Nosferatu (1922)

R: Around Halloween every year, the Michigan Theater does a screening of Nosferatu, with organ accompaniment (of course). This is my second time going, and my first time staying awake all the way through. As I recall, the screening last year was fairly late at night.

The film has several interesting technical moments, as one might expect from a very early horror movie. There's some crude stop-motion animation (what struck me as very crude, but on reflection I can't come up with an earlier example of any kind, so there's some leeway), several scenes shot in "fast motion" (fear Count Orlock's super-stage-coach!), and a few scenes where they used the film negative instead of a positive. The last one is an interesting effect, especially considering that a real night-time shot would have been out of the question.

I have to say that the film felt slow. Having seen Caligari recently, I don't think that the 80 year gap between filming and me is the whole explanation. There are several places where the intertitles explain the action on screen, rather than adding something to it. In no case are they at all subtle, and a lot of them were a bit over the top. In addition to this, the director spent a lot of time getting from one place to another -- in fact, that's most of the movie. Hutter goes to Count Orlock's castle (wait wait wait), Hutter and Orlock interact with each other (not bad), Orlock travels by boat to where he's going (travel travel, some dead sailors), Hutter travels too (wait wait wait wait), Orlock is defeated. Orlock doesn't have a lot of chances to establish himself as a Scary Dude, since he has so few scenes with other people.


Kate:

In Brief: Worth seeing at the Michigan next year, if only for the organ playing.

Last night, Ross and I went to the annual Halloween showing of the 1922 silent film, Nosferatu. This is the first full-length treatment of the Dracula story, though the director, FW Murnau, altered some things to avoid copyright issues. As a result, this vampire is not exactly the familiar Dracula character. Instead of a bat, his animal form is a rat, and he makes his victims sick with the plague instead of turning them into more vampires. However, it shouldn't be surprising that changing the villain's name and animal of choice didn't save the director from a lawsuit. Murnau lost the suit and was ordered to destroy all prints of the film. Obviously, some of them survived, including one print found in a Romanian insane asylum!

On the whole, I thought that this film was entertaining, but not particularly outstanding. The story is engaging, and it has its technical moments, but it *is* a popular horror movie--the 1920's equivalent of Creature from the Black Lagoon--so you should expect a good story--not a cinematic marvel. Also, it may be the modern eye, but this film just isn't that scary. Count Orlock (the vampire) is very eerie-looking--he seems to be all arms and legs and fingers--and some of his scenes are genuinely frightening, but I was never on the edge of my seat (and that's saying something--I'm particularly susceptible to horror films). Part of this may have been that the whole film has the appearance of daylight. We saw this film last year too, and I was totally confused--the count would say "it's nearly midnight" while standing IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. In retrospect, I realized that it must be because of the difficulty of filming in dark conditions. Near the end of the last showing, I figured out that the blue-tinted scenes were supposed to be darken scenes, and the brown-tinted ones were supposed to be in the light. With that information, this viewing was less confusing. But the brightly-lit scenes lack the claustrophobic feeling that you associate with the dark, and are thus much less effective.

The plot was also very thin in places. Our hero visits the castle of count Orlock, is initially entirely unconcerned about his surroundings, despite his host looking like something out of a Tim Burton film. Suddenly, he becomes scared out of his wits after reading a book about vampires and presumably making the connection to Orlock. How the information in the book helps him draw any kind of conclusion is unclear, since it mostly contains broad statements about blood. He escapes from the castle through a window (despite there being no indication that he is imprisoned in any way) and races home to rescue his love from the demon, who he has already sold the house across from his. Once he gets there, he apparently becomes convinced that the book caused him to hallucinate, and warns his wife not to read it (I would have thrown it out, personally, but I guess the plot must go on). Of course she reads it. They also move back into the same house--despite the vampire living across the way and the wife being convinced that he is watching her. Throughout, we have comic relief from our hero's boss, who is apparently Orlock's disciple, despite never being in the same place as orlock, or interacting with him in any way. He also gets put in an insane asylum right before Orlock arrives, but there is no explanation why. Hmmm...

Also, the acting was on the whole pretty bad. Acting in silent films is certainly more exaggerated than we are used to, but the melodrama was way over the top. The leading man was really bad--he seemed to have two settings: maniacal laughter and melodramatic horror. There two most convincing performances in the production were count orlock (who is, as I said earlier, very well-played) and orlock's disciple, the house agent. Since the house agent is a comic character who never actually interacts with Orlock, this leaves many weak actors reacting to Orlock.

Then there are some things that are just objectively funny--how can you not laugh at orlock carrying a giant coffin under his arm?

However, despite all of that, I would still recommend seeing it, if you have the chance. There were a couple of moments that stood out as being particularly worthwhile. There is a scene where the shadow of the vampire's long thing fingers closes over the heroine's heart that is really fantastic. There are several scenes where the action is sped up--a spirit horseman riding through the night, Orlock moving coffins onto a cart, and coffins moving themselves around. The entire scene on the boat is frightening--maybe because it actually achieves the claustrophobic feeling that the rest of the film lacks.

Also working in its favor, at the Michigan the film was accompanied by live organ music, played by the Michigan's staff organist, on the in-house organ*. As always, the organist was fantastic, and after 3 minutes, I forgot that the performance was live. He constructed the score by writing a theme for each character and then elaborating on the theme throughout the film. In this case, he took the themes from folk music native to eastern europe.

Finally, it was interesting in part because it gave you an idea what a popular silent film might have been. Like a 1920's independence Day--it is interesting from a purely sociological context.

*For those who don't know, the Michigan is one of 40 movie houses in the nation that has retained its organ. The organ was one of the things that motivated a small group of people to save the theater from destruction in the 70s. The organ is massive, and fills the walls of the theater.