First released in 1922, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors has long since departed from the era and culture of its origins, but remains a staple of mainstream cinema. The film is paradoxical in terms of its tangible influences, yet virtually unrecognizable in its impact.
Nosferatu is a silent film directed by FW Murnau and written by Henrik Galin. The film is an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. The film follows Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim), a realtor who is sent by his employer to Transylvania to sell land in Germany to Count Graf Orlok (Max Schreck). . Unbeknownst to the Hatter, Count Orlok is a vampire and his arrival in Germany is accompanied by a reign of terror.
At a surface-level analysis, modern viewers may find that little is buried within the film’s hour-and-a-half running time. The real problem here is that the film has lost most of its modern meaning 100 years after it was first released. It’s safe to say that not a single person who remembers seeing it in theaters in the 1920s is alive today.
“Nosferatu” almost feels alien because nearly every aspect of the film fails to conform to standard horror tropes and conventions. Fear is rooted in atmosphere and dramatic music. With most of Hans Erdmann’s original score to the film lost, most versions of the film use newly composed music, further obscuring the film’s original influences.
This ambiguity drives modern audiences into an unknowable, unwinnable battle to try to analyze “Nosferatu” from a purely qualitative perspective. From a thematic point of view. Count Orlok represents a wealthy foreigner who has moved to Germany, intent on making the land and women of his country his own. All the while he brings the plague to the town. This, combined with his sickly pale skin, bulbous nose, bald head, and claw-like hands, gives the character a distinctly anti-Semitic tinge.
Hitler came to power as head of the Nazi Party just a year ago, so it’s hard to believe that this is all a coincidence. Many film scholars, however, are more sensitive to Murnau himself being gay, and to an entire group that is ultimately invisible but persecuted for an inseparable part of their being. Even this reading becomes paradoxical in a more detailed analysis, as it points out that there is a high probability that there is. Here again, “Nosferatu” seems to be within the audience’s reach, yet unpalpable.
“Nosferatu” may seem far from modern, but there are many ways it remains culturally relevant. The film was part of the German Expressionist movement and an artistic development of cinema in response to the trauma caused by the horrors of World War I. The films of this movement rejected realism in favor of the fantastic as a direct line to the human emotional center. It inspired many important filmmakers such as Koch, Ridley Scott and Werner Herzog.
Images like Count Orlok’s shadow slowly creeping up the stairs or being burned alive by the rays of the sun have persisted as important cultural abbreviations for vampires and vampires. In fact, having vampires killed by sunlight is entirely an original concept for “Nosferatu” and does not exist in the original Stoker version of the story. Instead, Dracula is only weakened by sunlight. Even that subtle deviation would have completely changed the course of his Vampire fiction for the next century, and perhaps beyond.
In summary, Count Orlok is still very much alive despite his death at the end of the film. Although it may seem like a strange and inexplicable relic of the past, “Nosferatu” remains an important part of history. Its visual style and storytelling changed the culture forever. This movie is a ghost that lurks in the shadows of every horror medium you’ve ever seen. The horror that “Nosferatu” inflicts on the audience is a metatextual horror, all present but impossible to fully comprehend. It’s the Lovecraftian Void at the heart of the horror genre.
No rating can adequately convey what the movie-going experience is like, so we recommend this Halloween season.
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