Nosferatu – A Symphony of Horror (1922) – FW Murnau

FW Murnau's 1922 silent classic Nosferatu – A Symphony of Horror holds a significant place in the history of cinema as a forerunner of the horror genre and more specifically of the vampire sub-genre which has become increasingly prolific.  As an unauthorised interpretation of Bram Stoker's novel, the film has certain superficial alterations (such as the naming of some of the characters) but in essence it bears the fundamental storyline and themes of Dracula. Despite being a primitive prototype to the countless reworkings of Dracula and vampire tales in general, Nosferatu has succeeded in producing a memorable representation of one of,  if not the  most frequently portrayed characters in horror films.

 A German production adapted for the screen by Henrik Galeen (whose pedigree in horror dates back to his 1914 collaboration with Paul Wegener on the script of Golem), the basic plot of Nosferatu resembles that of the novel. To avoid copyright difficulties, the scene is moved from London to Bremen and the names of the major characters have been altered: Jonathan Harker is called 'Hutter'; Renfield becomes 'Knock'; and Mina is 'Nina' or 'Ellen' depending on the version. Count Dracula himself is known as 'Nosferatu', although he retains his aristocratic background as 'Count Orlock'. Even these modified names bear the mark of Bram Stoker's novel – in the first chapter Jonathan Harker's journal description of his journey  in Dracula's carriage echoes the name 'Orlock' :

"I could hear a lot of words often repeated… amongst them were 'Ordog' – Satan, 'pokol' – hell, 'stregoica' – witch, 'vrolok' and 'vlkoslak' – both of  which mean the same thing, one being Slovak and the other Servian for something that is either were-wolf or vampire."[1]

The choice of  'Nosferatu' as title and title character also comes from Dracula, Dr Van Helsing using it to describe the  'undead', but the term itself is much older, originally a Greek term meaning 'plague carrier' and then later a Romanian word meaning 'undead' or 'vampire' .[2] FW Murnau's selection of this title and moniker for the lead character in his film is apt, as it encapsulates many of the themes and images emphasised by the film. The element of plague is re-inforced in the film by reference to 'The Black Death' for example, and the recurring images of rats and bacteria. Both the names 'Orlock' and 'Nosferatu' echo the Eastern European tongue.  Even the name of Murnau's leading actor holds an undertone of horror – the surname "Shreck" means terror in German.[3]

 In streamlining the storyline of Dracula, Murnau and Galeen dispensed with much of the superstitious lore that Bram Stoker had gleaned from the mythology and cultural history of the vampire. Nosferatu's treatment of the legend includes only the myth that vampires are nocturnal and cannot face daylight, and that they must sleep in coffins surrounded by the unhallowed dirt in which they were interred. No reference is made in this film to the tools and methods of fighting vampires that have become commonplace icons in the plethora of  modern vampire tales in the media of cinema and television – garlic, crucifixes, holy water and stakes through the heart etc.

  FW Murnau was a German expressionist who rose to fame in the 1920s with films such as The Last Laugh (1924) and Sunrise (1927) as well as Nosferatu. The cinematographer on Nosferatu, Fritz Arno Wagner, was also from the German expressionist school, who later worked with Fritz Lang on several films including Spies (1928) and M (1931), and this influence is clear in the manipulation of lighting and shadows for maximum effect. Nosferatu was a technically groundbreaking film, and Murnau's editing with simultaneous events sequentially intercut was one of the earliest uses of the technique in the history of cinema. Although revolutionary Russian director Sergei Eisenstein is generally credited with the introduction of montage in film direction and production in his 1925 masterpiece The Battleship Potemkin, FW Murnau clearly contributed to its development in films including Nosferatu. Two of the key sequences in the Nosferatu follow the words "Blood – your beautiful blood!" as Orlock advances upon Hutter's bleeding finger, intercut with a scene in which Nina, sleepwalking back in Bremen, calls out a warning which transcends space and causes Orlock to retreat from Hutter. The next scene follows Hutter's flight from the castle and journey by coach to Bremen, which is spliced with cuts from two other sequences, that of Orlock travelling by ship, and Nina waiting uneasily for Hutter.

 As the first cinematic adaptation of the novel, Nosferatu was also the first visual characterisation of Count Dracula / Graf Orlock, and consequently German actor Max Shreck's likeness is one of the often associated images of the cinematic history of the vampires, and indeed the horror genre villain. Not the handsome, eccentric, suave or seductive figure of later Dracula films, Max Shreck's portrayal of Orlock is ugly and focuses on the vampire as an evil creature, a product of the art direction of Murnau's collaborator Albin Grau. In keeping with the animalistic features of the film, Orlock looks inhuman, almost rat-like (another reinforcement of the analogy of the spread of plague) with rodent fangs, bulging eyes, bat ears and long claw like fingers.

