Nosferatu
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Nosferatu
(1922)
Directed by F.W. Murnau.
Starring Max Schreck as
Count Orlock.
Production:
Murnau was a German Expressionist. This movement began after World War I. In
cinema, a new art form, German directors often focused on topics from the occult that
allowed them to explore abnormal mental states. Some of this interest arose in reaction
against the defeat of Germany in the war, which created national gloom. A more
important source was the influence of new theories in psychology, notably Sigmund
Freud’s ideas which argued that unconscious sexual impulses influence conscious
behavior and that the difference between normal people and abnormal ones results
mostly from how they developed. The importance of this last idea is that it denied there
is any absolute difference between normal and abnormal but rather saw the difference
as a continuum rather than an absolute distinction.
New approaches in the visual arts toward abstraction influenced the emerging art of film
as well. By its nature, film tends toward abstraction. Editing, shot composition, focus
effects, etc. created possibilities unknown in, say, stage drama, moving cinema away
from the simple depiction of reality. Several early filmmakers saw an analogy between
their art and music in that film could create a rhythm of images; hence, quite a few
early films are titled “symphonies”; even Walt Disney had this idea when he called his
first cartoons “Silly Symphonies.” Murnau called
Nosferatu
“a symphony of horrors,”
which suggests his emphasis on building shocks by manipulating the rhythm and pace of
his screen images.
Background:
Murnau decided to film Stoker’s
Dracula
and was almost through production when
Stoker’s widow filed suit. The director had not asked for permission to use the novel.
Murnau changed the names of the characters: Hutter = Harker, Ellen = Mina, etc.
However, he lost the lawsuit and was supposed to destroy all prints of his movie. A few
survived and the print we saw was a restored version.
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Legends:
Nosferatu
generated the legend that its star Max Schreck really WAS a vampire. This
legend generated the recent film
Shadow of the Vampire
(2000) starring John Malkovich
as Murnau and Willem Dafoe as Schreck. One reason for this belief is that “Schreck” is
German for “terror, fright.” However, this does appear to be the actor’s real name! See
http://www.kjenkins49.fsnet.co.uk/max.htm
for details.
Modifications of Stoker’s story:
Name changes (for reason mentioned above)
Knock, Hutter’s employer, is clearly in league with the vampire before Hutter
goes to Transylvania.
The Lucy story is entirely omitted. So are the three men. So are the female
vamps who want to kiss Harker. Other characters are pared down, e.g. the Van
Helsing character.
Ellen (= Mina) is the object of Orlok’s particular interest. Unlike Mina, she is a
conventional young wife (no shorthand, typewriting, etc. – not a “New Woman”
type).
The vampire looks different from the character Stoker describes: Orlok looks like
a human bat. Compare Stoker’s description of Dracula.
Nosferatu
apparently
invented the idea that vampires are killed by sunlight. Although Stoker’s novel
presents Dracula mostly at night, the vampire is described as walking the streets
of London during the day, so evidently sunlight doesn’t bother him.
Murnau’s film entirely changes the ending and, hence, thematic focus of Stoker’s
novel. Ellen, who fears for Jonathan after his return from Transylvania, learns
that if a good woman can keep a vampire feeding on her until daybreak, the
rising sun will destroy the creature. She does this, Nosferatu dies, but so does
she. Compare Stoker’s more “wild west” ending, with Mina and the men
pursuing Dracula across Europe.
Technique:
Filmmakers in Murnau’s era were limited to black and white film which was not very
“fast” compared to later film stock. This meant that the cameraman had to flood a
scene with light in order to get a good image on film. This limitation ALSO implied that
filmmakers could limit lighting to get deep blacks and shadows. One explanation for the
numerous horror movies in early film history may stem from this technological reason.
Slow film stock also made night shooting extremely difficult.
Murnau turns these technical drawbacks into artistic capital. He used tinted film stock to
suggest the difference between night and day, inside and outside – night scenes are
tinted blue, interiors and daylight scenes are sepia (brown) in tone. The tinting implies
an opposition between day and night that has thematic importance in
Nosferatu
.
Murnau experimented with two other film techniques to heighten the difference between
daylight reality and the terrors of the “land of phantoms.” First, as Hutter approaches
the Carpathian mountains, we see a panorama of them in a positive print (mountains
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are dark, sky is light). Later, as he rides in the ghostly coach to Orlok’s castle, we see a
similar view in a negative (lights and darks reversed). Again, the contrast of light and
dark – actually, a reversal of them – chimes with the contrast between day and night
established by the tinted film stock.
Another technique involves “undercranking” the camera (advancing the film through the
shutter at a less than normal rate) to create fast motion. We see two shots of coaches
traveling through the mountains. The first, which takes Hutter to the pass, is shot at
normal speed; it looks “real.” Later we see Dracula’s coach in an undercranked shot; it
appears to be moving faster than any real coach could.
A more influential innovation involves the use of parallel editing (or parallel montage)
when Murnau intercuts shots of Hutter in jeopardy in Orlok’s castle with shots of Ellen
sleepwalking. Obviously, Ellen and her husband are separated by a long distance, the
breadth of Europe. But unlike the characters, the camera can be in two places at the
same time. The intercutting amplifies the strength of Orlok’s powers by showing their
effect on the woman he has chosen and also develops the strong sympathy – almost
telepathy – between Ellen and Hutter.
