Nosferatu: 100 Years of Terror│Eureka Entertainment
Eureka! The Masters of Cinema Series #70
1080p high-definition restoration
by Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung
Courtesy of Eureka Entertainment
by JAMES CAMERON-WILSON
In 1922, a film opened that was a complete disaster. The American critics called it “a fantastically boring film” and at the behest of Bram Stoker’s widow all the negatives were destroyed. Not long afterwards, the company that made it – Prana Films - went bankrupt.
And yet, a hundred years later, the film remains a classic and thanks to the diligence of various departments in Paris, Berlin, Wiesbaden, Czechoslovakia and Bologna, a complete version has been assembled. To mark its 100-year anniversary, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is being shown around the country in conjunction with a Blu-Ray release packed with features, including a documentary on its maker, F.W. Murnau, and on the making of the film itself.
When you think that only twenty percent of all silent movies have survived, it seems akin to a miracle to be able to hold a work like Nosferatu in your hands. Murnau’s previous films were all lost, but thanks to the critical reception in France of Nosferatu and a print falling into American hands, it was rescued from obscurity. Murnau’s subsequent German films, The Last Laugh and Faust, have survived, and then, of course, Murnau went to Hollywood to direct the silent classics Sunrise, The Four Devils, City Girl – which inspired Terrence Malick’s Days of Heaven – and Tabu. It is ironic, too, that Murnau was killed in a car accident in Los Angeles when, during the First World War, he survived a reported eight plane crashes when he served in the German army’s Flying Corps.
His Nosferatu is of course an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, with the count’s name changed to Count Orlok, played by Max Schrek. The restored version uses the original score and inter-titles, with its scenes tinted in different shades as was the norm back then, with a yellow tint representing exteriors, a blue hue representing night time and so forth. There are two separate commentaries, shedding fascinating insights into the making of the film and its history. There is so much to behold on this high-resolution restoration, that I only got around to watching the film and half the documentary in one evening. I then sat through the film again – with the commentaries – as well as the rest of the documentary and the interviews with the historian Kevin Jackson and the director Abel Ferrara. With this sort of context, it’s really interesting to watch the film, first as an entertainment, and then again as a historical document. Because it was shot on such a low budget, there were very few studio sets and so Murnau had to shoot on location, both in Wismar and Lübeck, and in the Carpathian Mountains. Of course, the locations are what really give Nosferatu its distinctive look and it’s hard to believe that the enormous, creepy town house that Count Orlok buys – which even then looks like it was on its last legs – is still around today. Some of the streets and the houses in the film, wonderfully Dickensian haunts, were bombed during the Second World War, but many, surprisingly, still survive – and the documentary neatly cuts back and forth between what was then and what is now. The film still has a curious power but, bearing in mind that it was made over a hundred years ago, one must allow – and enter into the spirit of – a somewhat more demonstrative style of acting. A mix of German Romanticism and Expressionism, it has proved enormously influential, was remade by Werner Herzog in 1979, and prompted the Oscar-nominated Shadow of the Vampire, about the making of the film, with John Malkovich as Murnau and Willem Dafoe as Max Schreck.
Of course, I now can’t wait to revisit Shadow of the Vampire as when I originally saw it I had yet to see Nosferatu. Cinema really is the art form that keeps on giving, as new films appear daily on streaming platforms around the world and old classics are restored to bring us a whole new perspective of the medium.
The all-new/ancient Nosferatu is available now from Eureka Entertainment: https://eurekavideo.co.uk/movie/nosferatu/
Nosferatu 100th Anniversary screenings:
https://eurekavideo.co.uk/news/nosferatu-100th-anniversary-screenings/
Eureka Entertainment is the leading independent distributor of classic silent/early films in the UK. In 2004, Eureka! established the award winning Masters of Cinema Series, a specially curated director-led Blu-ray and DVD collection of classic and world cinema using the finest available materials for home viewing. In 2014, Eureka! established Eureka! Classics intended to highlight a broader selection of classic and cult cinema, and in 2017, Eureka! established Montage Pictures, a label celebrating ground-breaking and thought-provoking world cinema from new and upcoming directors.
