Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror () is a 1922 silent German Expressionist vampire film directed by F. W. Murnau from a screenplay by Henrik Galeen. It stars Max Schreck as Count Orlok, a vampire who preys on the wife (Greta Schröder) of his estate agent (Gustav von Wangenheim) and brings a plague to their town.
Nosferatu was produced by and is an unofficial and unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. Various names and other details were changed from the novel, including Count Dracula being renamed Count Orlok. Although those changes are often represented as a defense against copyright infringement accusations, the original German intertitles acknowledged Dracula as the source. Film historian David Kalat states in his commentary track that since the film was "a low-budget film made by Germans for German audiences... setting it in Germany with German-named characters makes the story more tangible and immediate for German-speaking viewers".
Even with several details altered, Stoker's widow Florence sued over the adaptation's copyright violation, and a court ruling ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. However, several prints of Nosferatu survived, and the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema and the horror genre. Critic and historian Kim Newman declared it as a film that set the template for the genre of horror film. The film entered the public domain worldwide in 2019.
Plot
In 1838, in the fictional German town of Wisborg, Thomas Hutter is sent to Transylvania by his employer, the eccentric estate agent Herr Knock, to visit a new client, Count Orlok, who is planning to buy a derelict house across from Hutter's own residence. As Hutter studies the route on a map, Knock secretly studies a mysterious correspondence in cabalistic symbols. While embarking on his journey, Hutter stops at an inn in which the locals are terrified by the mere mention of Orlok's name. In his room, he finds a book about vampires, which he initially scoffs at but puts in his baggage.
After his carriage refuses to take him further than the entrance to the mountain pass, Hutter travels on foot until after sunset, when he is met on the road by a coach and rides to Orlok's castle in the Carpathian Mountains, where he is welcomed by Orlok himself. While Hutter is eating supper, he accidentally cuts his thumb; Orlok tries to suck the blood out, but his repulsed guest pulls his hand away. Hutter wakes up the next morning to find fresh punctures on his neck, which he attributes to mosquitoes. That night, Orlok signs the documents to purchase the house and notices on the table a miniature portrait of Hutter's wife, Ellen, an image that the young man carries with him in a small circular frame. Admiring the portrait, the count remarks that she has a "lovely neck".
Reading the book that he took from the inn, Hutter begins to suspect that Orlok is indeed a vampire. With no way to bar the door to his bedroom, Hutter desperately tries to hide as midnight approaches. Suddenly, the door begins to slowly open by itself and, as Orlok enters, a terrified Hutter hides under the bedcovers and falls unconscious. Meanwhile, back in Wisborg, Ellen arises from her own bed and sleepwalks to the railing of her bedroom's balcony. She starts walking on top of the railing, which gets the attention of Thomas's friend Harding in the adjacent room. When the doctor arrives, Ellen envisions Orlok in his castle threatening her unconscious husband and shouts Hutter's name, which somehow Orlok is able to hear, causing him to withdraw.
On the next day, Hutter explores the castle. In a vault, he finds the coffin in which Orlok is resting dormant in the crypt and flees back to his room. Hours later, as Hutter watches, Orlok piles up coffins on a coach and climbs into the last one before the coach departs. Hutter manages to escape from the castle, injuring himself in the process, and after a period of recovery, he rushes home. Orlok's coffins are taken aboard a schooner, which the sailors open only to discover rats. All of the crewmen later die, and Orlok takes control of the vessel. Not long after Hutter returns home, the ship arrives in Wisborg; Orlok leaves unobserved, carrying one of his coffins, and moves into the house that he had purchased.
Many deaths in the town follow Orlok's arrival, which the local doctors attribute to an unspecified plague caused by the rats from the ship. Knock, who has gone completely insane, is confined to a mental asylum, but escapes after strangling one of the wardens. Against Hutter's wishes, Ellen reads the book that he found on his journey; it claims that a vampire can be destroyed if a pure-hearted woman distracts the vampire from the approaching dawn with her beauty and by offering him her blood of her own free will; Ellen decides to sacrifice herself to stop Orlok. Knock, whom the villagers blame for the plague, is eventually recaptured and returned to the asylum. Ellen opens her window to invite Orlok in and pretends to fall ill so that she can send Hutter to fetch Professor Bulwer, a physician. After he leaves, Orlok enters and drinks her blood, but the sun rises and its rays cause Orlok to vanish in a puff of smoke. Knock, in his asylum cell, senses this and is shattered. Ellen lives just long enough to be embraced by her grief-stricken husband.
The film's final image is that of Orlok's castle, destroyed.
