The eternal nightmare: How Nosferatu still haunts a century later

Even now, a full century since the unforgettable silent version of Nosferatu was released, the image of the vampire’s shadow mounting the stairs to his victim’s bedroom will haunt the dreams of anyone seeing it for the first time. Impossibly tall, claws extended, moving slowly at a time when film acting was generally accelerated and exaggerated, Max Schreck’s demonic Count Orlok was so vivid that the film was immediately banned in Sweden as too terrifying for the public, a rule that remained in place until 1972. At home in Germany, a persistent rumour had it that Schreck, an actor with Max Reinhardt’s troupe, really was a vampire.

To remake any classic takes bravery. It also demands reverence. That goes tenfold for Nosferatu: most directors couldn’t get away with so much as suggesting tampering with German expressionism’s crown jewels. This has created a huge sense of anticipation around the new Nosferatu directed by Robert Eggers, whose eerie, visionary films include The Lighthouse and The Northman. Lily-Rose Depp is the vampire’s prey, Nicholas Hoult is her new husband, and an unrecognisable Bill Skarsgard plays Count Orlok, whose sepulchral voice alone would be a justification for the talkies.

The original Nosferatu was closely based on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, which was a popular sensation when published in 1897. Nosferatu is an archaic Romanian word meaning “the insufferable one”; the producers renamed Stoker’s characters and relocated the story to Germany in an attempt, ultimately unsuccessful, to evade copyright laws. Yorkshire’s Whitby thus becomes the fictional Hanseatic city of Wisberg, from where budding estate agent Thomas Hutter – formerly Jonathan Harker – is sent to the Carpathians to sign over a valuable property to the mysterious, solitary Count Orlok.

At home in Wisberg, Ellen has seemingly going mad, desperate for her husband’s return; their friends Friedrich and Anna Harding care for her, finding her fits and moods increasingly burdensome. It is in the throes of a fit, however, that she senses not only her husband’s imminent return but a more ominous arrival at the Wisberg port. It is the plague ship Demeter, bringing with it a horde of infected rats and Count Orlok, now acting as captain and crew since everyone else on board is dead. Ellen knows he has come for her, his terrible fangs ready to bite.

Eggers shoots all his films in black and white, which gives his Nosferatu a superficial resemblance to the original; he also follows the story’s thread, adding conversation and nuances of performance that were not possible in a silent film. What is revolutionary in his approach, however, is to tell the story from Ellen’s point of view. Thomas’ journey to Romania and spine-chilling meetings with the count are still the heart of the narrative, but it is Ellen’s reactions – revealing her knowledge and understanding of this evil force, which has been pursuing her since she was a child – that convey what it means.

“I think it’s really powerful that Rob has moved Ellen’s experience into the foreground and sees it all from her perspective,” says Emma Corrin, who plays Ellen’s close friend, Anna Harding. Nobody believes Ellen; nobody takes her disturbances seriously. “I think something you really get is the male fear, not only of women’s sexuality but women’s mental health – and any kind of independent thought, independent experience that diverges from the norm. That was fascinating.”

It was also very much of its time. The first Nosferatu is often interpreted as a response to the turmoil of the First World War, but sanity, madness and wayward female sexuality were already being discussed in the 1890s. Notably, Sigmund Freud and Joseph Breuer published their breakthrough work Hysteria in 1895 – just two years before Dracula came out. By 1921, their ideas were common currency.

“I think a lot of our discussion on set was about the male and female dynamics of that time,” says Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who plays Anna’s husband Friedrich. “Friedrich Harding is very much the man of the house, a man of business who is the one who gets the doctor in. There is this young girl rolling around the floor with everything on show: how preposterous! And there is this erotic sexual thing happening in their household, a very safe bubble.” Hutter’s real mission in Romania is to earn enough to set up that kind of bourgeois haven himself. “That’s his aspiration, which we see crumble and fall amid this darkness.”

Besieged by madness, the encroaching spectre of the supernatural and the sudden spread of plague, the Hardings try to stay sensible. Corrin, who shot to stardom as the young Diana Spencer, is almost unrecognisable as the burgher’s wife. Eggers wrote each character’s history in an individual information pack; Corrin was fully informed of Anna’s strong Lutheran faith, conservative moral views and divided loyalties. “Increasingly, what she’s confronted by is the undeniable existence of something otherworldly, which doesn’t fit into her understanding of the world. So I think there is a vulnerability there.”

