Nosferatu Essay

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) is a groundbreaking film of its kind. As a German horror film, the vampire movie is one of the earliest of its genre. The film is based on Bram Stocker’s 1897 book Dracula. In Nosferatu, Murnau created some of the most detailed images in German expressionist cinema during the Weimar years. Nosferatu’s shadow ascending their stairs toward the woman who awaits him evokes an entire era and genre of filmmaking. There are vivid scenes in the film when Nosferatu’s ship glides into the harbor with its freight of coffins, rats, sailor’s corpses and plague are some the most recognizable details of Murnau’s film. Much of the scenes in Nosferatu were shot in an interesting manner and held significant meaning to the film. The location shooting used so effectively by Murnau was rarely seen in German films at the time. It is the purpose of this paper to detail and analyze Murnau’s film Nosferatu and how it applies to a historical context. This paper will discuss the film Nosferatu, the theme of death and how it is
Murnau was one of the top Expressionist filmmakers. Expressionism sought to convey subjective emotion based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions rather than a strictly realistic view. Murnau’s cinema mainly focuses on empty space/negative space, which creates a sense of isolation or loneliness. German films were mainly associated with expressionism mainly because of their “self-conscious stylization of décor, gesture, and lighting.” Part of the reason for this trend was that Germany was financially ruined after World War I, and German movie studios simply did not have the money to create realistic-looking sets and costumes for lavish period pieces and historical epics, which is what Hollywood was into in those days. The strangeness of space and shadows in Nosferatu is massive. However, Murnau’s usage of shadows throughout the film continues to be replicated in cinema