Nosferatu, 100 years of a symphony of horror

The poet Heinrich Heine commented that Germany was the propitious land for witches, the horrors of delirium, golems, ghosts and feverish dreams, and from those dreams 100 years ago the camera was born by the directorFriedrich Murnau, Nosferatu, the vampire.

Murnau is considered the prophet of German cinema for his virtuosity and his tendency to explore the fantastic and dark of the German psyche. In 1922, the production company Prana Films put him in charge of the ambitious project of bringing a version of the novel to the big screen. Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

To avoid paying royalties, screenwriter Henrik Galeen completely changes the names of places and characters, moving the plot to rural Germany. Murnau, with the help of his cinematographer Fritz Wagner, build a filmic hybrid that stands out a bit from German expressionism, so inclined to use artificial sets, to film for the first time in natural locations in Germany and Romania.

The film is endowed by Murnau with a broad sense of horror and the omnipresence of evil whose physical essence is the figure of Count Orlockbecause this vampire physically is the representation of decadence and ugliness.

The climate of horror is rising in state as the film progresses and has high points in two master scenes, one when the vampire makes his threatening and deadly presence felt on the ship that is transporting him to the continent, a presence accompanied by mountains of rats that invade the cover.

The other scene is even darker, and it is when the parade of people carrying coffins is witnessed in a city where the monster has extended its power. and spread the evil of the plague. This terrifying scene has been imitated on several occasions and not only that, but for the essayist Lotte Eisner it is a kind of prophecy of the horrors that Germany and the world would witness in the years to come.

The handling of dark and dim lights convey a sense of oppression and anguish, something so typically expressionist and apart from that, this film would lay the foundation for one of the most profitable subgenres of cinema, that of the vampire.

Viewing this work by Murnau 100 years after it was premiered continues to make one shudder and even more so when the story that would later happen in the world and especially in Germany is known, which would soon be seduced by a power more destructive than that of the vampire. An imperishable classic.

Vampire Horror Evolution

The vampire is one of the most emblematic characters in popular culture. young people have adopted it as the favorite in their gatherings or tastes. But its origin in the prehistory of current cinema has nothing to do with the characters of the literary and film saga of Twilight or the teenage vampires of the streaming series, handsome, with tuned bodies, here their physical evolution in the cinema.

Nosferatu, a symphony of horror made in 1922, presents us for the first time the image of the vampire in the cinema, and it is that the presence of actor Max Schreck has nothing to do with Count Dracula in Stoker’s novel. Of the dapper Count, Murnau leaves nothing behind, what we witness is an abominable, haggard being, with pointed ears, claws instead of nails and hideous canines.

When the sound arrives, the vampire jumps to the new continent, to the USA specifically. Universal studios do not want to repeat the German film, and put together their own adaptation of Dracula. For Universal, the vampire should not cause fright, rather he is a being that should seduce, and to achieve this his physique must be attractive, so the role falls to a Hungarian actor named Bela Lugosi. If Murnau’s film creates the myth of the vampire in the cinema, Lugosi’s and Universal’s monster, released in 1931, definitively establish the figure of the seductive, elegant and aristocratic vampire, since Lugosi’s Dracula transmits security and romanticism at a high level.

The Lugosi style is almost a brand that from that moment every film vampire must have, but a new aesthetic change would come and it is the one that Christopher Lee brings with the English production company Hammer. The British actor would bring a more menacing presence and above all he gives the air of wild eroticism and high sexual voltage to his character. Helped by his almost 2 meters tall, with an elegant slimness and a penetrating gaze, for millions of fans Lee’s Dracula is the quintessential count and his place has never been filled.

Today, both film and TV productions show us over and over again teenage vampires with childish themes and of little importance far from the original myth, since this was based on the fact that the vampire, despite being a seducer in reality, was a monster, a predator ruthless and insatiable bloodlust.