Movie Night: Nosferatu
Nosferatu is a German film first released in 1921 that was the Alpha Movie of all the Vampire flicks that it spawned and inspired.
Nosferatu was made on the cheap without the rights to the Bram Stoker novel, Dracula. So, although it could plagiarize all the characters and the plot of Mr. Stoker's classic novel; it could not take the name to ride off the novel's popularity. It was named Nosferatu because that is the Romanian name for a vampire. Count Dracula becomes Count Orloc, Mina becomes Nina (at least in the subtitles), and Mrs. Stoker, Mr. Stoker's widow, initiated a lawsuit against the movie's theft of her husband's novel. As I understand it, because of the lawsuits of the previous century, Nosferatu is banned in Germany on the You Tube sites where anyone other than someone in Germany can watch it. Nosferatu on You Tube. Est ist verboten!
Nosferatu was produced in 1921 which was several years after the end of the first World War and there is a repeated image of an avenue of tall townhouses with the windows blown out in the movie that hints at that war's destruction. 1918 and 1919 were also the years of the Great Flu Pandemic (not only in Europe but in the World) that killed millions of people, in particular, millions of otherwise healthy people in their twenties and thirties who would, in the normal course of a Flu Contagion would be immune to the mortality of the Flu. The vampire in this movie feeds only upon the young and healthy. And the vampire's effect upon the places of his residences is compared both directly and subtextually to a blood plague that has infected the towns and countryside where Nosferatu arrives and resides. It is as though, Nosferatu is the living or living dead embodiment of the Ebola Virus, implacable in his destructive reach and infectious beyond measure.
The anxieties of the early twentieth century are embodied in this film and the echoes of those anxieties haunt us as vampires still do today. I am talking about the BAMF Vampire varieties, not the maudlin, teen romance types.
There is a series of scenes in the middle of the movie where a biology professor lectures his students on the Vampires of Nature.
We are shown a several short science films where a polyp with tentacles captures and devours a amoeba, a venus fly trap eats a fly (and the fly trap is called the vampire of the Vegetable World), and a spider traps and devours a fly.
In this movie, the Supernatural is just the Implacable Natural Order of Things in this World. Eat and be Eaten. Devour and still be Hungry. Death and the Blood Sports must be served. Nosferatu has no origin; he just is. He is almost a Normal part of Nature.
Early in the movie there are several scenes with a hyena roaming the wilds of Transylvania. Why a hyena would be prospering in the forests and mountains of Transylvania is never explored. And how did it get there? The hyena like the vampire, just is. The Extraordinary is Ordinary in this film.
This film also has many scenes of people sleeping and falling asleep and awakening. It is as though this film is one long dream or a doze in and out of a nightmare that can't be controlled or vanquished until the end.
A man of science dozes.
Harker sleeps and dreams.
Harker spends the night in discussion with his host, Count Orloc, and then wakes the next morning with two marks on his neck.
Nina sleeps and sleep walks through her fear of losing her man Harker to the Darkness in her Dreams.
Nina and Count Orloc seem to have a psychic connection across time and space.
When she calls him, he comes.
There is a lot of "crowing of the Cock" if you know what I mean in this film.
The Cock crows, no doubt, from the top of the tower.
Nina and the Count even die together and clutching the same breast as each one expires.
Nina is a bit of an Hysteric.
I've read a few bodice rippers in my time, but I never had a full on orgasm from one.
Count Orloc is referred to as a Phantom in this movie and he is filmed like one. He appears and disappears at his own whim. And there is one sequence when the Count departs Transylvania for Bremen where the film stock blurs and flickers his image. This might be deterioration of the film stock, but it is a lovely effect.
Nina is ravished by the Count's shadow.
It is that old Phantom Love. "The Cock Crows."
Nosferatu is a wonder in this film. He has hands like the warped branches of an ancient evil haunted tree. He is a thing that feasts on blood from the necks of his young and healthy victims but he has no neck of his own.
He is a plague and rats follow him around like simbiotic sycophants.
He has his own secret masonic code and special hat of the vampire order.
And he carries his coffin around with him like a suitcase.
The Count is always breaking through the windows of our minds and existence to call us into the dark where he can work us over.
Murnau Miscellaneous
Mr. Murnau who directed this movie was a noted silent film director. He was Emil Jannings' favorite director in Germany and traveled to Hollywood on the basis of those Jannings films. One of his classic Jannings films was The Last Laugh. Mr. Murnau also directed the silent film classic, Sunrise. Mr. Murnau had a mounted but fluid camera that gave the viewer the characters' thoughts and emotions. I remember a scene in Sunrise where the couple from the country go to the big city for a vacation, and their ride on a streetcar to see the sights of the city appears to the viewer like a ride at Disneyland where the riders come out of a dark tunnel into a wild and dizzy of strange sights that rush by and are too much and too fast, but leave giddy delight behind in the riders' minds. It was a lovely ride.
Mr. Murnau was German and born with the surname of Plumpe; he changed that as soon as he could. He was a member of the German army in WWI and flew airplanes until he and his airplane were forced down in Switzerland early in the war and was interned there until the war's end.
Mr. Murnau had a respected career in Hollywood until he was killed in a car accident with his chauffeur in Santa Barbara. Mr. Murnau was superstitious (which is apparent from this film) and had been told by a psychic that he would die in an accident if he travelled by land. Mr. Murnau decided to drive to the steamboat offices and buy a ticket for New York so that he could travel there by sea instead of rail. There were also rumors that Mr. Murnau and his chauffeur were indulging in sexual high jinks on the road that might have caused the accident.
Screen Caps from some movie forum
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