FW Murnau's Nosferatu - the most famous silent horror film, the first adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula and containing some of the most memorable and terrifying images ever committed to celluloid.
The German Expressionist directors can be credited with inventing the horror genre. Not that works with a horror theme hadn't been made earlier elsewhere, but the Germans were the first filmmakers to actually use the medium of cinema to frighten the audience. In Nosferatu this is not just done by the disturbing look of the vampire, but by a number of cinematic techniques. For example, the huge distorted shadows are more eerie than seeing the real thing. He also nearly always has the vampire walking towards the camera, as if he is advancing upon the audience.
Max Shrek's as Dracula (or Graf Orlok, depending on the version) has to rank as one of the best performances of silent cinema. Not only is the vampire a brilliantly creepy creation in makeup, but the way Shrek moves and positions himself stiff, spindly and slow, like an animated corpse completes the character. The parts of the original Dracula novel which dealt with the vampire's ability to change into the shapes of various animals was dropped for Nosferatu, but Murnau references them by having Shrek creep like a rat, hunch his shoulders like a bat, rub his hands together like a fly and so on.
Other than Max Shrek, the other actors are decent but not outstanding. The performances are highly melodramatic and exaggerated, even by silent film standards. This was probably a deliberate request by Murnau to heighten the unreal quality throughout the picture, although having said that he favoured over-the-top performances even in straight dramas like Sunrise (1927).
Murnau had a great eye for space. His shots are often reminiscent of works by the Dutch painter Vermeer cramped interiors with open doors leading to distant vanishing points. This helps to give the film a tight, claustrophobic feel.
Like DW Griffith, Murnau makes extensive use of cross-cutting. However, whereas Griffith would use cross-cutting to make comparisons between historical events or to create a tense race-against-time, in Nosferatu the effect is much more psychological. He reveals the psychic link between Jonathon and Nina by cutting between him being attacked by the vampire and her nightmare; he defines Renfield by cutting from him to Van Helsing describing a carnivorous plant; he shows Nina's troubled mental state by cutting from her sleepwalking to shots of the raging sea.
Nosferatu is an early landmark in horror films. It's not Murnau's best though, and also sadly due to its history there are no perfect prints available. But the fact that it is still so well known and still has the power to creep out modern audiences is testament to it as a great piece of film-making.
The German Expressionist directors can be credited with inventing the horror genre. Not that works with a horror theme hadn't been made earlier elsewhere, but the Germans were the first filmmakers to actually use the medium of cinema to frighten the audience. In Nosferatu this is not just done by the disturbing look of the vampire, but by a number of cinematic techniques. For example, the huge distorted shadows are more eerie than seeing the real thing. He also nearly always has the vampire walking towards the camera, as if he is advancing upon the audience.
Max Shrek's as Dracula (or Graf Orlok, depending on the version) has to rank as one of the best performances of silent cinema. Not only is the vampire a brilliantly creepy creation in makeup, but the way Shrek moves and positions himself stiff, spindly and slow, like an animated corpse completes the character. The parts of the original Dracula novel which dealt with the vampire's ability to change into the shapes of various animals was dropped for Nosferatu, but Murnau references them by having Shrek creep like a rat, hunch his shoulders like a bat, rub his hands together like a fly and so on.
Other than Max Shrek, the other actors are decent but not outstanding. The performances are highly melodramatic and exaggerated, even by silent film standards. This was probably a deliberate request by Murnau to heighten the unreal quality throughout the picture, although having said that he favoured over-the-top performances even in straight dramas like Sunrise (1927).
Murnau had a great eye for space. His shots are often reminiscent of works by the Dutch painter Vermeer cramped interiors with open doors leading to distant vanishing points. This helps to give the film a tight, claustrophobic feel.
Like DW Griffith, Murnau makes extensive use of cross-cutting. However, whereas Griffith would use cross-cutting to make comparisons between historical events or to create a tense race-against-time, in Nosferatu the effect is much more psychological. He reveals the psychic link between Jonathon and Nina by cutting between him being attacked by the vampire and her nightmare; he defines Renfield by cutting from him to Van Helsing describing a carnivorous plant; he shows Nina's troubled mental state by cutting from her sleepwalking to shots of the raging sea.
Nosferatu is an early landmark in horror films. It's not Murnau's best though, and also sadly due to its history there are no perfect prints available. But the fact that it is still so well known and still has the power to creep out modern audiences is testament to it as a great piece of film-making.