Nosferatu - Two disc set

Starring: Gustav von Wangenheim, Max Schreck Director: FW Murnau Dvd Release: 22nd January, 2001 Number Of Discs: 2 Format: Box set, Black & White, Full Screen, PAL, Silent, Special Edition, Region 2 Encoding Subtitled In: English

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Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens is a German Expressionist film originally shot in 1922 by F,W. Murnau. He had wanted to film a version of Bram Stoker s Dracula, but his studio was unable to obtain the rights to the story. Murnau decided to film his own version & made only slight changes to the story. The resultant movie has many similarities to Stokers original tale. Dracula became Nosferatu & the names of the characters changed, with Count Dracula changed to Count Orlok. The role of the vampire was played by Max Schreck. Gustave Von Wagenheim, Greta Schroeder, Alexander Granach Stokers estate sued for copyright infringement & won. The court ordered all existing prints of Nosferatu destroyed, but a number of copies of the film had already been distributed around the world. These prints were then copied over the years, resulting in Nosferatu gaining a reputation as one of the greatest movie depictions of the vampire legend. This was the first & last, film of the production company Prana-Film GmbH.

DVD Extras: This two-disc set gives you the choice of watching Nosferatu in either a sepia-tinted version or the original black & white. Both, however, feature the same modern electronic music score by Art Zoyd.

The anonymous commentary track is a scholarly critical appraisal of the movie that exhaustively documents every aspect of it, from Murnau's aesthetic use of framing devices to the homoerotic subtext of the Hutter-Orlock relationship. In the Nosferatour featurette the movie's locations are shown as they are today, & there is also a look at the original artwork that served as Murnau's inspiration. Two text features provide a brief history of the vampire myth from Vlad the Impaler onwards, as well as a discussion of the controversy caused by the movie's release. Appropriately, a trailer for the John Malkovich-Willem Dafoe movie Shadow of the Vampire, which imagines that Max Schreck actually was a vampire employed by Murnau in his obsessive pursuit of verisimilitude, is also included.

Nosferatu ... the name alone can chill the blood!. F.W. Murnaus Nosferatu, released in 1922, was the first screen adaptation of Bram Stokers Dracula. Nearly 80 years on, it remains among the most potent & disturbing horror films ever made. The sight of Max Schrecks hollow-eyed, cadaverous vampire rising creakily from his coffin still has the ability to chill the blood. Nor has the film dated. Murnaus elision of sex & disease lends it a surprisingly contemporary resonance. The director & his screenwriter Henrik Gaalen are true to the source material, but where most subsequent screen Draculas were portrayed as cultured & aristocratic, Nosferatu is verminous & evil.

The films full title, Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens , reveals something of Murnaus intentions. Supremely stylised, it differs from Robert Wienes The Cabinet of Dr Caligari or Ernst Lubitschs films of the period in that it was not shot entirely in the studio. Murnau went out on location in his native Westphalia. As a counterpoint to the nightmarish world inhabited by Nosferatu, he used imagery of hills, clouds, trees & mountains . Its not hard to spot the similarity between the gangsters in film noir hugging doorways or creeping up staircases with the image of Schrecks diabolic Nosferatu, bathed in shadow, sidling his way toward a new victim. Heavy chiaroscuro, oblique camera angles & jarring close-ups, the devices that crank up the tension in Val Lewton horror movies & edgy, urban thrillers such as Double Indemnity & The Postman Always Rings Twice, were all to be found first in Murnaus chilling masterpiece.

Max Schreck was a German actor remembered today most for his lead role in Nosferatu. Along with Bela Lugosi & Christopher Lee, Schreck is considered among the classic portrayers of Dracula. He received his training at the Staatstheater in Berlin. He made his stage debut in Messeritz & Speyer & then toured Germany for two years appearing at theatres in Zittau, Erfurt, Bremen, Lucerne, Gera & Frankfurt. Schreck then joined Max Reinhart s celebrated company of performers back in Berlin. Many of Reinharts troupe made a huge contribution to the cinema. For three years between 1919 & 1922, Schreck appeared at the Kammerspiele in Munich whilst working on his first film Der Richter von Zalamea, adapted from a six act play, for Decla Bioscop. In 1922 he was hired by Prana Film for their first & only production, Nosferatu. The company declared themselves bankrupt after the films release to avoid paying copyright infringement costs to an irate Florence Stoker, the widow of Dracula author Bram Stoker.

Editors Choice: Nosferatu, View DVDology

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau was one of the most influential directors of the silent film era. He was one of a number of German film directors to take part in the expressionist movement that took root in German cinema during the 1920s & he directed a number of movies that were influential & remain widely seen among film scholars today. Much of Murnaus output from the silent era has been lost & only a few of his films survive today; film scholars acknowledge them as masterpieces. Murnaus most famous film is Nosferatu, an adaptation of Bram Stokers Dracula that caused Stokers estate to sue for copyright infringement. Murnau lost the lawsuit & all prints of the film were ordered destroyed, but bootleg prints were stored & preserved over time, so that Nosferatu is widely available in the present era. The film inspired Werner Herzog to remake the film in 1979. Nearly as important as Nosferatu in Murnaus filmography was The Last Laugh, written by Carl Mayer & starring Emil Jannings. Posters Of Faust

Editors Choice: Nosferatu, The Last Laugh, Faust, View DVDology

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