User:Paleface Jack/Nosferatu

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
Directed by	F. W. Murnau
Screenplay by	Henrik Galeen
Based on	Dracula by Bram Stoker
Produced by	Enrico Dieckmann Albin Grau
Starring	Max Schreck Gustav von Wangenheim Greta Schröder Alexander Granach Ruth Landshoff Wolfgang Heinz
Cinematography	Fritz Arno Wagner Günther Krampf (uncredited)
Music by	Hans Erdmann (1922 premiere)
Production company	Prana Film
Distributed by	Film Arts Guild
Release date	4 March 1922 (1922-03-04) (Germany)
Running time	94 minutes
Country	Germany
Languages	Silent film German intertitles

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (German: Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens) is a 1922 silent German Expressionist horror film directed by F. W. Murnau and starring Max Schreck as Count Orlok, a vampire who preys on the wife (Greta Schröder) of his estate agent (Gustav von Wangenheim) and brings the plague to their town.

Plot

In 1838, in the fictional German town of Wisborg, Thomas Hutter is sent to Transylvania by his employer, estate agent Herr Knock, to visit a new client, Count Orlok, who plans to buy a house across from Hutter's own home. While embarking on his journey, Hutter stops at an inn in which the locals are frightened by the mere mention of Orlok's name.

Hutter rides on a coach to a castle, where he is welcomed by Count Orlok. When Hutter is eating dinner and accidentally cuts his thumb, Orlok tries to suck the blood out, but his repulsed guest pulls his hand away. Hutter wakes up the morning after to find fresh punctures on his neck, which he attributes to mosquitoes. That night, Orlok signs the documents to purchase the house and notices a photo of Hutter's wife, Ellen, remarking that she has a "lovely neck." Reading a book about vampires that he took from the local inn, Hutter starts to suspect that Orlok is a vampire. With no way to bar the door, he cowers in his room as midnight approaches. The door opens by itself and Orlok enters, and Hutter hides under the bed covers and falls unconscious. Meanwhile, his wife awakens from her sleep and, in a trance, walks onto her balcony's railing, which gets the attention of her friend Harding. When the doctor arrives, she shouts Hutter's name and can apparently see Orlok in his castle who is threatening her unconscious husband.

The next day, Hutter explores the castle, only to retreat back into his room after he finds the coffin in which Orlok is resting dormant in the crypt. Hours later, Orlok piles up coffins on a coach and climbs into the last one before the coach departs, and Hutter rushes home after learning that. The coffins are taken aboard a schooner, where the sailors discover rats in the coffins. All of the ship's crew later die, and Orlok takes control. When the ship arrives in Wisborg, Orlok leaves unobserved, carries one of his coffins, and moves into the house that he purchased.

Many deaths in the town follow after Orlok's arrival, which the town's doctors blame on an unspecified plague caused by the rats from the ship. Ellen reads the book that Hutter found; it claims that a vampire can be defeated if a pure-hearted woman distracts the vampire with her beauty and offers him her blood of her own free will. She decides to sacrifice herself. She opens her window to invite Orlok in and pretends to fall ill so that she can send Hutter to fetch Professor Bulwer, a physician. After he leaves, Orlok enters and drinks her blood, but the sun rises, which causes Orlok to vanish in a puff of smoke. Ellen lives just long enough to be embraced by her grief-stricken husband.

Count Orlok's castle in the Carpathian Mountains is later shown destroyed.

Cast

• Max Schreck as Count Orlok
• Gustav von Wangenheim as Thomas Hutter
• Greta Schröder as Ellen Hutter
• Alexander Granach as Knock
• Georg H. Schnell as Shipowner Harding
• Ruth Landshoff as Ruth
• John Gottowt as Professor Bulwer
• Gustav Botz as Professor Sievers
• Max Nemetz as The Captain of The Empusa
• Wolfgang Heinz as First Mate of The Empusa
• Hardy von Francois as Mental Hospital Doctor
• Albert Venohr as Sailor Two
• Guido Herzfeld as Innkeeper
• Karl Etlinger as Student with Bulwer
• Fanny Schreck as Hospital Nurse

Production

Background and development

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror was originally developed by Enrico Dieckmann and occultist artist Albin Grau. Grau had studied at the Dresden Academy of Fine Arts before being called to serve in World War I, later returning Berlin where he found work as a commercial artist and designer of film posters. Also during that time, Grau had been introduced into the esoteric circles of Berlin society, ascending to the title of "Grand Master" within a group called the Lodge of the Light-Seeking Brothers. After working for several years with various production companies, Grau partnered with businessman Enrico Dieckmann to establish his own independent production company Prana-Film in 1921. The intention behind Prana Film's founding, which itself was named after a Theosophical journal which was itself named for the Hindu concept of prana, was to produce occult- and supernatural-themed films. Development for Nosferatu began shortly after the company's founding, with the producers choosing to make a film inspired by Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic horror novel Dracula as their first official production, although Prana Film had not obtained the film rights. It has previously been adapted in the Hungary as Drakula halála (1921), which is now considered lost. Grau had been fascinated with the topic of vampires and was inspired to shoot a film about them after having an apocryphal experience during the winter of 1916. According to Grau, while serving on the Eastern Front, he encountered a Serbiann farmer and struck up a conversation with the man. The farmer was purported to have claimed to Grau that his deceased father was a vampire and one of the undead.

Diekmann and Grau commissioned Henrik Galeen, a disciple of Hanns Heinz Ewers, to write the screenplay for the film. Galeen was already an experienced specialist in the genre of dark romanticism, having previously worked with actor and director Paul Wegener on The Golem (1915), and The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920). Galeen made the conscious decision to alter many of the plot points from Stoker's original novel, Galeen set the story in the fictional north German harbor town of Wisborg. He changed the characters' names, and added the idea of the vampire bringing the plague to Wisborg via rats on the ship, and left out the Van Helsing vampire hunter character. Galeen's Expressionist style screenplay was described as poetically rhythmic, without being so dismembered as some of the literature influenced by literary Expressionism, such as those by Carl Mayer.

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau was later brought on to direct the film.

Filming

Principle photography began in July 1921, with exterior shots in Wismar. A take from Marienkirche's tower over Wismar marketplace with the Wasserkunst Wismar served as the establishing shot for the Wisborg scene. Other locations were the Wassertor, the Heiligen-Geist-Kirche yard and the harbour. In Lübeck, the abandoned Salzspeicher served as Nosferatu's new Wisborg house, the one of the churchyard of the Aegidienkirche served as Hutter's, and down the Depenau a procession of coffin bearers bore coffins of supposed plague victims. Many scenes of Lübeck appear in the hunt for Knock, who ordered Hutter in the Yard of Füchting to meet Count Orlok. Further exterior shots followed in Lauenburg, Rostock and on Sylt. The exteriors of the film set in Transylvania were actually shot on location in northern Slovakia, including the High Tatras, Vrátna dolina, Orava Castle, the Váh River, and Starý Castle

Style

Release

Reception

Sequels, remakes and musical works

Sources

Books

• Dahlke, Günther; Karl, Günter (1988). Deutsche Spielfilme von den Anfängen bis 1933: ein Filmführer (in ger). Henschelverlag Art and Society. ISBN 978-3-3620-0131-1 – via Google Books.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)