Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie''s plot.
Going in to F.W. Murnau’s 1922 movie NOSFERATU, I was already aware it was basically a retelling of Bram Stoker’s DRACULA. Stoker’s widow sued over copyright infringement, and won, so I knew of the connection. However, I didn’t know just how similar. Wow, that’s almost the same movie. The names were changed*, but other than that . . .
Jonathan Hutter is sent away by his real estate firm to the castle of Count Orlok who is interested in purchasing property in the area. When Hutter arrives, he’s immediately warned away by the locals, but he has a job to do and, anyway, doesn’t really believe in supernatural nonsense.
Then he meets the Count. Orlok’s visage is a startling one. Very tall (actor Max Schreck was 6ֵ”, but he’s dressed and shot in a way so as to make him look even taller), bald with large pointed ears, and long spindly fingers topped with claws. Plus his teeth are pointed. So it’s easy to understand Hutter‘s hesitation. But when he wakes up after his first morning with bite marks on his neck and attributes them to either mosquitoes or spiders . . . well, it’s hard to sympathize with a character who’s been leafing through a copy of THE BOOK OF THE VAMPIRE, but decides the bites on his neck must be from an insect.
Count Orlok soon leaves his castle, deserting Hutter, and makes his way by boat to Hutter’s hometown. Along the way, the entire crew of the DEMETER, the boat on which Orlok has stowed away, dies of “the plague”, and when the ship arrives at port, the Count sneaks off. He sets up house in a mansion across the street from Hutter’s home and soon people in the small village begin dying off.
Hutter makes his way home to his wife Ellen who reads in Hutter’s BOOK OF THE VAMPIRE that a woman pure of heart who offers her blood freely to a vampire can destroy him by keeping him by her side till sunrise.
Okay, that ending was a little out of nowhere considering how closely the rest of the plot resembled the source material. And like I said, I had no idea beforehand just how true it stayed to DRACULA. No wonder Murnau was sued.
Another expectation that was completely shattered as I watched NOSFERATU was the belief that this would be some chilling creep-fest, a true classic of the horror genre that sent chills down my spine and made me glad Schreck died in 1936 so he couldn’t come after me.
As it is, I spent a good deal of the movie checking the clock. That was a LONG 80 minutes.
It’s bad enough knowing the plot to the movie already, but then to make it a silent movie with the cue cards taking up valuable time, the music, the overacting, and the general meandering tone to the whole thing. . . . It just seemed like a really slow movie. It was probably done to create mood and drama, with Orlok, in his limited time onscreen, looming in the dark, or taking ten minutes to perform an action that requires about 20 seconds, but it just dragged the movie down. And Orlok didn’t have much time, most of the movie was filled with the other characters. Ellen fretting over Hutter, Hutter wandering around being stupid. There was a 5 minute scene with Professor Bulwer showing his class how a Venus Fly Trap gathers its food. And since that was pretty much the extent of the Professor’s involvement in the plot, I think we could have lost that scene and not noticed.
I tried to love NOSFTERATU. I’m sure in 1922 it really was startling with its gaping stop-motion effects and hideous villain. And I’m not one who demands constant action or fast MTV editing. Just give me a story that isn’t entirely predictable at a decent pace with good acting. NOSFERATU, in 2008 anyway, fails on most counts.
I’ll give the movie credit for adding to the vampire mythology. Before NOSFERATU, vampires eschewed the daylight, but they could tolerate it. It was only from NOSFERATU on that it was decided sunlight could kill a vampire. Murnau’s movie also stands out in that the vampire isn’t the suave romancing aristocratic type, but instead looked more vermin than man. So for these innovations to the myth I salute it with 3 stars. But I’m still disappointed that, in 1922, before every writer and his brother had written all there was to write about the vampire, a more original story hadn’t been conceived. Or at least a better movie made from it.
*After the Stoker suit, some subsequent versions of the movie were released with all title cards replaced to reflect the original Stoker character names. This is the copy I saw, although for this review I’m using the names supplied by screenwriter Henrik Galeen.
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