Although it is true that Prana Films, the film company that produced
Nosferatu, was sued by the estate of Bram Stoker over copyright
infringement, it would be short-sighted to view the film simply as a
clumsy adaptation of the seminal vampire novel. Released about 25 years
after the first edition of Stoker's novel, Nosferatu uses the subject of
the foreign bloodsucking menace to deal with perceived threats and
devastating trauma that many Germans experienced at that time, shortly
after the ending of the "Great War". This war had confronted the involved
nations with horrors that had previously been unimagineable. In Germany a
whole generation of idealistic and unprepared young men went to fight in
the war, under direction of authorities from the older generation, only
to be brutally slaughtered on the battlefields, and later decimated by
influenza during the outbreak near the end of the war. "It will cost some
efforts, a little sweat, and perhaps a little blood", Knock says to
Hutter when enticing him to go to Count Orlok's castle in Transylvania
for a real estate deal. Hutter stands in for the "lost generation" of
WWI. The journey east that he undertakes with child-like enthusiasm for
adventure will be dramatically life changing. He will return home in a
catatonic state resembling shell shock.
With the end of WWI many Eastern European Jews fled westward and ended up
in Germany, The population there did not greet them with open arms, but
rather saw them as a threat and menace; the Other. This led to a surge in
anti-Semitism in Germany. Nosferatu, with his foreign features, and
emaciated body represents this menace and embodies the fear. He is the
threatening Other that brings chaos and destruction into the town.
Eventually he is not defeated by enlightened science (as in Dracula), but
by the fearless sacrifice of a woman.
The film ends on a hopeless note. The evil is defeated, but the town is
destroyed. In this expressionistic masterpiece, F. W. Murnau creates
haunting images. And while the histrionic acting of the main characters
may seem strange to a contemporary eye, the actors evoke an existential
fear that leaves a haunting impression, even for viewers in the 21st
century.
- Petra Watzke