or science here. Dark and bleak but
mesmerizing.
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