31 days of Horror: Nosferatu remains a chilling black & white bloodsucker

Nosferatu is one of those films I usually watch every October with the lights out. Out of the well-known German Expressionist films from the 1920s, director F.W. Murnau’s masterpiece remains my favorite. The very loose adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is still a chilling watch more than 100 years later, especially for its use of light and shadow, strange landscapes, and dream-like sequences.

The film stars Gustav von Wangenheim as Hutter, essentially a stand-in for Jonathan Harker from Stoker’s book, and Greta Schröder as his wife, Ellen. Like Harker, Hutter decides to make a real estate transaction with the strange and mysterious Count Orlok (Max Schreck). However, things don’t go quite as planned because it turns out, well, the Count is a vampire.

I’m especially fond of the scene when Hutter first encounters Orlok and enters the bloodsucker’s uncanny world. Unlike a lot of German Expressionist movies, which mostly utilized hand-built sets, much of Nosferatu was filmed in northern Slovakia, using real castles and otherworldly landscapes. The use of this natural setting is one of the many reasons this film still maintains such a hypnotizing effect. Once Hutter passes through those eerie archways and follows the Count to his castle, you know that he’s not going to have an easy time returning home.

Besides the frightful landscapes and Murnau’s ghastly use of light and shadow, this movie holds up so well largely because of Schreck’s performance. Even people who haven’t seen this film in full are familiar with some of its most famous scenes, which largely feature Count Orlok. These include the moment he rises from his coffin on the Demeter and then stalks the deck of the ship, or that harrowing sequence when his shadow creeps along the wall, as he’s about to attack sweet and innocent Ellen. The longer the film goes on, the more animal-like and predatory he becomes, resembling a spider and rat with his sharp nails, front fangs, and pointy ears. He’s truly the stuff of nightmares.

Looking back, it is fair to critique and analyze what exactly Count Orlok is supposed to represent, considering this movie was released during the Weimer Republic, about a decade before Hitler’s rise to power. Whenever I’ve taught this film, I’ve had students question whether or not Orlok is representative of negative depictions of Jews. It’s a fair question to ask. However, to be clear, Murnau opposed Hitler and when fascism rose in his country, he fled to the U.S. by 1926 and worked for Hollywood. However, the film has its baggage. There’s even the fact Stoker’s wife, Florence, didn’t want this to get made. For a deeper reading of some of the historical context, I suggest checking out this article, published last year by Fangoria.

For me, I read Nosferatu as a response to World War I. The vampire unleashes plague and death upon modern Europe. Regardless of the various interpretations, more than 100 years later, the film is one of the most important to the horror canon. Its best sequences remain bone-chilling. Here’s hoping Robert Eggers’ remake gets it right. I have a lot of faith that it will, based on the style and tone of his other films, especially The Lighthouse.