Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)

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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.