In the horror genre, few movies are as iconic and revered as F.W. Murnau's 1922 silent vampire
tale Nosferatu, but like any film worth its salt, this one was a nightmare to make. This
is the true story behind Nosferatu.
German director F.W. Murnau is most often credited for Nosferatu's unique atmosphere
and imagery, and rightly so - Murnau would go on to massive success for films like 1924's
The Last Laugh, 1926's Faust, and 1927's Sunrise. But equally deserving in praise for the film
is Albin Grau, Nosferatu's producer - and an experienced occultist. Grau was a member
of a hermetic order named Fraternitas Saturni, or "Brotherhood of Saturn."
Many believe it was Grau's spiritual relationship with the occult that leant Nosferatu its chilling
ambiance, and one can even see hermetic and occult symbols in certain scenes. When Grau
started the production company that made the film, it was meant to focus on films solely
of a spiritual or supernatural nature.
Many critics will point out that Nosferatu is a rip-off of Dracula. And to be fair, that's
exactly what it is.
"I read that book. Murnau gave it to me."
Before the widespread popularity of Bram Stoker's novel, vampires were folk legends rather than
part of pop culture. But apparently, while Grau wanted to film Dracula, he had actually
become interested in vampires even before reading the novel, when he was stationed in
Serbia during World War I.
In a 1921 article, Grau explained that a Serbian farmer told him about how his father had become
a vampire. The farmer's father had died and was buried without receiving the holy sacraments.
A month later, a string of deaths occurred - and then witnesses reported seeing the farmer's
father walking around. Locals exhumed his coffin and found it empty. The next morning,
they returned and found a healthy-looking man with teeth so long and pointy that he
couldn't close his mouth. A stake was driven through the corpse's heart before it was cremated.
While Grau's story might have been a way to drum up hype for his film, Eastern Europe
has always been where the legends of vampires as we know them — the blood-drinking, nocturnal
undead — have originated. The country was home to some of the earliest European vampire
hysteria, in part focused around the folkloric character Sava Savanovic. That Grau would
have heard this story in Serbia makes sense.
Though Nosferatu's creators gave their central vampire a look and feel all its own, at its
heart it's simply Bram Stoker's Dracula, but with the characters' names altered for the
simple reason that Grau couldn't obtain the rights for the novel from Stoker's estate.
The job of trying to dodge litigation fell on screenwriter Henrik Galeen. He changed
names, settings, descriptions, and even the cast of the story in order to adapt Stoker's
lengthy novel into a silent film. Count Dracula became Graf Orlok, Jonathan Harker became
Thomas Hutter, Renfield became Knock, and Mina Harker became Ellen Hutter. Many of the
novel's supporting characters, such as Professor Van Helsing and cowboy Quincy Morris, are
absent entirely. Unfortunately, the writer's hard work was not enough to keep the production
company out of legal hot water.
The actor playing Graf Orlok, one Max Schreck, has been the subject of rumors over the years.
The most common one is that he was, in fact, a vampire himself, a concept that was turned
into the full-length horror film Shadow Of The Vampire, starring Willem Dafoe as the
undead Schreck. While the story is obviously untrue, everything about Schreck did little
to dispel these rumors.
"The script girl. I'll eat her later."
According to biographer Stefan Eickoff, Schreck was no supernatural creature, but rather a
versatile actor with an unusual temperament. He was a civil servant's son with over 800
screen and stage roles and was, quote, "a loyal, conscientious loner" with no family
to speak of. Schreck was also known for his detached, offbeat sense of humor, leading
one of his contemporaries to claim that he lived in his own, quote, "remote and strange
world." Of course, it certainly didn't help his reputation that the word "schreck" is
German for "terror," immediately painting the man as an intimidating figure.
While different depictions of vampires cherry-pick their strengths and weaknesses - fearing the
crucifix, casting no reflection in mirrors, transforming into bats - one of the universally
recognized tropes is that vampires are killed by direct sunlight.
However, this wasn't always a common concept. In fact, Bram Stoker's Count Dracula walks
around in the sun - he's merely weakened by it.
It was Nosferatu's climax that cemented the idea of sunlight killing the vampire into
the minds of the public. And it was Murnau who came up with the idea of the vampire being
disintegrated by the rays of the dawn. While the poetry of the final scene is laid on thick
- Ellen sacrifices herself to the vampire, so that he, drunk on her innocent blood, doesn't
notice the rising sun until it's too late - really, the use of this special effect was
just a cheap alternative to a grisly death scene. The folkloric way to dispense with
a vampire involved driving a stake through its heart, cutting its head off, and burning
the corpse, which wasn't easy to show onscreen.
"Ooh. Ow. Ah."
But Nosferatu wasn't widely viewed after its release due to it being destroyed via court
order. So whether the sun as vampire repellent spread quickly among the few folklore enthusiasts
who saw the film, or whether Murnau had heard about it in some rare piece of lore, is unknown.
For a work of art as atmospheric and macabre as Nosferatu, Grau and Murnau couldn't simply
host the world premiere in a movie theater. Instead, the film was premiered with the kind
of event one wishes more horror movies launched with - an epic costume party at a zoo.
Nosferatu premiered March 4, 1922, at the Marble Hall of the Berlin Zoological Gardens.
