She's got a date at midnight with Nosferatu
(Actually, Nosferatu is at 7:00 and 9:30, but that's not how the song* goes.)
I went to this show last year, and, if you'll pardon the overused Halloween pun, it was a scream. Tonight, the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring is showing the 1922 classic silent film, Nosferatu. If I may borrow from the AFI's web site:
"German silent-film master F. W. Murnau's uncredited appropriation of Bram Stoker's DRACULA set the standard for all vampire flicks to come. Max Schreck's monstrous Count Orlock is singularly frightening, repulsive and beastly where Bela Lugosi was courtly and Christopher Lee seductive."
A pair of Baltimore musicians called Silent Orchestra wrote an original score to go with the film, and they will be performing it live in the theater tonight. The DVD of Nosferatu, with the subtitle "Symphony of Horror", has the Silent Orchestra score on one of the audio tracks. For $10 at Amazon, you'll be hard pressed to find a better bargain on a great Halloween film.
You must remember that Nosferatu was set upon the public at the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. Life was all about good times, liberal fashions, cigarettes, automobiles, jazz clubs, the Charleston**, Rudolph Valentino, Art Deco... Coincidentally, the AFI Silver Theater is a renovated Art Deco style theater... And oh, by the way, here's a horror film that lies many standard deviations away from the norm for its time. It must have been positively grotesque to the popular culture of the time. That's part of the fun of this movie.
The rest of the fun is seeing an 85-year-old film stand up to the test of time. After so many advances in the art and science of film making, Nosferatu is still a finely polished gem.
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*Type O Negative - "Black No. 1"
** The Charleston actually became popular in 1923, a year after Nosferatu's release. The sentiment works, though.
I went to this show last year, and, if you'll pardon the overused Halloween pun, it was a scream. Tonight, the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring is showing the 1922 classic silent film, Nosferatu. If I may borrow from the AFI's web site:
"German silent-film master F. W. Murnau's uncredited appropriation of Bram Stoker's DRACULA set the standard for all vampire flicks to come. Max Schreck's monstrous Count Orlock is singularly frightening, repulsive and beastly where Bela Lugosi was courtly and Christopher Lee seductive."
A pair of Baltimore musicians called Silent Orchestra wrote an original score to go with the film, and they will be performing it live in the theater tonight. The DVD of Nosferatu, with the subtitle "Symphony of Horror", has the Silent Orchestra score on one of the audio tracks. For $10 at Amazon, you'll be hard pressed to find a better bargain on a great Halloween film.
You must remember that Nosferatu was set upon the public at the beginning of the Roaring Twenties. Life was all about good times, liberal fashions, cigarettes, automobiles, jazz clubs, the Charleston**, Rudolph Valentino, Art Deco... Coincidentally, the AFI Silver Theater is a renovated Art Deco style theater... And oh, by the way, here's a horror film that lies many standard deviations away from the norm for its time. It must have been positively grotesque to the popular culture of the time. That's part of the fun of this movie.
The rest of the fun is seeing an 85-year-old film stand up to the test of time. After so many advances in the art and science of film making, Nosferatu is still a finely polished gem.
---
*Type O Negative - "Black No. 1"
** The Charleston actually became popular in 1923, a year after Nosferatu's release. The sentiment works, though.