 

The shape of his head too is bat-like, and the set of Orlock's castle features doorways arched to frame his bat like head. Murnau's masterful use of shade includes the projection of Orlock's shadow on the wall, arms outstreched, symbolising the bat that Bram Stoker described Dracula turning into. The symbolism of the bat in Nosferatu is twofold, serving also as another reference to the spread of plague, as it was scientifically documented by this stage that vampire bats spread numerous diseases including rabies.  Orlock's stature is stiff and unnatural, as if uncomfortable in the façade of human action. This emphasis on the bestial nature of the vampire, with undertones of primal atavism, draw on themes from vampire mythology such as the ancient nature and mysterious origins of the creature. Also there is the idea of visceral (carnal, sanguinary) appetites lying in the animal domain, from which humanity by its spiritual nature is somewhat removed, a dualistic philosophy espoused by Stoker's church and a recurrent theme in early vampire reports such as those of William of Newburgh, as discussed in the introduction.

 Themes from the earliest recorded vampire mythology which present the creature as devilish or demonic are also woven into Nosferatu through imagery such as the letter from Orlock read by Knock (and read by the film's audience over his shoulder), written in occult symbols. Murnau creates a sense of primal fear by playing on the idea of animals perceiving without intellect the presence of an evil spirit or a feeling of impending danger: in Orlock's territory in the Carpathian Mountains horses bolt and a hyena cowers, effectively building up a sense of impending doom. There are also demonic undertones in Murnau's constant grounding of the supernatural in the natural, recurring animal themes reinforcing the bestial savagery of evil (the "Beast").

 Nosferatu, perhaps more than any of the other films I will be examining, seems to unite the themes of sexuality and disease. I have already discussed the spread of plague that is alluded to by bats, rats, bacteria so forth. There are also numerous images of mass death. The ship on which Orlock travels carries a cargo of coffins, and by the time the ship reaches its port of call, the cargo includes a dead crew. In Bremen the coffins of the many dead proceed slowly down the city streets. It is the vampire of course, the nosferatu, that represents the spread itself, which links sexuality with disease and death. The un-dead occupies a space between the sexual life force and finality of death. Vampirism in the novel Dracula,  written with a background of Bram Stoker's Catholicism and the constrictions of a Victorian morality, has been read as a metaphor for the spread of venereal disease, which could be as fatal and as feared at that time as the spread of HIV/AIDS at the time of the making of Bram Stoker's Dracula by Francis Ford Coppola in 1992.

 

While the spread of disease is one of the most emphasised themes of Nosferatu, the sexual predator as its cause is also frequently alluded to. Orlock lives without a mate, this could refer to promiscuity or sexual behaviour outside the monogamous nuclear family, which according to the rigid Victorian value system of Bram Stoker (in theory at least) protects against the spread of venereal disease. The nature of the predator is demonstrated by the symbolic imagery of the predator in nature: the eerie depiction of a spider devouring its victim as Knock watches, as trapped in his prison cell as the arachnid's prey is in the web. The spider image is reminiscent of the long spidery fingers of Orlock. In the image of  the venus flytrap the violence of a natural predator is alluded to, but this time the vampire is scientifically sanctioned as again we see an attempt to construct credibility in the vampire myth as the lecturing scientist declares: "the vampire of the vegetable kingdom".

 In 1979, the same year of release as John Badhams' Dracula  (one of the other films which will form the focus of this paper), German director Werner Herzog made Nosferatu The Vampyre (also released under its German title of Nosferatu – Phantom der Nacht), an attempt at a faithful remake of Murnau's classic (the latter was thought by many especially in Germany to be the definitive cinematic version of the popular tale). Herzog conscientiously reproduced much of the animal symbolism and imagery, and embellished upon the presence of vermin and infected animals, with a rather less subtle allusion to the spread of sexually transmitted disease in the scenes of sheep and goats copulating in the town square. But while the themes of Nosferatu are reinforced by Murnau's German successor, the remake does not and cannot reproduce the eerie silence that accompanies the hushed scenes of the plague stricken landscape, with its deserted town square, chalk-crossed plague houses and sailors graves by an endless ocean. These haunting images are given a special dreamlike quality that seems to have been rendered ineffective in the remake. In a review written by Roger Ebert, he asks why the horror of Nosferatu lies in the silence:

                        "…(the silence) means that the characters are confronted with alarming images and denied the freedom to talk them away. There is no repartee in nightmares. Human speech dissipates the shadows and makes a room seem normal. Those things that live only at night do not need to talk, for their victims are asleep, waiting."[4] 

  The changing cinematic representation of the character Dracula from the novel has developed, in later films, to a seducer or a lady killer. This is in keeping with the metaphor of sexual predator who kills his prey by the spread of deadly disease, but is somewhat different to FW Murnau's interpretation of Orlock as the stalker, who like a rapist traps his prey and like a savage animal predator kills it. The equally deadly Bela Lugosi of Tod Browning's 1931 Dracula  or  Frank Langella in John Badham's 1979 Dracula can be construed as sex symbols with the fatal charm of the pick-up artist type, while Max Shreck's portrayal of the same character  relies not on dangerous seduction but deadly compulsion.

