Nosferatu [DVD]

Hutter is a German real estate agent newly married and extremely excited about his latest transaction, selling a property to the reclusive Herr Orlok, who lives in remote Transylvania. Despite the warnings of the local peasants and the imploring of his wife, Hutter travels to Orlok’s castle where he begins to suspect that his client may not be of this world. Orlok travels by boat to Bremen where he prepares to realise the evil intentions he nurses for Hutter’s beautiful young wife. Although the plot is quite close to that of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the emotional and intellectual emphases are different. The figure of Count Orlok resembling an animated corpse is far from Stoker’s well-groomed, demonic vampire and Nosferatu exhibits none of the shadow play of Caligari. Director Murnau showed how the fantastic film could gain from the use of real settings and the imaginative treatment of space. This feeling of landscape became a central element of the classic vampire film.