Hallo-Watch: Nosferatu - a Symphony of Horror (1922)

Watched:  10/10/2024

Format:  Amazon Prime

Viewing:  first straight thru

Director:  FW Murnau

I've seen this film in bits and pieces, but never in one shot.  So, technically, this is either my first view or not, and I'm calling it my first as I spend this Halloween watching films I should have already seen and have not.  

Yes, I've seen Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) - or most of it - before, here and there.  

Structurally, Nosferatu is more or less a very watered down Dracula - infamously so as the movie was immediately sued into oblivion by Bram Stoker's widow (yes, Dracula came out so recently that Stoker's widow was around in 1922).  

Briefly - A Transylvanian fellow entertains a young solicitor come to sell him property in his hometown.  He sees Count Orlock doing weird things, lusting for blood, etc...  And the Count runs off to his hometown with crates of soil, murdering a transport ship along the way.  But in London Wilborg, instead it focuses on a plague of rats, and our Mina stand in doesn't fall ill, she realizes she must sacrifice herself as a sinless woman to the Count so he'll have overplayed his hand.

Unshockingly, this movie is mostly here for the spooky vibes and to tell everyone else how to do this for the next 100 years.  It's not the first horror movie by a long shot, but it is a highly influential one.  And - in my opinion - is maybe more in the spirit of the novel than all the romantic versions made since Lugosi made women swoon in 1930.  Orlok is a straight up weirdo, and our leads know it.  He's bringing illness and plague with him, he's a soulless killing machine.  

But what folks remember, rightfully, are the visuals of the film.  Flexing some Expressionistic bona fides, Murnau leans into strange and eerie sequences of shadow moving, some in-camera tricks of the day, and long, oddball takes to build tension in a single shot.  Our vampire is a homely bastard - not as described in the novel, but his own, unique look that echoes some of what's there - the grasping, claw-like hands.  But you know all this.  It's a gorgeous film, and worth a look for spooky season, even if you just put it on during your Halloween party.  That's the power of the Nosferatu vibes.

There's little question in my mind that Orlok and Dracula both represent some fear that folks living in times of less exposure to other people held when it came to foreigners or even their own neighbors who were different from them.  Ie: The Other.  Whether that's intentional or the casual racism of Grandpa thinking "that's how things are", I suspect the latter case.

What's odd is the lore around this movie - from the notes in Wikipedia about it being made by German occultists who wanted to, like, employ the dark arts.  To the lawsuits and upsetting Mrs. Dracula, to the film almost being lost, to the 2000 movie Shadow of the Vampire.

But, look... here's what Bacall has to say.

So, be like Lauren Bacall, people.  Refrain from shoe-based violence and check out the OG vamp feature.

I should mention, the Werner Herzog version is really good, and we're looking at a remake coming this Christmas from Robert Eggers, who I think is maybe the right dude to do this justice with modern cameras, etc...