Nosferatu (1929)

The Plague Bearer

Nosferatu is one of the few silent movies enjoyable by those who don't like silent movies. The vampire theme lends itself perfectly to grainy black and white and tinted film, atmosphere building organ music and cheep, crude special effects. Nosferatu is easily the best Dracula movie. Bela Lugosi was memorable but Max Schreck is instantly iconic.

Innovative director F.W. Murnaw makes ingenious use of location shooting, clever camera tricks and his star, Max Schreck, to craft a creepy, unconventional gothic horrorshow. Schreck himself was reputed to have been a very strange man who enjoyed playing grotesque characters in a series of horror movies. Here he is perfect as makeup and flappy ears are added to his angular face to give him a disgusting white bat look.

The film's money scenes are the meeting between the naive real estate agent Hutter and the ghoulish Count Orlock and the scenes aboard the boat as the vampire rises from hois mouldy coffin in the belly of the ship and decimates the crew. Murnaw expertly combines his filmmaking instincts with Bram Stoker's expertise in gothic horror and barely repressed homoeroticism. Nosferatu is one of those one-of-a-kind movies that everyone should see at least once in their lives. July 16, 2008

Kino raises the bar

For sheer technological artistry, it's difficult to see how the Kino remastering of "Nosferatu" could be surpassed. Visual quality is excellent and the original 1922 Hans Erdmann score is (at long last) made available. Supplementing the digitalized film is an hour-long documentary on the making of "Nosferatu," as well as clips from director F.W. Murnau's other films. All in all, Ausgeseichnet!

"Nosferatu" really is an amazing film (and I say this as someone not particularly fond of the vampire genre). Murnau's expressionist cinematography creates an eeriness that's never been matched. The long, lean Count Orlok (Max Schreck), his fingers unnaturally talon-like, arms stiffly at his side like a corpse's, eyes wide open but somehow dead, can frighten even modern audiences who've been trained by special effects artists to demand much from spooky movies. The shipboard scene of Nosferatu rising from his coffin is uncanny. Murnau also speeds up the camera when he films Nosferatu in motion, thereby suggesting that what the viewer is seeing is unnatural, other-worldly.

For the most part, Gustav von Wangenheim's Hutter (parallel to Stoker's Jonathan Harker) is competent, although there are a few of those overdone melodramatic moments one associates with silent film. At one point, for example, Hutter slams a book about vampires on the floor to express his amused contempt for such superstitions. But the scene is so over-acted that it comes across as more funny than anything else. Greta Schroeder's Ellen (Stoker's Lucy) is a flop. Schroeder seems incapable of not overacting in the grand style of silent movie queens satirized in "Sunset Boulevard." Alexander Granach's Knock (Stoker's Renfield) is, in my judgment, the real star of the film. Granach perfectly captures the creepy madness of Knock/Renfield. His performance is stellar.

The libidinal tension implicit in all vampire stories also comes through in "Nosferatu." In one scene in which Nosferatu is preying on Ellen, she cups one of her breasts and Nosferatu's shadow cups the other. A gripping, masterful image, and one that's not been bested by the thousand and one Dracula re-makes since "Nosferatu."
June 30, 2008

Another Layer Better

This is of the double Kino DVD. There are a few improvements in this edition, making it worth getting, particularly as you can find it reasonably priced. First the improvement of the frames per second makes the acting more realistic and modern if still more than touched by Wagnerian over-emoting. Note: there are tiny frame displacements that in this digital computer age could easily be fixed by fabricating the tiny image loss between the two surrounding frames and it is hoped in the future Kino, Criterion and other labels will stop being reticent to do this. Creating the missing frames in such things as Harpo Marx's run across a couch with an ice block in one of their Paramount comedies will benefit from this too. It's no different than removing noise from the soundtrack or dirt from the print.

The images are almost pristine, and the tinting lovely. There are a few sequences that should be tinted and either Murnau neglected to do them or the surviving materials are missing them - for instance Orloc crosses to his house in full daylight carrying his coffin of dirt. Obviously Orloc dies in the morning sunlight later, so this sequence should be tinted blue for night. It would be no crime to fix this. Ditto when Orloc dies, there is no tinting as the sun hits him, yet when the film cuts back to the dying woman the room is tinted gold. It seems obvious this is some kind of technical oversight at the time. Preserving such an error isn't film scholarship, it's stuffy academy-itis, like the insistence that Shakespeare's son's name was Hamnet (not Hamlet) though it's certainly just poor penmanship by the local Stratford official.

The music is by far the best of the many film soundtracks over the years, most of which are too clever, too modern, or contemptuous of the original film, treating it as camp. This is just right, a reconstruction of the original classical score, deeply romantic and gothic, Wagner Lite. "Nosferatu" is a love story, in fact two love stories that intersect tragically. This score completely expresses that. The complaints about it are inexplicable to me. If you want a jagged atonal score, buy Kino's previous issue. This version is what Murnau obviously intended musically.

Murnau and Gance and Cocteau are the great surreal artists of the cinema, and no one has touched them via modern computer work to date; Tim Burton should study Murnau for a couple of years before he tries to make another film, his "Sweeney Todd" was childish compared to this. Given the technical limitations he had to deal with of the period, Murnau may have been the greatest of all, though Gance was more innovative. This is the edition for anyone who hasn't seen this film before, or anyone who has seen it many times and loves it. There will be a better issue in some decade to come, but it will be built on this. The German disk is actually unnecessary, but probably allows Kino to pay for the issue by charging for a double disk; given the results they are entitled.

PS If you want to dig deep enough, there are anti-Semitic and homophobic strains in the depiction of the title character - the anti-Semitic patina remarked upon when the 1922 actor's name was used for the villain in the Tim Burton Batman film - but frankly there are very few horror films then or now that don't in some way. It's certainly less homophobic than "Silence of the Lambs". June 8, 2008

THANK YOU KINO!!!!!!!!!!

I have been in love with this film since I first saw it when I was 11 in 1982......I can't even count how many versions I have bought on VHS and DVD thru the last 20 years. However, looking at this version is like actually going to see it in the movies back when it came out!! SUPERB JOB!!! The original score fits so well with the story, and, for once, its nice to see the most complete version of this film available - its just over 90 minutes. So many other versions are between 54 and 81 minutes. BUY THIS! If you even remotely like this film, BUY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'd give it more than 5 stars if I could! May 31, 2008

The Best Version Of Nosferatu Yet

Kino has once again done a magnificent job of restoring a classic. I've seen may other editions of Nosferatu over the years with quality ranking from good to horrible. This version is the best yet. The extras that are now so often seen on DVD versions are a nice bonus. If you love silent movies like I do, or are looking for the penultimate vampire movie, look no further. May 29, 2008

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