Monster Island Theater presents
Nosferatu (1922)

Director - F.W. Murnau
 

The Monster Island Theater Transylvanian Recipes...

The Plot
Commentary
Ingmar Ozu-Bresson on Nosferatu
Cast and Production Credits

The Plot

Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror is the 1922 silent film treatment of the Dracula story. More faithful than many subsequent productions, it was ironically filmed without the permission of the Bram Stoker estate. Original versions of the film tell the tangled and horrifying story of Graf Orlak, young Hutter and his wife Ellen. Of course, it is Count Dracula, Jonathan Harker and his wife Mina. Throughout the years many of the surviving prints of the film have replaced the original English subtitles with ones that call them by the more familiar names. Alameda TV's public domain print is regrettably one of these bastardized versions.

So, Jonathan/Hutter, an ambitious go-getting real estate salesman, is sent to the Carpathian Mountains to sell a castle in Bremen to a mysterious count. He is graciously received and served a sumptuous feast, before he in turn is feasted upon. He survives the ordeal, and escapes the castle, but the Count has already sailed for Breman in a rat-infested ship. By the time the ship arrives, there is not a man left on board. There are, however, many coffins filled with soil and one in particular which houses the Count himself. And then there are the rats — lots of them. An epidemic of death soon pervades the area. Mina contracts the disease. You know the rest — unspeakable horror followed by self-sacrifice.

Back to top

Commentary

Haunted and Horrible Cinema

It's moody, morbid, haunted and horrible. Even after 80 years, this classic film still wields a primitive and poetic power. One of the first "expressionistic films" shot outside the confines of a studio setting, director F.W. Murnau invests unreality upon the very real settings. It was all strange then, and it is just as strange now. In fact, even the admittedly dated stylized performances and certain archaic special effects somehow provide the modern viewer with an even greater experience than a movie-goer in 1922.

Movie Poetry

F.W. Murnau was only 42 when he died in an auto accident. His film career was short (1919-1931), but he remains a towering influence on cinema history. Hollywood created an entire industry of horror movies by following the surface of his stylistic techniques in Nosferatu and Faust. But Murnau was also the director of The Last Laugh, Tabu and Sunrise. His influence, though, extended far beyond the monster movie genre, as he was an admitted major influence on Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock. Actually any director with an ambition toward real art and poetry can be said to have been directly, or indirectly, a follower of the great German auteur.

Nosferatu - The True Meaning of the Word

Over the years the word "Nosferatu" has come to be translated as an Eastern European term for Vampire or Undead. Silent film expert Cory Gross' research on the term concludes that it is an "old Slavonic word 'nosufuratu', which itself was derived from the Greek 'nosophoros'". "Nosophoros", in the original Greek, stands for "plague carrier".

The plague was a good part of what Murnau had in mind for his film, and it is most certainly the predominant subtext of Werner Herzog's extended retelling in 1979.

Watch For

• The phantom carriage racing up the mountain
• Scenes between the Vampire and Jonathan in the Castle
• Max Schreck - spooky, creepy, and yet sympathetic
• The ocean voyage
• The Vampire dying at dawn

Further Adventures

As mentioned above, Werner Herzog remade Nosferatu. Herzog considered Murnau the greatest of German directors and Nosferatu the greatest of German films. His intention was to take the original material to new places, and with aid of the insanely great Klaus Kinksi as the Count, it does indeed go where other vampire films fear to tread.

-- Ed Schneider - Alameda TV

Back to top

Ingmar Ozu-Bresson on Nosferatu

"Muranu est le Seigneur votre Directeur. Vous n'aurez pas les directeurs étranges avant lui. Il est l'Alpha et l'Omega de cinéma comme l'art."

("Muranu is the Lord Thy Director. Thou shalt not have strange directors before him. He is the Alpha and Omega of cinema as art.")

Back to top

Cast

Production Credits

Back to top

For more on...

F.W. Muranu
Werner Herzog

Monster Island Theater

For more information about Monster Island Theater...

Submit a Review

Share your views of Monster Island Theater with other Alamedans....