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Silent 101Film 7 of 20
Nosferatu
Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens
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F.W. Murnau's 1922 Prana Film production is an unauthorized Dracula. Max Schreck's Count Orlok arrives in Wisborg with a cargo of rats. Greta Schröder and Gustav von Wangenheim are the couple who wait for him. Florence Stoker sued. In 1925 a German court ordered the negative and the prints destroyed. Copies had already left the country, which is why the film is still here. The shot people remember is not the face. It is the shadow on the stairs.
In three programmes
The camera is a carrier. Murnau shoots real hills, real water, a real ship, and lets Orlok infect them. The shadow on the stairs is the shot everyone remembers. The rats coming off the ship are the one that matters.
The one film here that goes outdoors, and the outdoors is worse. Orlok's shadow climbing the stairs is the image. The rats coming off the ship are the argument.
The Supernatural and the Occult
A contagion, not a seduction. Murnau puts real hills and a real ship around a figure that should not be walking and lets the landscape catch it. The shadow on the stairs belongs to no one you can see. The rats do the rest.
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