Elements relevant to an analysis/comparison:
The film techniques suggest the basic opposition is between day and night.
The opening shots suggest that the day is Ellen’s domain: we see her in a sunny garden
among flowers. The garden setting also associates her with nature, fertility, innocence.
The flowers Hutter plucks for her evoke her comment that he has killed them. This
foreshadows her fate in two ways: she herself will be killed, and the plucked flowers
connote sexual defloration.
Night is Orlok’s realm. The danger of the night is first intimated by the innkeeper who
warns Hutter. We only see Orlok at night, naturally, and his connection with night is
underscored by his similarity to a bat, a nocturnal creature that flies at night and sleeps
by day. (Again, technique underscores theme.)
The use of the negative shots as Hutter approaches the castle may suggest that, on the
thematic level, day and night will be reversed; or, more plausibly, that the values
associated with day and night are interdependent and not necessarily mutually
exclusive. This assessment seems to square with the Freudian notion that the
difference between normal sexuality and abnormal sexuality is largely a matter of
degree rather than an absolute difference in kind. The reason I drag Freud and
sexuality into this discussion is that
Nosferatu
foregrounds sexuality in a way that
Stoker’s novel could not. Hutter kisses Ellen at least five times in the first ten minutes!
Orlok’s fascination with Ellen stems from his admiration of the beautiful miniature
portrait Hutter carries. And the ending is rife with sexual implications.
The interpenetration of night and day is centered chiefly on Ellen, initially the sunniest
figure in the film. When Hutter is in danger, she starts to sleepwalk, a sign that night is
no longer peaceful. One might say that sleepwalking, on the structural level, represents
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a daytime, conscious activity – walking – performed unconsciously at night.
Psychologically, the sleepwalker is an active body temporarily beyond the control of the
conscious will. Naturally, this emphasis on the body of Ellen cut off from her daylight
sense of self becomes important in the resolution of the story. Sleepwalking sexualizes
her on screen in a way the modest wife in that garden would perhaps not entirely
understand – but the viewer does!
Nosferatu
explicitly links love (and sex) with death, an age-old theme in world literature.
Here we witness Ellen sacrificing herself for love of Hutter via an act which looks very
much like a sexual encounter with a man (OK, a vampire) who isn’t her husband. He
literally spends the night with her. The last scenes depend on the tension between the
purity of her motives and the wantonness of her actions. Her sacrifice seems noble, but
it can also be regarded as a punishment for violating conventional sexual mores. In
Freudian terms, she abandons the psychological repressions that govern her daylight
hours. (It’s worth noting in this context that not too long before Murnau made this film,
Freud shocked himself and his followers by arguing that our unconscious harbors a
death instinct as well as a life instinct – Thanatos as well as Eros. See Freud’s amazing
book
Beyond the Pleasure Principle
. The age-old connection between love and death
was given new psychological currency in Murnau’s time.)
If we play out these ideas, we get a better idea of what Murnau was getting at and how
radical his movie is compared to Stoker’s attempt to button up the sexual implications of
his story. Consider this: Murnau infantilizes Hutter, makes him child-like. Can you note
any details that suggest this? Notice, by the way, that Hutter (unlike Ellen) gets a good
night’s sleep at the inn. This may SEEM trivial, but the contrast to Ellen’s sleepwalking
is pretty clear, so it must be significant. More far-fetched, perhaps, is to examine his
entrance to Orlok’s castle as a reverse birth: he walks through a tunnel (which is NOT in
Stoker) which we can liken to a trip back through the birth canal to a womb-like state,
reinforced by the fact that food for Hutter magically appears, just as the embryo gets
food automatically in the womb.
What does his infantilization suggest about his relationship with Ellen? She represents
the so-called Madonna-whore stereotype: chaste and submissive by day, sexually
wanton at night. Her seduction of Orlok saves Hutter by sacrificing herself – more in the
manner of a mother saving a child than a wife saving a husband. (After all, can’t Hutter
do anything to save himself? He seems almost incapable of taking any sort of action at
all!)
This line of reasoning, basically Freudian, helps make sense of an important image in
the opening scene: the garden. Is it reasonable to regard that as another Eden in which
Hutter and Ellen, though married, are both child-like, especially about the darker side of
human sexuality? (Notice all the kissing which seems affectionate rather than
passionate.) The difference between them is that Ellen comes to know the darker side
of human nature, especially her own as evidenced by her seduction of Orlok. Although
we can see another Eden myth at work here, Murnau’s focus (unlike Stoker’s) is not on
the religious implications; the movie is almost devoid of the Christian symbols Stoker
plays up. The “fall” from Eden is Ellen’s; Hutter is too passive, even too dense, to
access t the darker forces in his psyche, unlike his wife. Ellen’s sacrifice represents her
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ambivalent but tragic acceptance of unrepressed sexuality; her nighttime surrender
restores the rightness of the daylight world.
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