Nosferatu Blu-ray Review

• 4th Oct 2013

As a part of the exciting ‘Gothic: The Dark Heart of Film’ season showing at the BFI is the Eureka! presentation of that classic piece of German Expressionist grand guignol Nosferatu, also known as Nosferatu: A Symphony in Horror; that the poster for the three month highly advertised season shows a still terrifying and iconic image of the bald Nosferat of the film biting the neck of a victim demonstrates the enduring iconography of the film. Made in 1921 in Germany, a country going through enormous problems with post World War I humiliation and defeat, revolution and soon to be facing hyper-inflation this is one of the standout films of the golden silent age of German Expressionist cinema, an art cinema that was to be killed off when the Nazis came to power. Nosferatu was not the only piece of gothic art to emerge in the decade but it is the best known. One of the key elements of expressionist cinema in Germany was the shadow and few films use the shadow and the symbol of the shadow more powerfully than done here.

The plot, it will be plain to see early on in the film is of course Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’ but some of the locations and all the names had to be changed for copyright reasons dictated by Stoker’s widow; even the word vampire was substituted for Nosferatu! The story begins with estate agent Thomas Hutter (Jonathan Harker in the original) travelling from the city of Wisborg (actually Wismar) to Transylvania on a perilous journey to Count Orlok’s castle in Transylvania, in the heart of the Carpathian mountains for Orlok to sign a contract to rent a house in Wisborg. On the hard journey he stops at an inn where all the locals run in terror when Hutter explains where he is heading to; even the coachmen will only go so far. He is then picked up by a mysterious coachman who takes him to the castle (it is in fact Orlok himself). The first time and every time we see Orlok (played by an actor called Max Schreck – schreck mean fright in German and many considered to be a real vampire) we reel in terror at the shocking and powerful make-up – a true monster indeed, not the handsome and debonair ‘Eastern’ European of the Bela Lugosi and Chris Lee outings as Dracula but a bald, white faced bat-like creature. The film also has some real moments of inventiveness, such as the sped up scene of Orlok mounting the coffins onto his coach. This might look comical now, but its strangeness is equally intriguing, any shot of Orlok particularly as he rises erect from his coffin or his face appearing at a window.

Directed by the great F.W. Murnau (not enough room here to wax lyrical about this director), the influences of the film spread far and wide in the horror genre and it is hard from the perspective of today, with all the horror and vampire films that have followed to appreciate what an advancement in cinema and the horror genre this film was. The film was also remade in Germany in 1979 with Klaus Kinski playing Orlok and the later Shadow of the Vampire (1999) about the making of the film with Willem Dafoe playing Schreck. Of course the film had already been released by Eureka! in their Masters of Cinema series of releases, but how wonderful to see this film on the big screen. There are many prints of this film circulating on the DVD market, but this cleaned up version displays how good and fresh this film still is with new German intertitles. Still the version kicking around with a haunting organ soundtrack as opposed to this more melodramatic soundtrack is also definitely worth a look at even if the print is nowhere near as fresh and clean. This film is the central showpiece to the BFI’s gothic season and is well worth seeing, whether seen many times before or this is the first time. Although made in 1921, it clearly demonstrates that despite this, a film this old still has the power to shock. Eureka! are planning to re-release the film again, no doubt wit a slew of extras after its run at the BFI this truly is one of the greatest vampire films of all time.

Chris Hick