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Nosferatu
1922 Dir: F.W. Murnau
With: Max Schrek, Alexander Granach, Gustav von Waggenheim, Greta Schroder.
Max Schreck is probably the
weirdest looking Dracula ever!
The film begins in Bremen,
Germany. Knock (Alexander Granach), a real-estate agent, sends his employee Hutter (Gustav Von Wangenheim) to Orlok's castle
in the Carpathian Mountains.
Hutter doesn't take much notice
of the local superstition, or fear the Count, until he cuts himself with a bread knife at dinner. Orlok takes a bit of a shine
to his blood, saying: 'Blood, your beautiful blood!' At this point Hutter becomes a little concerned!
When the Count advances
on Hutter, he flees the castle and makes his way back to Bremen. Orlok travels by sea. The cargo of the ship is stacked coffins,
filled with plagued earth. The crew sicken and die. One of them goes down into the hold and opens a coffin and rats pile out.
In an eerie scene he opens the coffin containing Count Orlok, and the fiend springs up out of a coffin, rising stiffly!
The film ends when Ellen (Knock's
wife), learns that the only way to stop a vampire is for a good woman to distract him so that he stays out past the first
cock's crow. At dawn, the sunlight causes Nosferatu to fade.
The film is very atmospheric
and unsettling, but it is more eerie than frightening. There are no shocks as in later horror films.
There was a colour remake
in 1979 and a film about the making of the movie, Shadow of the Vampire,
in which Max Schrek is played as if he was a real vampire!
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