Nosferatu

I decided to start my film series with the first vampire film, FW Murnau's Nosferatu.

It's so good, I watched it twice, the first time was Image Entertainment's edition streamed on Netflix, the second time it was the Alpha Video edition.

Image was the better of the two videos. The print had been cleaned up and scenes tinted different colors depending on context. There was a new score, which complimented the movies nicely but it was a little new-agey for me. The intertitle cards were re-written, nicely calligraphed in a formal script, while excerpts from a book were done in Black Letter style.
Alpha, on the other hand, had "original" intertitles- sort of. Vintage title cards but they use the character names from Bram Stoker's Dracula- Harker instead of Murnau's Harker becomes Hutter, Mina becomes Ellen, and Count Dracula becomes Count Orlok. It's untinted, but the print is scratchy.

The score is closer to silent film style score than the Image edition.

All things considered, I preferred the Alpha edition because it seemed to capture the “feel” of watching a vintage movie, the Image version was, in my twisted estimation, too polished.

As for the movie it self, Murnau transports the Victorian Dracula story to the late 1830's Germany, costuming the characters in period dress. Since there was no Dracula image to draw upon- as so many horror films have done- Murnau's vampire wasn't the suave Eastern European nobleman, but a ratlike creature of the night. So much of the night, as a matter of fact, the Murnau sets a cinematic/literary precedent of sunlight destroying the vampire- a fatal flaw not seen in the Stoker novel.

Despite degradation in the quality of the film, and the dated silent film acting styles, Nosferatu endures on the strength of it's atmosphere, an all pervading sense of fear, and the amazing wordless performance of Max Schreck as Orlok.

But don't take my word for it, check it out here:

After I'd written this post, it occurred to me that the movie is kind of a fairy tale- don't go into the mountains, city man- you don't know what's out there. But he does, and brings back evil with him.

Or maybe I'm reading too much into it.