With Sunrise, Murnau Inverted the Nightmare of Nosferatu
Note: This is the hundred-and-eighteenth in a series of historical/critical essays examining the best in film from each year. Essentially, I am watching films from the beginning of cinematic history that interest me and/or hold some critical or cultural impact. My personal, living list of favorites is being created at Mubi, showcasing five films per year. All this being explained, what follows is an examination of my third favorite 1922 film, NOSFERATU, directed by F.W. Murnau.
Look, if I’m going to write about F.W. Murnau, I’m going to write about SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS (1927), one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen. I know I should truly be focused on NOSFERATU for this, an entire piece ostensibly on the landmark German horror film. But I think there’s a pretty incredible connection between it and the Hollywood drama, well, besides the obvious. As markedly different as you could claim NOSFERATU and SUNRISE are, both are defined by an ethereal quality that is nearly unmatched in the silent era. It’s just that SUNRISE, ironically, “twisted” the nightmare of NOSFERATU into a beautiful dream.
Both films are impossible to shake from the corners of my mind. They leave an impression that washes over me rather than provokes intellectual evaluation, with the sheer thought of the movies dragging up the emotional connection of their images. Of course, that won’t stop me from trying to capture that “intellectualism”, but many, many people have written about both pictures with incredible eloquence. However, the works of Murnau, in particular, provide some difficulty for me. They so perfectly embody the vision of cinema; their visual acuity is so strong, so defined and fully formed that words do them a disservice.
I’m just hand-wringing. I don’t mean to say NOSFERATU and SUNRISE don’t stimulate my mind. Quite the opposite. Look, as usual, Roger Ebert put it perfectly.
NOSFERATU remains effective: it doesn’t scare us, but it haunts us.
SUNRISE does the same. Well, obviously it doesn’t scare. But it still haunts, its emotional core springing into your mind with the thought of the fairground scenes and the mystical lakeside. NOSFERATU, years earlier, proved Murnau’s mastery at this immaculate influence, using the stark images of Count Orlac’s shadow on the stairs, his unmoving, lean, tall frame down the hall of his castle, the vampire’s magical rise from his coffin in the hold of the ship. These moments are chilling, if not through sheer fear, then certainly through an implication that you will never forget these sights.
I would also be disingenuous if I said NOSFERATU isn’t, like, spooky. Max Schreck’s bizarre, macabre vampire is iconic for a reason; the creature’s massive ears, its trailing fingers, its elongated fangs are unsettling. This was Schreck’s defining role. The actor died prematurely in 1936, at age 56, but has been immortalized not only by NOSFERATU itself, but the legends propagated by Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake and the 2000 “secret history” film SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE, funneled through both Klaus Kinski’s adaptation of the role and Willem Dafoe’s portrayal of the man himself.
Gustav von Wangenheim, an avowed communist who would later flee Germany for the Soviet Union and get into some troubling naming of names business during the Stalinist purges, played hero Thomas Hutter. Greta Schröder, the future wife of Paul Wegener, played his wife, Ellen. These roles would be their most notable.
Oh, and yeah, the release of NOSFERATU, the “first” Dracula adaptation, was full of troubles. As an unauthorized interpretation of Bram Stoker’s Victorian novel, the film swiftly became the subject of legal attention, and after playing for a short time, was ordered destroyed. This also sank the production company, Prana Film; NOSFERATU was to be its only production. Thankfully, a copy or two slipped through the cracks, and we still have access to this incredible, morbid meditation.
An attempted circumnavigation of the law ultimately didn’t help. Obviously, “Dracula” is not Dracula in NOSFERATU, and all of the other characters have their names changed as well. There are also some significant deviations from the novel, but of course, what kind of cinematic adaptation doesn’t take these steps? In spirit, and in all but name, NOSFERATU is an ode to the birth of vampirism, and therefore is in its own way the progenitor of a motion picture tradition.
It was also the start of Murnau’s genius. Previous efforts like THE HAUNTED CASTLE (1921) and THE BURNING SOIL (1922) were competent and clearly foreshadowed the director’s work in the future, but after NOSFERATU, Murnau would be on, essentially, an unbroken roll until his untimely death from a car accident in 1931, aged 42.
But I will be certainly come back to Murnau in the near future…as in next week, and for at least three times after that. In the meantime, sink into the darkness of NOSFERATU, but find the hidden light in the film’s refinement and sharpness. It’ll make the connection to SUNRISE: A SONG OF TWO HUMANS all the brighter, a perfect double feature from one of the great filmmakers.
