The long shadow of ‘Nosferatu’
With Robert Eggers' version in theatres, we look at the small but distinguished cinematic legacy of ‘Nosferatu’
Like the now-iconic image of Count Orlok arising from his coffin, Nosferatu has resurrected itself over and over for more than a century of cinematic adaptations, despite an early attempt to drive a stake through its heart. On discovering that the 1922 silent German Expressionist film (streaming on Plex) was an unauthorised adaptation of author Bram Stoker’s Dracula, his widow, Florence, was furious. A years-long legal battle ensued and in 1925, a German court ordered that all copies of Nosferatu, directed by F.W. Murnau, be destroyed. Luckily, some prints had already made their way over to America, where Dracula was in the public domain. Nosferatu survived, and cinema was all the better for it. (Robert Eggers’ 2024 version, starring Bill Skarsgård, Nicholas Hoult and Lily-Rose Depp, releases in Indian cinemas this week).
Murnau’s eerie undead antagonist, the Transylvanian vampire Count Orlok (Max Schreck), isn’t suave or alluring like his counterparts that would eventually come to be associated with the genre—Christopher Lee in the Hammer horror films, or Twilight’s Edward Cullen. Instead, Orlok has unusually pointy ears on which tufts of hair sprout, long claw-like fingers, a glassy unblinking stare and two sharp, protruding front teeth. The image of this pale, inhuman creature sinking his fangs into your neck when you’re asleep —a time when you’re never more vulnerable—is terrifying. More than his appearance, however, it’s what he represents that makes the terrors so enduring.
Also read: ‘Nosferatu’ review: Horror remake has a point but no rhythm
The word “Nosferatu" itself is connected to “nosophoros", the Greek word for “disease-bearing". Those bitten by the Count don’t transform into vampires, as they do in Stoker’s novel. Instead, they die. Nosferatu’s opening title card refers to a fictional plague, but it released just four years after the 1918 Spanish Flu, one of the deadliest pandemics in history, estimated to have killed 400,000-plus Germans within just a few months, only slightly more than the country’s military casualties that year.
Consider the imagery Murnau associates Orlok with—rats, the symbols of disease, and coffins, omens of death. When the Count sails to the fictional German town of Wisborg, rats crawl out of his ship’s hold, linking him to the 14th century Bubonic Plague or “Black Death". Assumed to have been spread by rodents, the pandemic killed around 25 million Europeans. The film makes a direct reference to it during an intertitle that describes Orlok’s coffins as being filled with “accursed earth from the fields of the Black Death".
Even the film’s more comic moments bear an undercurrent of terror. When real-estate agent Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) discovers pinpricks on his neck after a night spent at Orlok’s castle, he mistakes the two clear fang marks for mosquito bites, “quite close together". His utter obliviousness is amusing, but through mosquitoes, another disease-carrying insect, the film refocuses our attention on its preoccupation with illness. The sight of Nosferatu lugging his coffin around Wisborg in search of his new accommodation—a logistical burden even a supernatural creature can’t evade—is hilarious. Later, however, it parallels a procession of plague victims’ coffins being carried out of town, rendering the scene tragic in hindsight. Orlok, having swept through the town with a marker of death, is now responsible for theirs.
Likewise, Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake, also in German, of this classic also announces its fixation with death upfront— the opening credits of Nosferatu the Vampyre unfold against the mummified remains of those who had succumbed to the 1833 Guanajuato cholera epidemic and are now preserved in the Mexican state’s museum. Both films feature a grandfather clock with a skeletal, grim reaper figurine. Unlike the 1922 version, however, this Nosferatu is not just a force of destruction, but also dealing with the pain of being indestructible—centuries have passed and being unable to grow old has made him grow weary instead. Herzog lingers on meditative shots of the landscape and long stretches of clouds drifting across the sky, making us feel the passage of time as his vampire does. “Death is not the worst," says Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski). Abject loneliness is.
