Nosferatu

Láda Sándor

AEGJM1

Advanced Writing Skills BAN 4007

Prescott-Pickup Francis Julian

12. December 2016.

Nosferatu, the Movie which set an Example for the Future of Filmmaking.

F. W. Murnau’s silent movie Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) was one of the first horror films and a true classic. The influence of Nosferatu on the film industry is still at large even today. This is shown in the sheer numbers of vampire books, movies, and television shows. Furthermore, as the first ever vampire movie, Nosferatu also set an example for all serious vampire movies that came after it.

One of the most well-known giants of the horror genre, Alfred Hitchcock, borrowed core elements from Nosferatu and implemented it perfectly into his own movies. It is accepted as fact, that Hitchcock’s movies are heavily influenced by German expressionism, and Nosferatu being a German expressionist horror movie, it seems logical for some of Hitchcock movies, like The Lodger (1927), Spellbound (1945), Vertigo (1958) and Psycho (1960), to have common themes with Nosferatu and, in one or two ways, resemble one another.

 One important shared element of the movies listed above is the way they use shadow and light. For instance, in Psycho the manipulation of the lights and shadows were done to add a sense of fear and instability to certain scenes. Let’s take the famous shower scene as an example, where the audience can see the blurry shadow of the killer approaching the victim. This scene is, in a certain way, reminiscent of the stairwell scene in Nosferatu, since both scenes share the same purpose, that is, to create an eerie and unpleasant feeling in the viewer (Rossi, 2010). A different representation of expressionist influence can be found in Spellbound, a movie with strange dream sequences. These dreams are surrealistic, proof of a troubled psychological state of mind, and the dreams also play with lighting. The technique used in these scenes is called chiaroscuro (a technique often featured in black and white movies), and it is used to indicate low-key and high contrast lighting. Chiaroscuro is present in many Hitchcock movies as well as in Nosferatu since it is a strong trait of most German Expressionist films.

Another important feature of German Expressionist movies is Expressionist acting. In these movies, the actors engaged in amplified, often stiff or jerky, movements and used overstating facial expressions (Ferreira, 2010). Suitable examples for this are the killer’s stabbing during the shower scene of Psycho and the first few scenes of Nosferatu, where the protagonist greets his wife. Furthermore, costumes and make are also overstated, to resemble tumultuous emotions (Ferreira, 2010). Being parts of the same artistic movement, it is natural for Hitchcock’s movies and Nosferatu share many similarities.

However, Nosferatu’s legacy is not only present in Hitchcock’s movies but several vampire movies as well. In this case, the resemblance is in scenes that were borrowed directly from Nosferatu, which is interesting, because the original source material, a book from Bram Stoker titled Dracula, lacks such scenes. This implies that scenes like the papercut scene were the work of Murnau’s creativity, something unique that had nothing to do with the book the movie was based on. Still, Dracula movies tend to sneak this scene into their own movie, regardless of having nothing to do with Stoker’s book. For example, Tod Browning, the director of the movie Dracula (1931), implemented this scene when making his own movie. Another movie which borrowed this particular scene is Dracula: Dead and Loving It (1995), the infamous parody of all Dracula movies. Although the circumstances of getting the papercut are the same as in Nosferatu, the effect, the tone, the purpose of the scene and how it plays out are completely different in Dracula: Dead and Loving It. Another vampire movie with a similar scene to the one shown in Nosferatu is Nosferatu, The Vampyre (1979), the original movie’s remake. In the remake, the situation where the protagonist cuts himself is quite similar to its predecessor, but here the protagonist’s injury is caused by a knife. The references made towards Murnau’s Nosferatu allow the movie to stay fresh and important decades after its initial screening.

Being the first movie to represent a vampire on screen, Nosferatu had the honour to set the rules on how a vampire should look like. It is true, that the movie was inspired by Dracula (Bram Stoker, 1897), however, Murnau was the one, who brought the first on-screen vampire to life. Because of this, vampires that were shown on the silver screen resemble Count Orlok to some extent. For example, vampires usually have a tall and slender body, their fingers are thin and their nails are usually longer than an average person’s. Their skin is pale and they have large dark eyes. In terms of fashion, vampires seem to possess a remarkable sense of style as they are always dressed in fashionable clothing, have trendy hairstyle (those, who have hair) and have no facial hair. These common characteristics made up the typical vampire, however, over the last decade, the typical appearance of vampires changed substantially. This change was due to the rising popularity of vampires in popular culture, and it turned vampire characters into physically attractive and desirable charmers. Gary Oldman’s Dracula from 1992, who sweeps Mina off her feet in a ‘natural’ and romantic fashion, is a great example of this. Another depiction of the attractive vampire is Gerald Butler’s Dracula in Dracula 2000 (2000), who is even closer to the popular culture vampires due to his retractable fangs, moderately revealing clothing and the slight pornographic nature of the movie (Shepherd, 2010). However, perhaps the greatest change to vampire characters came in the form of “beautiful vampires”, which are vampires found in movies and TV series intended for teens and young women. Although they are very different from classical vampires, they do share some characteristics with classical vampires, like their fangs, their thirst for blood, their pale skin and their fashionable outfit.

Like it was mentioned previously, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror had a huge influence on the film industry by serving as a source material for a number of Hitchcock’s movies, living on in other Dracula movies by scenes that other movies borrowed and the style and physical appearance of the vampire which stayed true to Nosferatu for decades. That is why stating that Murnau’s Nosferatu built the universal standard for all vampire characters that were shown on the silver screen, and has one of the most iconic vampire characters of all times.

Works Cited

Stephen Rossi: "The Terror of German Expressionism", 12. 09. 2010.

Blayne Ferreira: “The Impact of German Expressionist Films upon the Modern Film Industry” 07. 11. 2010

            Annie Shepherd: “The Evolution of the Vampire in Fiction and Popular Culture” 2010.