The appearance of Nosferatu in 1922 is the first appearance ever of a vampire in the cinema. The impact of this film has never really been given its proper place in the history of cinema. It represents an articulation of the supernatural that was previously relegated to literature.
Nosferatu is what I would call an experimental film (I mean this as the highest compliment), because nothing like it before existed. Its use of technology and makeup, composition and lighting is so extraordinary that the filmmaking itself is ‘supernatural’ given the technology of film stock and lighting and cameras/lenses of that period. The novel use of real locations, taking the camera outside of the comfort zone of a studio setting, was something that many filmmakers saw as ridiculous and far too cumbersome at that time. The fact that Murnau chooses to explore the supernatural and the uncanny using real locations set in Nature as opposed to the artificial world one could create in a studio setting represents a remarkable and visionary turn in how films are made.
It is curious to know that at the time Nosferatu was made, the Stoker family felt it a demeaning embarrassment to adapt Dracula to the cinema screen, thus showing how early cinema was looked upon as a ‘questionable’ art not worthy of well-healed cultured audiences. This only magnifies just how forward thinking Murnau was in making Nosferatu.
I remember when I was twelve watching Nosferatu and being completely haunted by this film especially by its main character played by Max Schreck. The night scene at the castle, when the vampire shows up at Hutter’s bedroom, strikes the most atavistic terror into the heart of the audience and it is a scene that has never left me. The vampire’s insect-like movements, the stiff and laboured motion of the limbs, the unnaturally extended long fingers, the unblinking piercing rat-like eyes and teeth compounded by the enlarged bald head made this creature horrifying and unforgettable.
In my own research on Murnau for Shadow of the Vampire, it had upset me a great deal to learn that almost half of his films are completely ‘lost’ and totally unaccounted for. Where have they gone? And why are they missing? It is very interesting to know that the Stoker estate sued Prana films, the production company Albin Grau, the film’s producer, and Murnau formed together to make Nosferatu at the time. The Stoker estate won and Nosferatu was declared illegal and wrong to have been made. A court order was issued in which all the original negatives were to be burned along with existing prints of the film. Nosferatu was to be erased from the earth. So how does the film exist today? It exists only because a print that was unaccounted for in France was not found and burned at that time. Every print thereafter was from a negative struck from that print.
There are not many books on Murnau and even fewer books on Nosferatu specifically. It is my pleasure to introduce this book written by a passionate and brilliant young scholar, Cristina Massaccesi. I am delighted that her study is specifically devoted on this singular work of cinematic art – may it further inspire more to understand its ground-breaking levels of cinematic innovation, style and beauty and to discover even greater depth in Murnau’s Nosferatu.
E. Elias Merhige
Los Angeles, 21 March 2015