Thrice Told Tales: Nosferatu
17th February 2025
If Florence Stoker had had her way, I wouldn’t be writing this post. Bram Stoker’s widow tried to destroy all copies of the 1922 film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, and she was very nearly successful. She did have her reasons.
The film is very clearly a rip-off of Bram Stoker’s novel, Dracula. It’s a great novel, using the epistolary (letter writing) format very well. Not only can it still give a reader chills, it’s quite surprisingly a Christian story. Count Dracula as a character is still easily one of the most widely recognized characters in fiction.
Fred Saberhagen did a wonderful series of novels using Dracula as the protagonist.
German screenwriter Henrik Galeen and director F.W. Murnau made no effort to hide the fact that they were using the Stoker novel as a blueprint for their story. Not only is it a vampire story, but such plot elements as a real estate agent going to a foreign land, a death ship, and a Transylvanian count whose nemesis is a scholarly doctor are clear steals.
They did change names, such as Dracula becoming Orlock, but even the original credits acknowledge the debt to Stoker. They never officially sought permission or made payment to the Stoker estate. It was a naive but costly mistake.
Florence brought the filmmakers to court (I assume a German court), which ruled that all copies of the film were to be destroyed. Fortunately for cinematic history, not everyone followed the court order, and some copies survived. It is a black and white, silent film that holds up as a great work. The German Expressionist set design and cinematography are beautiful and unsettling. The villain, played by the mysterious actor Max Schreck, is hideous and imposing. (Another film worth watching is Shadow of the Vampire, a Gothic drama about the making of Nosferatu that theorizes that Schreck really was a vampire.) And the tale leads to a thrilling, sunlit conclusion.