Before the film, there was a stage show including a spoken-word prologue by star Max Schreck
himself, followed by a dance number. After the showing, there was an elaborate masquerade
ball, complete with gowns, frocks, and suitable costumes to honor such a morbid film. The
party, dubbed "The Festival of Nosferatu" raged until 2:00 AM, with guests including
German filmmakers Ernst Lubitsch and Heinz Schall. The party and promotional campaign
surrounding the film apparently cost more than the movie itself.
Thankfully, this elaborate event has been recreated to a certain degree today. Austin,
Texas, hosts an annual Nosferatu Festival, inviting fans from all over the world to travel
to America's "City of Bats" and celebrate all things vampiric.
Given the climate of anti-Semitism in Europe during the first third of the 20th century,
it's unsurprising to learn that many saw Nosferatu as an inherently anti-Semitic film. Jews had
for some time been cast as blood-drinking witches by anti-Semites, and the similarities
between the vampire Graf Orlok and contemporary stereotypes of Judaism lent the movie a bigoted
undertone.
One member of the audience at Nosferatu's premiere leaped on this concept: Julius Streicher,
who would become chief editor of Hitler's antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer. Streicher
was so transfixed by the film that he returned to watch it repeatedly. Later on, in the pages
of Der Stürmer, Streicher would repeatedly use art and prose to conflate Jews with vampires.
While it has since been noted that Murnau was friendly with many Jewish people in the
film industry, the feeling that Nosferatu was made to stoke the fear of the universal
Other - a claim often made about Dracula as well - remains to this day.
As noted earlier, Nosferatu was a direct adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, with names
and references changed to avoid a copyright infringement lawsuit. That… did not work.
Why? Well, the makers of the film weren't ready for the sheer tenacity of the enemy
they had made: Florence Balcombe, Stoker's widow.
After her husband's death, Balcombe's only real source of income was the royalties from
Dracula, his one truly successful book. When she discovered that Grau and Murnau had made
the film, she demanded financial compensation. When they dodged this, she demanded that all
copies of their film be destroyed.
Despite Nosferatu's producers doing their best to avoid Balcombe's wrath, Stoker's widow
won. The German courts ordered all prints and negatives of Nosferatu to be burned, in
one of the first cases of capital punishment being waged against a film. However, by then,
copies of the movie had been distributed throughout the world, and as one can guess, the fact
that Nosferatu is such an iconic film means that it was not entirely lost.
Though Nosferatu is considered a cinematic milestone today, at the time, it was a risky
money making venture that had cost a ton to promote. When Bram Stoker's widow decided
to take legal action against Prana Film, producer Albin Grau had only a few options when it
came to avoiding lawsuits. So he chose one of the extreme ones - and declared bankruptcy.
Prana Film's finances had always been precarious, but the threat of litigation - and one with
actual merit behind it - would have been too much for the production company to bear. Grau's
declaration of bankruptcy made Nosferatu the only feature Prana Film would ever make. Meanwhile,
Grau sold the movie to Deutsche Film Produktion in order to immediately distance himself from
the production. That company, incidentally, edited the film without Murnau's permission.
The result of the film being banned is that many of the copies of Nosferatu that survived
were incomplete, re-edited, or had their title cards changed, so every version of the film
is different. One such unique copy was The Twelfth Hour: A Night Of Horror, a sound version
of the film released in 1930 by Deutsche Film Produktion. Featuring new scenes, a different
ending, the inclusion of footage that didn't make the original film, and even a different
actor playing the vampire in similar makeup, The Twelfth Hour was shown in theaters and
on television around the world but is now difficult to find and stands as a testament
to how original movies were recut and re-released before the art form was commonplace.
Interestingly enough, even Bram Stoker's widow couldn't kill the vampire after she'd ordered
it burned. According to David J. Skal's Hollywood Gothic, shortly after she'd won her case against
Nosferatu, Balcombe received an invitation to a private film society screening - of F.W.
Murnau's Dracula.
At the end of the day, the most iconic depiction of Dracula will always be Bela Lugosi in Tod
Browning's 1931 film by Universal - the cape, the widow's peak, the thick Eastern European
accent.
"Children of the night. What music they make."
And yet, for many film critics, Nosferatu's ugly, ethereal depiction of the vampire makes
it a superior film to its latter-day, properly licensed descendants.
In fact, renowned film critic Roger Ebert gave the movie four out of four stars, saying
on his website:
"To watch F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) is to see the vampire movie before it had
really seen itself. Here is the story of Dracula before it was buried alive in cliches, jokes,
TV skits, cartoons, and more than 30 other films. The film is in awe of its material.
It really seems to believe in vampires."
Nosferatu has been directly remade once - German filmmaker Werner Herzog directed infamous
character actor Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula in 1979's Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht.
However, it appears as though a new version of Nosferatu is in the works. According to
Bloody Disgusting, Robert Eggers, director of stark psychological horror films The Witch
and The Lighthouse, is planning a remake of Murnau's classic film. The director has stated
that he is drawn to the film for its primordial depiction of the vampire, as well as for producer
Albin Grau's occultist vision, explaining:
"I think Nosferatu is closer to the folk vampire [...] The vampire played by Max Schreck is
a combination of the folk vampire, of the literary vampire that actually has its roots
in England before Germany, and also [has roots in] Albin Grau, the producer/production designer's
occultist theories on vampires."
Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about your favorite
stuff are coming soon. Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss
a single one.