While Murnau’s film is silent, Herzog’s uses sound to unnerving effect. Being unable to hear Nosferatu speak means one must imagine the inflection with which he speaks of Hutter’s wife’s “beautiful throat", eyes wild with desire, mouth agape as though salivating. On the other hand, to hear Dracula speak of mundane daily activities—the servants, the food—only heightens how unnatural he is, a performer trying out a part. Real-estate agent Jonathan Harker’s (Bruno Ganz) footsteps echo through the Count’s cavernous castle, reinforcing just how alone and defenceless he is.
Herzog sticks to the beats of Murnau’s film, but conjures up some striking imagery of his own. Dracula’s approaching shadow grows larger and larger until it’s eclipsed the entirety of the Harkers’ house, evocative of a pall of gloom descending on their home. A haunting scene towards the end depicts a family enjoying their last meal as plague rats swarm over their feet and their dining table. Herzog also emphasises the implicit sexual aspect of Murnau’s film. Here, Dracula wants not just Lucy Harker’s (Isabelle Adjani) blood, but also her body. Once again, her sacrifice vanquishes the Count, but Herzog also plays up her courage and resourcefulness in this version by painting her as the Cassandra figure of Greek myth, helplessly attempting to warn the townspeople of the danger. By the end, Jonathan awakes from his feverish stupor and begins ordering his housemaid around. All is well, except his smile now appears different. It’s crueler. And features two prominent fangs. In this adaptation, the horrors are relentless.
Kinski would reprise his role as Nosferatu once more in the 1988 Italian supernatural horror film Vampire In Venice, intended as a sequel to Herzog's movie. Only this time, he refused to shave his head or wear a bald cap, altering the character's now-familiar look considerably. His vampiric behaviour extended to the film's troubled production, with two actresses accusing him of sexual assault, and the crew abandoning the set in protest against him at one point. If the film features far too many scenes of Nosferatu wandering around the city, it's because Kinski himself is said to have filmed about 10 hours' worth.
The abiding horror of Murnau's vampire is that he not only invades a town, but creeps into its inhabitants’ minds, his capacity for psychological terror boundless. Like the contagion he represents, he has the uncanny ability to mutate into current anxieties, which explains his long-lasting cinematic lineage.
The English-language Gothic mystery Shadow of the Vampire (2000), framed as a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Nosferatu, views filmmaking itself as a vampiric enterprise that saps the life of its cast and crew. It’s the director who’s the monstrous figure, willing to offer them up on the altar of his ambition. The film envisions Murnau (John Malkovich) as prone to pretentious word salad and faux-artsiness, so slavishly devoted to realism that he hires a real-life vampire (Willem Dafoe) to play Count Orlok. Not much is known about Max Schreck, the actor who played the vampire in the original Nosferatu, which makes his story ripe for speculative fiction. Even his name plays into the mythmaking—“Schreck" is the German word for “fright".
Shadow of the Vampire derives tension from a director for whom complete control is part of the job description hiring a supernatural being beyond his control. Still, there’s comedy in how this sweeping force of nature, this harbinger of pestilence, is reduced to yet another prop to be pushed around on a set. The film wryly points out how accommodating method actors is as hard as accommodating a real vampire. Murnau, however, is just as predatory as his hire. He endangers his cast and crew in his pursuit of authenticity in filmmaking, a medium of inherent artifice. At the same time, director E. Elias Merhige faithfully recreates the look and feel of early silent movies, making his Nosferatu feel as “authentic" as the real one.
Through Murnau the director, who not only believes that art requires sacrifice, but demands it, the film indicts filmmakers who perpetuate systems of abuse on their sets. The vampire Max’s obsession with lead actor Greta Schröder (Catherine McCormack) mirrors Nosferatu’s obsession with Ellen Hutter (Greta Schröder) in the original film. The threat to Greta is not only supernatural but all too real, from a director who entraps her and crew members who assault her.
The real Murnau died in a car accident in 1931; he did not live long enough to see the feverish imagination his creation would inspire in the years to come. The indelible silhouette he created—of Nosferatu’s long gnarled hand creeping towards a door—lives on, unlocking new fears with each iteration.
Gayle Sequeira is a Mumbai-based film critic.
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