Batman Returns: ‘Nosferatu’ (2024)
A Remake of the 1922 F. W. Murnau Original by Robert Eggers
Like many of you, I have just seen the first trailer for the Robert Eggers remake of Murnau’s 1922 silent German expressionist masterpiece Nosferatu. To say I am very excited is probably the understatement of the year.
Murnau’s full title was Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror and is a silent film that with its overwhelmingly dark visualization of the Bram Stoker story — Dracula — through its manipulation of the aesthetic of full-blown German Expressionism provides an increasing sensory crescendo of approaching threat, diabolical fear, and an evil emanation still unsurpassed in the realms of fiction or cinema.
Murnau’s silent film was based on the Bram Stoker novel, but the title and character names were changed because Stoker’s widow charged, not unreasonably, that her husband’s estate was being ripped off. Even with several details altered, Stoker’s heirs sued over the adaptation, and a court ruling ordered all copies of the film to be destroyed. However, several prints of Nosferatu survived, and the film came to be regarded as an influential masterpiece of cinema and the horror genre.
Ironically, in the long run, Murnau was the making of Stoker as more than 30 films have resulted not to mention a regular output…
