Echoes of the Undead

🏰 The Journey to Orlok's Lair

The narrative commences in 1838 within the fictional German town of Wisburg. Thomas Hutter, an estate agent, is dispatched to Transylvania by his eccentric employer, Herr Knock, to finalize a property acquisition with the enigmatic Count Orlok. During his arduous journey, Hutter encounters locals who are visibly terrified by the mere mention of Orlok's name. He also discovers a book on vampires, which he initially dismisses but retains. Upon reaching Orlok's remote Carpathian castle, Hutter is greeted by the Count. An accidental cut on Hutter's thumb during supper reveals Orlok's unsettling fascination with blood, a moment Hutter attributes to a strange custom.^[9]

🩸 The Vampire's Gaze

Hutter awakens to find mysterious punctures on his neck, which he rationalizes as mosquito bites. As Orlok finalizes the purchase of a house directly opposite Hutter's residence in Wisburg, his gaze falls upon a miniature portrait of Hutter's wife, Ellen. Orlok's chilling remark about her "lovely neck" foreshadows his sinister intentions. Hutter's growing unease is confirmed as he delves into the vampire book, realizing Orlok's true nature. Terrified, he attempts to barricade his room, but Orlok effortlessly enters, causing Hutter to fall unconscious. Simultaneously, Ellen in Wisburg sleepwalks, sensing her husband's peril, and her cry for Hutter's name mysteriously causes Orlok to retreat.^[9]

🚢 The Plague Ship

Hutter discovers Orlok resting in a coffin within the castle vault and flees, sustaining injuries. He eventually makes his way home. Meanwhile, Orlok loads his coffins onto a schooner, concealing himself in the last one. The ship's crew succumbs to a mysterious illness, and Orlok assumes control. Upon its arrival in Wisburg, Orlok disembarks unnoticed, carrying a coffin, and takes residence in his newly acquired house. A devastating plague, attributed by local doctors to rats from the ship, sweeps through the town, causing widespread death. Herr Knock, Hutter's employer, descends into madness and escapes a mental asylum, further fueling the town's panic.^[9]

🌅 Sacrifice and Dawn

Against Hutter's pleas, Ellen reads the vampire book, learning that a pure-hearted woman can destroy a vampire by distracting him with her beauty and offering her blood until dawn. Ellen resolves to sacrifice herself. She feigns illness, sending Hutter to fetch Professor Bulwer. As Orlok enters her room and drinks her blood, the rising sun's rays strike him, causing him to vanish in a puff of smoke. Knock, still in his asylum cell, senses Orlok's demise. Ellen, having fulfilled her sacrifice, lives just long enough to be embraced by her grief-stricken husband. The film concludes with the haunting image of Orlok's castle, now destroyed, signifying the eradication of the ancient evil.^[9]

👽 The Other

Nosferatu is frequently analyzed for its profound themes concerning the fear of "the Other," a concept potentially inherited from Bram Stoker's Dracula.^[10] Count Orlok's distinct physical appearance—characterized by a hooked nose, elongated claw-like fingernails, and a prominent bald head—has drawn comparisons to stereotypical caricatures of Jewish people prevalent during the film's production era.^[11] Furthermore, his features have been likened to those of a rat or a mouse, animals with which Jewish people were often pejoratively associated.^[12][13]

Orlok's desire to acquire property in the German town of Wisburg, a departure from London in the novel, has been interpreted as exploiting the anxieties of the German populace regarding external threats. Professor Tony Magistrale noted that the film's depiction of an "invasion of the German homeland by an outside force [...] poses disquieting parallels to the anti-Semitic atmosphere festering in Northern Europe in 1922."^[14] The arrival of Orlok's ship, bringing a swarm of plague-spreading rats—a significant deviation from the source novel—further reinforces the association of Orlok with rodents and the "Jew as disease-causing agent."^[13][15] It is also noteworthy that Orlok's accomplice, Knock, a Jewish realtor, acts as a "fifth column" within the Biedermeier town of Wisburg.^[16] However, some scholars, considering director F. W. Murnau's personal relationships and his own identity as a homosexual, suggest that any perceived antisemitic associations were likely unintentional on his part.^[13][17]

🔮 Occultism

Murnau and producer Albin Grau imbued Orlok with a demonic lineage and an occult origin, portraying him as a creation of Belial, one of the Satanic archdemons. Belial, associated with pestilence in Psalm 41:8–10, directly links Orlok to the manifestation of contagion, with rats pouring from his coffins to spread the Black Death in Wisburg. This connection to Belial is significant, as Belial is traditionally summoned by Goetic magicians, implying Orlok's practice of dark sorcery prior to his vampiric transformation.^[18]

