Nosferatu (1922)

Cinema’s original vampire movie, this copyright-infringing adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula is one of the great classics of German expressionist cinema.

Two years after a (now lost) version of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Jekyll and Hyde story called Der Januskopf, F.W. Murnau turned to another giant of Gothic literature: Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Unlike the suave, moustachioed count of Stoker’s novel, Murnau’s Count Orlok is immortally embodied by actor Max Shreck as a bald and bulbous ghoul whose emaciated fingers cast fearful, flickering shadows.

Forsaking the highly stylised sets typical of German expressionist films such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), Murnau imparted a sense of dread to a real world of forests, mountains and open sea. Stoker’s widow sued the production company for its unauthorised adaptation, but the damage was done: the vampire had entered the jugular of popular cinema and the contagion is still with us a century later.

1922 Germany
Directed by
F.W. Murnau
Produced by
Albin Grau, Enrico Dieckmann
Written by
Henrik Galeen
Featuring
Max Schreck, Alexander Granach, Gustav von Wangenheim
Running time
89 minutes

Ranked in The Greatest Films of All Time poll

Sight and Sound

Who voted for Nosferatu

Critics

Nigel Andrews
UK
Roger Clarke
UK
David Cox
UK
Mihai Fulger
Romania
Pablo García Canga
Spain
Hans Langsteiner
Austria
Mathieu Macheret
France
Gabrielle Marceau
Canada
Wang Muyan
China/France
Ben Nicholson
UK
Tommi Partanen
Finland
Behzad Rahimian
Iran
Mohammed Rouda
UK
Philippe Rouyer
France
Michael Wedel
Germany

Directors

Jack Bond
UK
Robert Eggers
USA
Norbert Pfaffenbichler
Austria

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