Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror

Devil's Advocates #16

by Cristina Massaccesi

Nosferatu – A Symphony of Horror, directed by German director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau in 1922, is not only regarded as one of the most intriguing and disquieting films to have been produced during the years of Weimar cinema but is also a key step in establishing the vampire as a cinematic figure and in shaping its connection with our subconscious fears and desires. In her analysis of this hugely influential film, Cristina Massaccesi unravels the never-ending fascination exercised by the film over generations of viewers and filmmakers whilst at the same time providing the reader with a clear guide about the film’s contexts, cinematography, and possible interpretations, covering the political and social context of the Weimar Republic and its film industry, the German Expressionist movement, the film’s production, reception and difficult initial release. The book also includes the results of a lengthy interview between the author and E. Elias Merhige, director of the Nosferatu homage, Shadow of the Vampire (2000).

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Horror

129 pages, Kindle Edition

First published December 1, 2015

About the author

I was born in Ortona near Pescara, on Italy’s Adriatic coast, and I moved to London in 2000 for my postgraduate studies. I completed my PhD in Italian Studies, with a thesis on postmodernity and intertextuality in the work of the Italian writer Pier Vittorio Tondelli, at UCL in 2007 and I hold an MA in History of Film and Visual Media from Birkbeck College London.
I have always loved film and comics, and my teaching and research interests are now entirely focused on the areas of Film Studies and Sequential Art.
My interest in specific cinematic genres, such as horror and science fiction, gave me the chance to work on films not connected to Italian cinema. I have recently published a book on F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (Auteur, 2016), the first (unofficial) adaptation of Dracula released in 1922, at the height of German Expressionism. I am currently working on another book focusing on an example of ‘hybrid sci-fi’: James Cameron’s Aliens that has recently celebrated its 30th anniversary (it was released in 1986).
I'm also a freelance translator. After working for many years with film festivals and academic publishers, I've recently (and very happily!) started working as an English to Italian translator for Dreamspinner Press and Less Than 3 Press.

Reviews

[kumori]

From the very beginning of its creation, vampires in gothic literature like Polidori’s Lord Ruthven, Le Fanu’s Carmilla, and Stoker’s Dracula has always been associated with sexuality and it follows that Nosferatu/Count Orlok is no exception. While film critics could only speculate and theorize about what the original Ellen feels toward Count Orlok, similar with the previous film studies, in this book it is said that a suggestion exists, a subtle clue that Ellen and Thomas has never/has yet consummated their marriage which then makes her perfectly qualify not only as a sacrificial victim but also as a virginal bride who can destroy the vampire through her purity. And because of her psychic bond with Count Orlok and her awareness of him, she is the only one who is capable to integrate the conscious self with the (collective) unconscious self which embodies by Count Orlok and then to achieve wholeness of self through her sacrifice by keeping Count Orlok with her until dawn. It is also an act of self-assertion on her part, to finally liberate herself from an oppressive and stifling life because of the need to conform to a respectable bourgeois society.

The focus of Egger’s Ellen in his remake then, is for her to take the full brunt of her repressed shame and desires in the shape of Count Orlok who comes back to her life again not long after she married Thomas. Her melancholic morbidity tied in with early Freudian reading in 1931 about the connections between vampire and sexuality which stated that morbid dread always signifies hidden sexual longings. And not only as an embodiment of Ellen’s unbridled primal sexual urges, (demonstrated by one of her dialogue where she taunted Thomas “You could never please me as he could” while kneeling at his feet), Count Orlok also acted as a catalyst to her sexual awakenings, he took her innocence at their first encounter and Ellen said “At first it was sweet, I had never known such bliss. Yet it turned to torture, it would kill me” but when Count Orlok started to sexually assaulted her that’s when she finally knew to fear him, yet such transgression is also a source for pleasure (just like what happened with Jonathan Harker and Dracula’s brides or with Mina and Dracula in the book) nevertheless it shamed her and she felt unclean because it’s not normal nor proper for a woman of her time to have felt such things.

