It has been many years since I had seen the original “Nosferatu: A Symphony in Horror,” an “inspired by ‘Dracula'” vampire film that truly invented “the vampire movie” when it came out in 1922.
In this historic silent masterwork the expressionistic director F.W. Murnau and cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner conceived a whole chapter in the future Language of the Cinema in creating one of the most influential movies ever made.
Even the passing decades cannot dim the movie’s signature images and moments, something the latest “Nosferatu,” Robert Eggers’ worshipful new version starring Alexander Skarsgård, Lily Rose Depp and Willem Dafoe summons up in scene after recreated scene.
It’s been remade more than once — Klaus Kinski! –and its myth even inspired a creepy and most entertaining “making of” thriller “Shadow of a Vampire” starring John Malkovich as the celebrated director Murnau and Willem Dafoe as Max Schreck, the actor playing the title role in this “unauthorized” adaptation of “Dracula,” getting deep/deeper/deepest into character as he did.
Watching Murnau and Wagner and their cast in the 1922 film is a way of further illuminating Eggers’ homage, as the modern director pays tribute to the pioneering filmmaker in shot after shot, effect after shadowy effect.
The remake is pretty close to a note for note recreation. But watching the 1922 film again reminds us of untidy touches in the script, the conventions of the “Dracula” story that were filmed as written, or added for Henrik Galeen’s script, and then abandoned because there are sharper ways of moving the action from point A to B and more that could be made of assorted characters not scripted to their full potential in that original script.
“Vampire hunters” named “Van Helsing” were for the future.
The names of the cities may change, the time-setting may be moved up five years, but the mid-19th century “plague” parallels are still here, the Dickensian attire and Gothic architecture — easier to envision in pre-WWII Germany and Slovakia — hits the viewer like Buster Keaton’s Civil War comedy “The General.” It can be like watching a documentary shot in the 1840s.
It begins, as “Nosferatu” always does, with real estate and a realtor in the thrall of that big fish client interested in a ruined property on his books. Knock (Alexander Granach) leers and grins through his sinister assortment of teeth at the idea of sending young estate agent Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) off to close the deal in far off Transylvania, “the land of spectres.”
Adoring newlywed Hutter is loathe to leave his bride Ellen (Greta Schröder), but as anybody who’s dealt with a real estate agent will tell you, money is money, even if the boss hints at the “sweat” and especially the “blood” this deal will cost Hutter.
He makes the overland journey while wife Ellen has nightmares about what’s to come. Hutter finally reaches the village next to the castle, only to find the locals recoil at the name of the resident of that castle.
A “phantom” carriage fetches Hutter to the castle, warnings of “werewolves” (plainly a hyena) in the forest be damned. And then he meets the count (Schreck), a man with bugging eyes, ears he hides under a hat and a yen for doing business after dark.
We take the “the midnight hour” remarks here with a forgiving eye, as day and night sequences in this classic film — which exists in many prints, restorations, entertitlings, etc. — are a jumble of scenes, most of them plainly shot in daylight. So much for the Count fearing “the living sun.”
Hutter finds himself awakening after the “deepest sleep” to find “mosquito bites” he describes in a letter to Ellen. He reads a book on vampyres and starts to get the willies about who and what he’s dealing with in the fastness of this imposing, seemingly inescapable mountain redoubt.
Ellen’s mania at Hutter’s absence grows and the friends who take her in consult with a couple of “professors” who are of little help. And Hutter’s escape won’t end their peril because as the narrator has mentioned on silent film intertitles from the start, this is an account of “the great death of Wisborg,” a “plague” that engulfed the port torn, and assorted other port towns in that year.
All of those cities, it turns out, Count Orlok had just passed through.
Comparing the “new” and old “Nosferatu” isn’t as simple as you’d think, as the decades of “Dracula” and “Nosferatu” adaptations make it tricky to know where “Dracula” ends and the knock-off “Nosferatu” script begins when it comes to the conventions and tropes of these films — the “familiar,” the damsel in danger, the sea voyage, etc. I’ll leave that parsing of puncture wounds to the scholars and vampire cognoscenti.
Suffice it to say the original “Nosferatu” is a cinephile’s bucket list title, and the fact that it’s available for streaming as Eggers’ film comes out is just icing on the cake.
Because whatever version of this twice-restored film you see (Tubi has a 1:29 restoration, and there are versions as long as 1:34), what punches through the cinematic century that has passed since its first release is the creepiness of the milieu, the authentically ancient or 19th century settings and the primal nature of the horror.
Eggers and generations of film remakes have gotten more graphic in that “fear of being eaten alive” phobia this story taps into. But fear of an insidious, wasting illness, the “plague” with no possible cure and little means of resistance, is timeless.
Fear of the inadequacies of science among the superstitious has reached a modern day peak.
The idea that ahistorical and historical monsters have evil, compliant henchmen always in their thrall never goes away, even if that craven “familiar” is named Renfield or Knock, Goebbels or Kushner, and only some of them deal in real estate.
The comical camp that turns up in Eggers’ film wasn’t new, either. By 1922, the world knew the “Dracula” plot, and when the no-doubt-he’s-a-vampire Orlok purrs “Your wife has such a beautiful…neck” at seeing a locket depicting Ellen, it might have been as funny then as it is now.
Like “Citizen Kane,” when it comes to horror, what came out before this 1922 masterpiece — and “Haxxan” and “The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari” of the same era — is a world apart from what followed. Horror got sophisticated and the table was set for the glory years of Tod Browning, Universal Studios horror and all that came later.
Learning that cinema audiences wanted to be frightened, and in ways mere stage shows couldn’t provide, was a turning point.
In this film school graduate/CGI settings and special effects era of movie storytelling, any horror filmmaker not studying “Nosferatu” shot by shot and any period piece director not taking a hard look at silent cinema’s painstaking recreations of the 1800s and early 1900s is missing the boat.
Sometimes that boat isn’t an actual time-and-weatherworn sailing brigantine, and sometimes the name “Demeter” is emblazened across her stern.
Rating: unrated, TV-PG
Cast: Max Schreck, Greta Schröder, Alexander Granach, Gustav von Wangenheim
John Gottowt and Gustav Botz
Credits: Directed by F.W. Murnau, scripted by Henrik Galeen, based on Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.” A Sala46 World release on Tubi, other streaming platforms.
Running time: 1:29 (or 1:34)
