Watch F.W. Murnau’s Legendary Vampire Film NOSFERATU Online Now
If you’re looking to fill some gaps in your film knowledge during the Coronavirus/COVID-19 shutdown, then you might want to watch F.W. Murnau’s legendary Nosferatu. The public domain film is available online for free.
Murnau’s silent 1922 film, (unofficially) based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, sees Max Shreck’s vampire, Count Orlock as he becomes involved with estate agent, Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) and his wife Ellen (Greta Schröder).
The estate of Bram Stoker wasn’t happy with Nosferatu, suing the film’s makers. While the names of the characters have been changed, and the word ‘vampire’ has been replaced by ‘Nosferatu’, the core story of Stoker’s text remains the same. Most of the film’s prints were destroyed following the legal action, but enough survived to help the film become a classic. The influence of Nosferatu on the horror genre cannot be over hyped, with the film’s strong visuals and eerie tone becoming a byword for expressionist horror. Werner Herzog remade the film in 1979 with Klaus Kinski , while a fictionalised account of the film’s making was made as Shadow of the Vampire in 2000. The name Max Shreck was used for Christopher Walken’s character in Batman Returns (1992), a movie highly influenced by German expressionist cinema. Every frame is an absorbing image, many of which have become iconic in their own right. Even if you haven’t seen the film, it’s a fair bet that you have seen something that has used its visuals for inspiration.
In the 21st Century it is difficult for a silent film to create an edge-of-your-seat tension. Nosferatu manages to do this. The pacing for the film is well timed, while the sinister tone permeates through the entire film – even when Shreck’s Orlock is not on the screen. The look of Orlock is striking, his misshaped head and ears and elongated fingers add an otherworldly quality to the character. If vampires did exist then surely they would look like this. Todd Browning’s official adaptation of Dracula in 1931 may have introduced us to Bela Lugosi’s suave Transylvanian Count and Christopher Lee may have continued that tradition in the Hammer movies, but, Murnau’s film and Shreck’s Orlock are just as iconic and infinitely more terrifying.
Check it out below…
