Stummfilmfestival Karlsruhe

Saturday 10 February 2024, 8.30pm Closing Event
Nosferatu A Symphony of Horror
Germany 1921/22, 96 min. Director: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
Screenplay: Henrik Galeen
Cinematograpy: Fritz Arno Wagner
Cast: Max Schreck (Graf Orlok - Nosferatu), Alexander Granach (Häusermakler Knock), Gustav von Wangenheim (Knocks Angestellter Hutter), Greta Schröder (Ellen Hutter), Georg Heinrich Schnell (Reeder Harding - Westrenka) Ruth Landshoff Ruth Hardin - Lucy Westrenka), John Gottowt (Prof. Bulwer), Gustav Botz (Gemeindearzt Dr. Sievers), u. a.
Production Company: Prana-Film GmbH, Berlin copy: Blu Ray, Intertitles: German
Musical Accompaniment: Trio Transformer: Hui-Chun Lin (Violoncello), Klaus Roth (Percussion) and Sabine Zimmer (piano).
Synopsis: „Count Orlok seeks a residence in Wisborg. Knock, a real estate agent, dispatches Hutter, his secretary., to Orlok‘s remote in the Carpathian Mountains to offer him a property. As Orlok‘s guest, Hutter discovers his host sleeping in a coffin and flees, horrified. Meanwhile Ellen, his young wife at home , is plagued by terrifying dreams, so she is greatly relieved to see her beloved husband return unharmed. A ship arrives in Wisborg carrying a coffin, which contains Orlok - the vampire. Suddenly rats overrun the port city and plague spreads everywhere, killing countless residents ... (Weimar Cinema 1919 - 1933, New York, MoMA 2010) About the film: „Murnau‘s Nosferatu is a film about mass death and self-sacrifice. It works through the experience of the war a time when German society hat just begun to mourn its dead and commemorate their sacrifice. It is also the story of an undead vampire who sucks blood from the living. Even though the film‘s narrative draws heavily on Irish writer Bram Stoker‘s popular vampire novel Dracula, it is very much a German film of the postwar period. .... In one of the film‘s scariest scenes, Hutter is tempted to explore Nosferatu‘s habitat in the basement of the castle. Approaching a rough-hewn coffin, he suddenly faces the vampire staring at him from between two planks of the coffin, his huge animal fangs dominating the picture. He is half buried in dirt, an image reminiscent of Otto Dix‘s 1924 etchings of decomposting dead soldiers peering out from muddy trenches with open eyes. Being buried alive, which was one of the most frequent precipitants of shell shock, evokes the eerie ambivalence of a state between life and death. ...“ Anton Kaes, Shell Shock Cinema, Princeton, 2009, p. 98f und p. 106 Courtesy of the author