The communication between Orlok and his servant Knock is conducted in an occult language, with their contract inscribed in Enochian, a constructed language believed to be that of angels, documented by English occultist John Dee and alchemist Edward Kelley in the late 16th century.^[18][19] Professor Bulwer, a character in the film, is named in homage to the English occult novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton.^[19] The film also draws from the alchemist Paracelsus's ideas of astral entities causing epidemics that necessitate blood sacrifices, a concept embodied by Professor Bulwer's "Paracelsian" nature and Ellen's ultimate sacrifice to destroy the dark entity responsible for the plague.^[20]

⚔️ Echoes of War

The genesis of this vampire film is deeply rooted in the wartime experiences of its creators. Producer Albin Grau's inspiration stemmed from an encounter with a Serbian farmer during World War I, who believed his father had become an undead vampire.^[24] Director F. W. Murnau also saw extensive action, serving as a company commander on the Eastern Front and later in the German air service, surviving at least eight crashes. Max Schreck, who portrayed Count Orlok, also served in the trenches, and colleagues noted his reclusive nature and preference for solitude, suggesting possible post-traumatic stress disorder. The turmoil of 1920s Germany and the profound war-time experiences of the production team are thus considered to have significantly shaped the film.^[21]

Lotte Eisner, an occultist, observed that "Mysticism and magic, the dark forces to which Germans have always been more than willing to commit themselves, had flourished in the face of death on the battlefields." Grau himself explicitly linked the war and vampires, describing the conflict as a "monstrous event that is unleashed across the earth like a cosmic vampire to drink the blood of millions and millions of men." The connection between Belial, war, and contagion is further emphasized by Orlok's direct link to the Black Death, and many critics have drawn parallels between the film's disease-bearing rodents and the transmissible sicknesses rampant in the rat-infested trenches of World War I. Psychoanalytic studies by Ernest Jones also note the proliferation of vampire legends during periods of mass contagion.^[22]

🎻 The Lost Original Score

The original score for Nosferatu was composed by Hans Erdmann and performed by an orchestra at the film's Berlin premiere. Regrettably, the majority of this score has been lost, with only a partial adapted suite surviving.^[1] This absence has opened the door for numerous composers and musicians to create or improvise their own soundtracks to accompany the film throughout its long exhibition history.

🎹 Modern Interpretations

The film's enduring appeal has inspired a diverse range of musical interpretations. James Bernard, renowned for his scores for Hammer horror films, composed a score for a reissue.^[1][38] Musicologists Gillian Anderson and James Kessler undertook a reconstruction of Erdmann's original score, released in 1995, with missing sequences composed in a matching style. Other notable contributions include a version scored by the doom metal band Type O Negative (1998) and a new score by Dutch composer Jozef van Wissem (2022), which progresses from solo lute to electric guitar and distorted recordings of extinct birds, culminating in "dense, slow death metal." In October 2023, the Louisville Orchestra premiered a new score for full orchestra and piano, commissioned from Sebastian Chang, performed live with the film.^[39][40]

🔄 Reimagining the Legend

The enduring power of Nosferatu has inspired several remakes and reinterpretations, each offering a unique perspective on Murnau's original vision.

• Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979): Directed and written by Werner Herzog, this remake starred Klaus Kinski. While based on the 1922 film, Herzog's version reverted to using the character names from Bram Stoker's novel.^[56]
• Nosferatu (2023): Director David Lee Fisher's remake, featuring Doug Jones as Count Orlok, premiered in November 2023. This adaptation innovatively utilized green screen technology to integrate colorized backgrounds from the original film with live-action performances.^[57][58]
• Nosferatu (2024): A remake by Robert Eggers, starring Bill Skarsgård as Orlok and Lily-Rose Depp as Ellen Hutter, with Willem Dafoe, Nicholas Hoult, and Emma Corrin also appearing. Principal photography concluded in May 2023, and the film was released in December 2024.^[60][61][62]

Earlier, in 1977, Spanish amateur filmmaker José Ernesto Díaz Noriega created a humorous and iconoclastic adaptation titled Manuscrito encontrato en Zarazwela or Nos fera tu la pugnete, which recontextualized the plot within the Spanish transition to democracy, renaming characters to political figures of the era.^[54][55]

📜 References