Nosferatu

1
Nosferatu

• Please write for about 10 minutes on the
  following
• What is your greatest fear and why?

2
First Viewinga bit tedious

• At first viewing, Murnaus work can seem overlong
  and tedious given how little the modern audience
  is used to silent black and white films with long
  sequences.
• Yet to liken this Symphony of Horror to a
  vulgar vampire film or the hundredth adaptation
  of Bram Stoker's book Dracula would be a major
  error.

3
Directors Intent

• Despite its apparent simplicity, the film grows
  in scope in its use of suggestion and different
  degrees that hide behind a simple story that only
  serves as a vehicle for the directors
  intentions.

4
Nosferatu and Nazism

• The vampire symbolizes Hitler.
• Nosferatu leaves his country to spread his power
  abroad.
• His bite makes puppets of his victims, servants
  body and soul to their powerful master, blinded
  fanatics that represent the German people, while
  Knock, his servant abroad, is perhaps comparable
  to a collaborator.
• The rats the Count brings with him in his boat to
  propagate in the foreign county, carrying with
  them the plague, symbolize the Nazi ideology that
  spreads throughout Europe.
• Furthermore, this is confirmed when one knows
  that Nazism was also qualified as a black plague
  in its time.

5
Nosferatu and Painting (German Expressionist Art)

• Themes like ambivalence (subjectivity and the
  unconscious, mystery and imagination) as well as
  he idea of a double, the ambiguous, Gothic, and
  the communion between the artist and nature are
  omnipresent in the film.
• For the Romantics, portraits, reflections, and
  shadows blend into a single entity.
• The shadow, particularly important (as in the
  scene as he climbs the stairs), anticipates an
  imminent danger, embodies a sexual desire, and
  always betrays the killer in German cinema.

6
(No Transcript)
7
Gothic

• Primarily an architectural style that prevailed
  in western Europe from the twelfth through the
  fifteenth centuries, characterized by pointed
  arches, ribbed vaults, and flying buttresses,
  that made it possible to create stone buildings
  that reached great heights.

8
Gothic Qualities

• Gothic qualities are manifested in the physical
  characteristics of the vampire and in the
  architecture.
• Noseferatus bald oval head reflects the Gothic
  archways of his chateau, while his twisted body
  responds to the curves of the gate.
• His long nails symbolize the Easts despotism and
  correspond to the elongated lines of Gothic
  architecture. Finally, nature has a preponderant
  role, as important as a character. The stretches
  of land are the mental projections of the
  characters while the waves of the sea announce
  the imminent arrival of the count.

9
Nosferatu and Cinema

• Orlok's character is record of film's positioning
  facing other arts and in particular painting. The
  vampire is between death (immobility painting is
  a rigid art) and life (movement cinema is an art
  in motion). This duality also represents the
  technical evolution of art, cinema being the
  living form and the most advanced thanks to
  technological progress.

10
Nosferatu and Homosexuality

• The film conceals allusions homosexuality, taboo
  at that time, and reflects the repressed
  tendencies of the director. Hutter leaves his
  wife for the Count and the dinner scene at the
  chateau resembles a seduction scene where the
  young man succumbs fairly easily. The vampire's
  bite can also be considered as a forbidden kiss
  between two men.

11
Nosferatu and Globalization

• The film coincides with the beginnings of
  globalization and in particular the investment of
  foreign capital in the local economy. The Count,
  who is obviously a predator, here embodies the
  phenomenon of globalization, at that time
  considered a danger.
• www.taravangeons.com/yahoo_site_admin/.../Nosferat
  u.28353022.ppt