The set was a period piece in itself; even the drawers of the Hardings’ dresser contained letters they had once exchanged. Nobody would read them; it was enough to know they were there. “Rob’s so interested in the period, that’s at the forefront,” says Corrin. “He is such a historian in many ways, and the way he writes really reflects that, whether he’s writing in a particular dialect or a particular period.”

There was no room for improvisation or even the rogue raising of an eyebrow. “When you’re saying a line, he really wants you to say it the way he’s written it, and that can come down to not emphasising words that shouldn’t be emphasised,” says Corrin. “All the subtext you know about your character is there – and you will discuss that in immense detail – but then at the end of the day, what you’re saying is: ‘Children, it’s time for bed’. And putting it all into that line.”

Seeing the story through Ellen’s lens means that while she is still clearly tortured, she is not a mere victim. The count has chosen her because she has some kindred spirit in her; when, as a privileged but unloved child, she first hears his voice rasping on the wind through the window of her bedroom, she is immediately drawn to its promise of some other life. As an adult, she tries to be a good wife; she loves her husband. Whenever her resolve softens, however, the count’s voice finds her again, pressing for the union he believes is now his due. It is a constant, secret battle to ward him off. She isn’t mad; she is exhausted.

“Nosferatu is a metaphor for multiple things,” says Taylor-Johnson. “For Lily’s character, it’s almost like the darkness is shame: this perverse erotic shame she carries around with her that she has had as a child and brings into her adult life. Until you can figure that out and accept it, you can’t defeat it. I think we all go through growth and dealing with patterns like that, things we’re coming to terms with.”

When Henrik Galeen was writing the first Nosferatu, Europe was just emerging from the devastating epidemic of Spanish flu. “And we’d gone through a global pandemic together; it was kind of art mirroring reality and naming it. In Wisberg, there is a fear of plague, and this family trying to hold itself together. There’s so much reality and authenticity bouncing off all these things.”

However different in its perspective, there is no way the new Nosferatu can escape the context of the original, which had its own interesting history. It was released in 1922 amid tremendous fanfare and, in true Weimar style, a world-beating party. German critics were instantly enraptured, and the film shot the unknown director, F. W. Murnau, to prominence. By the time Murnau left Berlin for Hollywood in 1926, however, it had completely disappeared.

What happened is like a story in miniature of the movie industry, which was then new and reckless. The producers, an odd group of Theosophy enthusiasts whose goal was to make occult films, hadn’t bothered to seek copyright clearance from Bram Stoker’s estate; they thought they could wing it by just changing the characters’ names.

It didn’t work. Stoker’s widow Florence got wind of the lavish Berlin premiere and sued, insisting that all copies of the film be destroyed; Prana Film was bankrupted, and their slate of spooky films never came to be. Ironically, the fact that the film did survive, in bits and pieces that were later reassembled, was thanks to the loose disregard for copyright laws in Hollywood; nobody bothered about illicit reels of film in the Wild West. Various versions of the film have circulated since, still delivering those chills.

Florence Stoker did license other adaptations of Dracula as soon as 1924, when a stage version, later adapted for film, was a great success, setting her up comfortably for life. Subsequent Dracula figures, however, were very different from the count: suave and seductive, whereas Count Orlok was hollow-eyed, white-faced and weird. In 2011, German director Werner Herzog adapted it as Nosferatu the Vampyre with his muse Klaus Kinski as the count. Made in a fervent spirit of homage, it was well received by critics. Nothing, however, could touch Murnau’s original.

Nor will Bill Skarsgard’s Count Orlok eclipse the dreadful sight of Max Schreck staring at Hutter’s bedroom door, no doubt still tasting the blood he managed to lick from his guest’s cut finger at the dinner table. He is, however, truly horrible – huge, slimy, putrid and naked, launching into his prey like rotting meat on the move. In an era when CGI can deliver any kind of visceral nasty, edited into heart-stopping jump scares, neither Nosferatu is actually frightening. And yet, somehow, that old-school horror gets its teeth into you.

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