NOSFERATU: A SYMPHONY OF TERROR: DVD

SYNOPSIS:
An estate agent's clerk, Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim), in the city of Bremen leaves his bride Ellen (Greta Schroeder) to conduct business in the distant Carparthian mountains with an eccentric client named Graf Orlok (Max Schreck) who is looking for property. It's a long and hazardous journey, and the closer he gets to his destination, the more terrified are the people he meets. Orlok turns out to be more than just eccentric and his interest in Hutter's wife unsettles the terrified clerk.

Review by Andrew L. Urban:
The last time I saw the 1922 original on the big screen was in 2003 at the Sydney Opera House, as a special event in the Festival of Sydney, together with the 1925 Phantom of the Opera. Both were accompanied on the giant organ by Dennis James, a specialist in this line of work. It was a remarkable event, a powerful fusion of F W Murnau's dark images and the gothic grandeur of the grand organ.

As many film enthusiasts will know, a then little known actor called Max Schreck created the unforgettable vampire character in the film. Legends have grown around Max Schreck, fuelled initially by the fact that he was never seen on the set out of character or make-up. In the wonderfully entertaining and award winning, Shadow of the Vampire (made in 2000), Willem Dafoe recreates the character to haunting and chilling effect.

Schreck does indeed have a disturbing presence in the film, and while the PG rating reveals its relative safety (in today's terms), there is a darkness to the work that is nonetheless eerie. For all its dated look, Nosferatu remains a classic.

In a fight over copyright regarding the character, all known prints and negatives of Murnau's Nosferatu were destroyed under the terms of a lawsuit by Bram Stoker's widow. However the film subsequently surfaced in several countries and is as fascinating for its own history as it is as an unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.

January 31, 2008