At a point in Nosferatu when Bremen is in the grip of fear, haunted by the stark images of death, the screen is lit up with a title bearing the profound message "the town was looking for a scapegoat".  This could be convincng read in a number of ways, one of which goes back to the idea of the link between sexuality and death. In the strictly repressive Victorian society where venereal diseases such as syphilis could ultimately mean death, a scapegoat was commonly sought: it might have prostitutes or promiscuity, in Nosferatu it was the madman Knock (dementia also being one of the symptoms of tertiary syphilis) who is eventually stoned. Previously in this section I have noted the similarity between Murnau's representation of the Victorian notion of unlicensed sex being dangerous to society and Francis Ford Coppola's use of the blood/sex/death media overkill relating to the HIV/AIDS issue in his 1992 Bram Stoker's Dracula. The scapegoat idea once again comes into play, as the latter film's codified homosexuality relates to the way in which the gay community was an early scapegoat in the AIDS crisis.

  Another way in which the 'scapegoat' analogy can be read relates specifically to the way in which horror films reveal contemporary social fears. The selection of a scapegoat by the 'townsfolk', the common people or proletariat in particular is indicative of assigning blame to a person or group in response to a threat or fear for which they have no explanation. For one such example we might look at the attack on Frankenstein's monster by the angry townspeople in James Whale's 1931 film Frankenstein. The  persecution of this scapegoat revealed the community's fear of a man with no soul, of the godless world that progressive science and technology might create. As discussed in my introductory section on the cultural history of the vampire, this figure has been a scapegoat for diseases and deaths as documented by William of Newburgh, and mythologised by numerous other cultures. Through the depiction of the realisation of subconscious threats, films in the German Expressionist horror-fantasy genre in particular have been traditionally read by film critics as allegories of contemporary history which speak of the national character.[5] In Germany in the 1920s, the  political climate sought a scapegoat on whom to focus the threat of foreign invasion and the tainting of pure German blood. In this context it is possible to read Nosferatu as having an anti-Semitic element, in which the vampire and his servant Knock represent the caricature of the Jew. The ancient, borderless origins of the vampire apply also to the global nature of Judaism, and partly as a result of this, Jews have suffered as scapegoats throughout history.

            The reading of Orlock and Knock as a foreign (Jewish) threat is constructed in the following way: firstly by the nature of the invasion, which prior to Orlock's physical arrival in Bremen sees his purchase of a house through Knock, the real estate agent. The set of Bremen is built to look like a typical German town, and the purchase of property by a foreigner is a common source of xenophobia. That this foreigner might be of  Jewish extraction is hinted at through characteristics that are associated with an anti-Semitic stereotype – the bald, hunched figure of Knock, whom the titles describe as the  "subject of many an evil humour", like his master understands the hieroglyphic text incomprehensible to 'us'.   Orlock's appearance can especially be construed as an anti-Semitic depiction of the Jew in light of the emphasis on trade and bargaining, and the darker side it brings to Bremen, corruption spreading like the plague. In Reading the Vampire Ken Gelder further elaborates upon the idea of Nosferatu's representation of the prevailing political attitudes in pre-World War Two Germany:

"Nosferatu repeats the point that the vampire preys upon the young: they are shown, finally, to be strong enough (committed enough to the emergent nation?) to repel this particular foreign threat – although sacrifices have to be made. In the meantime, 'folk' are also mobilised… to evict those who would negotiate with foreigners, sell them German property, speak their peculiar language."[6]  

  Nosferatu, although only 63 minutes long, is a text rich with layers of meaning, and as the first cinematic representation of Dracula is a version unburdened by the cliches of the Dracula genre which more recent films must incorporate or overcome. Nosferatu itself has become part of the language of the genre, and it must be with an understanding of this film that we proceed to the next.

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[1] Stoker, Bram: Dracula: Puffin Books: London, 1986 p 14

[2] Greenwood, Marie (ed): Eyewitness Classics, Dracula – Bram Stoker: DK Publishing Ltd: New York, 1997

[3] Gelder, Ken: Reading the Vampire: Routledge: London, 1994: p95

[4] Ebert, Roger: Nosferatu: Chicago Sun-Times Inc:

http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/old_movies/nosferatu.html

[5] Gelder, Ken: Reading the Vampire: Routledge: London, 1994: p96

[6] Ibid p 97