Nosferatu (1922)

***Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror*** (*Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens*) is a silent German Expressionist horror film from 1922. This movie is directed by F. W. Murnau and stars Max Schreck as Count Orlok, a vampire who preys on his estate agent's wife and brought the plague to their town. Nosferatu is an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel *Dracula*. The names of the characters and other details were changed from the novel, including Count Dracula being renamed Count Orlok. Despite these changes, Stoker's heirs sued over the adaptation, and a court ruling ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. Several prints of Nosferatu survived, however, and the film would eventually be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema and the horror genre.

## Synopsis

In 1838, in the fictional German town of Wisborg, Thomas Hutter is sent to Transylvania by his employer, estate agent Herr Knock, to visit a new client named Count Orlok who plans to buy a house across from Hutter's own home. While embarking on his journey, Hutter stops at an inn where the locals become frightened by the mere mention of Orlok's name.

Hutter rides on a coach to a castle, where he is welcomed by Count Orlok. When Hutter is eating dinner and accidentally cuts his thumb, Orlok tries to suck the blood out, but his repulsed guest pulls his hand away. Hutter wakes up the morning after to find fresh punctures on his neck, which he attributes to mosquitoes. That night, Orlok signs the documents to purchase the house and notices a photo of Hutter's wife, Ellen, remarking that she has a "lovely neck." Reading a book about vampires that he took from the local inn, Hutter starts to suspect that Orlok is a vampire. He cowers in his room as midnight approaches, with no way to bar the door. The door opens by itself and Orlok enters, and Hutter hides under the bed covers and falls unconscious. Meanwhile, his wife awakens from her sleep, and in a trance walks onto her balcony's railing, which gets his friend Harding's attention. When the doctor arrives, she shouts Hutter's name, apparently able to see Orlok in his castle threatening her unconscious husband.

The next day, Hutter explores the castle, only to retreat back into his room after he finds the coffin in which Orlok is resting dormant in the crypt. Hours later, Orlok piles up coffins on a coach and climbs into the last one before the coach departs, and Hutter rushes home after learning this. The coffins are taken aboard a schooner, where all of the ship's sailors and captain die and Orlok takes control. When the ship arrives in Wisborg, Orlok leaves unobserved, carrying one of his coffins, and moves into the house he purchased.

Many deaths in the town follow after Orlok's arrival, which the town's doctors blame on an unspecified plague. Ellen reads the book Hutter found, which claims that a vampire can be defeated if a pure-hearted woman distracts the vampire with her beauty. She opens her window to invite Orlok in, but faints. Hutter revives her, and she sends him to fetch Professor Bulwer, a physician. After he leaves, Orlok enters and drinks her blood, but starts as the sun rises, causing Orlok to vanish in a puff of smoke by the sunlight. Ellen lives just long enough to be embraced by her grief-stricken husband.
The last scene shows Count Orlok's destroyed castle in the Carpathian Mountains, symbolizing the end of his bloody reign of terror.

## Cast

* Max Schreck as Count Orlok
* Gustav von Wangenheim as Thomas Hutter
* Greta Schröder as Ellen Hutter
* Alexander Granach as Knock
* Georg H. Schnell as Shipowner Harding
* Ruth Landshoff as Ruth
* John Gottowt as Professor Bulwer
* Gustav Botz as Professor Sievers
* Max Nemetz as The Captain of The Empusa
* Wolfgang Heinz as First Mate of The Empusa
* Hardy von Francois as Mental Hospital Doctor
* Albert Venohr as Sailor Two
* Guido Herzfeld as Innkeeper
* Karl Etlinger as Student with Bulwer
* Fanny Schreck as Hospital Nurse

## External Links

* Nosferatu at Wikipedia
* Nosferatu at IMDb
* Nosferatu at the TCM Movie Database