Cast
Max Schreck as Count Orlok, a Transylvanian noble and vampire. In the public domain version, he is referred to as Count Dracula. Gustav von Wangenheim as Thomas Hutter, a young estate agent. In the public domain version, he is referred to as Jonathon Harker. Greta Schröder as Ellen, Hutter's wife. In the public domain version, she is referred to as Nina. Georg H. Schnell as Harding, a wealthy shipowner and Hutter's friend. In the public domain version, he is referred to as Westenra. Ruth Landshoff as Ruth, Harding's sister. In the public domain version, she is referred to as Lucy and said to be his wife. Gustav Botz as Professor Sievers, Wisborg's doctor. In the public domain version, he is referred to as the town doctor. Alexander Granach as Knock, an estate broker and Hutter's employer. In the public domain version, he is referred to as Renfield. John Gottowt as Professor Bulwer, a physician. In the public domain version, he is referred to as Dr. Van Helsing. Max Nemetz as the Empusa captain. In the public domain version, he is referred to as the captain of the Demeter. Wolfgang Heinz as the Empusa first mate as the Empusa sailor
Making uncredited appearances are Karl Etlinger as one of Bulwer's students, as a doctor at a mental hospital, Guido Herzfeld as an innkeeper, and Fanny Schreck as a hospital nurse.
Themes The Other
Nosferatu has been noted for its themes regarding fear of the Other, as well as for possible antisemitic undertones, both of which may have been partially derived from the Bram Stoker novel Dracula, upon which the film was based.Giesen 2019 page 109 The physical appearance of Count Orlok, with his hooked nose, long claw-like fingernails, and large bald head, has been compared to stereotypical caricatures of Jewish people from the time in which Nosferatu was produced.Giesen 2019 page 108 His features have also been compared to those of a rat or a mouse, the former of which Jews were often equated with.Giesen 2019 pages 108–109Magistrale 2005 page 25–26 Orlok's interest in acquiring property in the German town of Wisborg, a shift in locale from the Stoker novel's London, has also been analyzed as preying on the fears and anxieties of the German public at the time.Magistrale 2005 page 25 Professor Tony Magistrale wrote that the film's depiction of an "invasion of the German homeland by an outside force [...] poses disquieting parallels to the anti-Semitic atmosphere festering in Northern Europe in 1922".
When the foreign Orlok arrives in Wisborg by ship, he brings with him a swarm of rats which, in a deviation from the source novel, spread the plague throughout the town.Joslin 2017 page 15 This plot element further associates Orlok with rodents and the idea of the "Jew as disease-causing agent". It is also notable that Orlok's accomplice in conspiracy Knock is a Jewish realtor, who acts as the vampire's fifth column in the Biedermeier town of Wisborg.Golem, Caligari, Nosferatu – A Chronicle of German Film Fantasy (2022) by Rolf Giesen
There were other views – writer Kevin Jackson has noted that director F. W. Murnau "was friendly with and protective of a number of Jewish men and women" throughout his life, including Jewish actor Alexander Granach, who plays Knock in Nosferatu.Jackson 2013 page 20 Additionally, Magistrale wrote that Murnau, being a homosexual, would have been "presumably more sensitive to the persecution of a subgroup inside the larger German society". As such, it has been said that perceived associations between Orlok and antisemitic stereotypes are unlikely to have been conscious decisions on the part of Murnau.
Occultism
Murnau and the film's producer Albin Grau gave Orlok a demonic lineage and an occult origin: Orlok is the creation of Belial, one of the Satanic archdemons. Belial in Psalm 41:8–10 is also associated with pestilence, with Orlok in film being a manifestation of contagion, rats pouring out of his coffins onto the streets of Wisborg, spreading Black Death. Orlok's link to Belial is also significant because Belial is "one of the demons traditionally summoned by Goetic magicians" – making Orlok someone who practiced dark sorcery before becoming a vampire.Annwn Jones, David (2023), Vampires on the Silent Screen: Cinema's First Age of Vampires 1897–1922, pp. 169, 184
Orlok and his servant Knock are communicating in occult language – the documents between Orlok and Knock are written in Enochian, a constructed language said to be that of the angels, which was recorded in the private journals of English occultist John Dee and his colleague English alchemist Edward Kelley in late 16th-century Elizabethan England.Movie Magick: The Occult in Film (2018) by David Huckvale, p. 52
The character of Professor Bulwer in the film is named in reference to English occult novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The idea of astral entities, arising from the dark thoughts of human beings, responsible for epidemics that call for blood sacrifices in order to prevent them, is also closely linked to that of the alchemist Paracelsus, whose figure is partly embodied in the film in the character of Professor Bulwer (who is mentioned in the film to be Paracelsian himself). This is made concrete in the film in the plague epidemic that spreads through the town of Wisborg, which cannot be remedied by scientific methods, but by the blood sacrifice of a woman, thus destroying forever the dark being responsible for this catastrophic situation.
World War I