And even though she tried to bury her shame (a.k.a Count Orlok), he kept haunting her in dreams, she said “He stalks me in my dreams, all my sleeping thoughts are of him, every night–“ and when Count Orlok reappeared in the flesh, that attraction and repulsion, fear and desire for him once again at war within her. But i would argue that there’s no love at all involved, it’s just a mutually raw sexual lust and obsession between them. For one thing, Count Orlok said that he cannot love, that he is nothing more than an appetite, which actually means Ellen’s own appetite (?) and i think Ellen does love Thomas genuinely. When things eventually come to a head, Ellen decided to surrender to Count Orlok for the sake of a greater good, and for the last time to deny herself his embrace no longer, to finally unite with her death personified, her demon lover, her shadow-self once and for all and neutralized it when the day breaks then to kill them both in the process but at least finally she can be at peace just like what she told Thomas of her dream where she felt
“…But I had never been so happy as
that moment... as I held hands with
Death”

[Viola · Rating 4 out of 5]

Obligāta lasāmviela visiem "Nosferatu" filmas faniem.

[David Stephens · Rating 4 out of 5]

For anyone who enjoys the merging of art, pop culture, and scholarly analysis as much as I do, this little gem of a book series will be a wonderful surprise. Cristina Massaccesi investigates the many phantoms that lurk within and all around F.W. Murnau's foundational vampire classic. She begins with background on the poor economic conditions of the Weimar Republic against which, almost inexplicably, phantasmagoric films like this emerged.

She describes the Expressionist art groups like Der Blaue Reiter and Die Brucke that had a clear influence on Murnau's style. As is characteristic of many of the German Expressionist films, many shots show stark contrasts between light and dark and characters emerge from the shadows like a painting slowly coming to life. One particularly interesting example of this is the shot of Nosferatu slowly crossing a river, coffin in hand. It harkens back to Arnold Bocklin's painting, Isle of the Dead, with its lone figure wading before a darkly shadowed island.

She also discusses how Florence Stoker demanded that all copies of the film be burned. Not only was the story an unauthorized version of her late husband's novel, Dracula, the art form of film was still one without cultural prestige that she didn't want to be associated with.

And, of course, Massaccesi explores the film itself. She follows Noel Carroll's "complex discovery plot" with its four main features of onset, discovery, confirmation, and confrontation. This allows her to illustrate where the film coincides with the mainstream of horror stories as well as where it diverges, which is primarily the confirmation stage since Hutter strangely never tells his wife that he has witnessed and been held captive by a vampire that is currently making its way to Wisborg and quite possibly for her.

Her analysis emphasizes moments that are fairly obvious, yet still worth emphasizing. The cross cutting between Nosferatu's attack on Hutter and Ellen's somnambulism shows the bizarre connection the two characters have. Also, the low angles of Nosferatu aboard the Empusa reinforce his towering gothic stature. However, her analysis also teases out details I had carelessly overlooked, such as the tension that exists between Hutter and his wife. Not only does she respond badly to the flowers he gets for her, a door frame rests in the background right in between the two, showing a physical barrier between them. He begins the film by vainly looking in a mirror of himself while she longingly looks out a large window. He often runs feverishly while she stays nearly motionless. Even if the two truly love each other, they can't quite find a way to connect.

Massaccesi also does a great job commenting on the many liminal spaces that exist in the film. There are a number of doorways, arches, and bridges that could possibly serve as portals from the real world into the tenebrous world of phantoms. Not knowing where the line exists between reality and fantasy makes the film all the more haunting.

Considering how short this book is, it's impressive that it's able to cover such a broad range of topics and pull from a wide array of existing scholarship. However, the overall analysis never feels complete. It touches on interesting issues and rarely fails to be engaging, but just like a carriage speeding through the woods, it often moves on too quickly. Nevertheless, it still makes me want to seek out the rest of the books in this series.

[David Klingenberger · Rating 4 out of 5]

This history is also a well-done, close reading of the film.