Nosferatu [Ultimate Edition] [2 Discs]

MOVIE DESCRIPTION:

F. W. Murnau's landmark vampire film Nosferatu isn't merely a variation on Bram Stoker's Dracula: it's a direct steal, so much so that Stoker's widow went to court, demanding in vain that the Murnau film be suppressed and destroyed. The character names have been changed to protect the guilty (in the original German prints, at least), but devotees of Stoker will have little trouble recognizing their Dracula counterparts. The film begins in the Carpathian mountains, where real estate agent Hutter (Gustav von Wagenheim) has arrived to close a sale with the reclusive Herr Orlok (Max Schreck). Despite the feverish warnings of the local peasants, Hutter insists upon completing his journey to Orlok's sinister castle. While enjoying his host's hospitality, Hutter accidently cuts his finger-whereupon Orlok tips his hand by staring intently at the bloody digit, licking his lips. Hutter catches on that Orlok is no ordinary mortal when he witnesses the vampiric nobleman loading himself into a coffin in preparation for his journey to Bremen. By the time the ship bearing Orlok arrives at its destination, the captain and crew have all been killed-and partially devoured. There follows a wave of mysterious deaths in Bremen, which the local authorities attribute to a plague of some sort. But Ellen, Hutter's wife, knows better. Armed with the knowledge that a vampire will perish upon exposure to the rays of the sun, Ellen offers herself to Orlok, deliberately keeping him "entertained" until sunrise. At the cost of her own life, Ellen ends Orlok's reign of terror once and for all. Rumors still persist that Max Schreck, the actor playing Nosferatu, was actually another, better-known performer in disguise. Whatever the case, Schreck's natural countenance was buried under one of the most repulsive facial makeups in cinema history-one that was copied to even greater effect by Klaus Kinski in Werner Herzog's 1979 remake - Nosferatu the Vampyre. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

DVD FEATURES:

• Number of Discs: 2
• Audio: Dolby Digital Stereo
• Screen: Tint
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1 (Pre-1954 Standard)
• Features:
  • View the film with newly-translated English intertitles or the original German intertitles (with options English subtitles)
  • Hans erdmann's original 1922, available in 5.1 stereo surround or 2.0 stereo
  • The Language of Shadows: The Early Years and Nosferatu; a 52-minute documentary
  • Nosferatu: An Historic Film Meets Digital Restoration; a 3-minute documentary
  • Lengthy excerpts from other films by F.W. Murnau: Journey Into the Night (1920), The Haunted Castle (1921), Phantom (1922), The Finances of the Grand Duke (1924), The Last Laugh (1924), Tartuffe (1925), Faust (1926), and Tabu (1931)
  • Photo gallery
  • Scene comparison

AWARDS

• Telluride Film Festival

•     Film Presented - 2000

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

• Cast:

  
       Max Schreck - Graf Orlok, Nosferatu
       Alexander Granach - Knock
       Gustav von Wangenheim - Hutter, His Employee
       Greta Schroeder - Ellen Hutter
       G.H. Schnell - Harding, Shipowner
       Ruth Landshoff - Annie
       Albert Venohr - Seaman

• Director:

  F.W. Murnau

• Producer:

  Albin Grau, Enrico Dieckmann

• Screenwriter:

  Henrik Galeen

• Book Author:

  Bram Stoker

• Cinematographer:

  Gunther Krampf, Fritz Arno Wagner

• Composer (Music Score):

  Hans Erdmann

• Art Director:

  Albin Grau

REVIEW:

• The film that brought one of German cinema's masters to international attention, F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) is also one of the best screen versions of Dracula, even if the Bram Stoker source received no credit. Eschewing the elaborately artificial studio-bound sets that gave most German Expressionist films their luridly somber mood, Murnau used actual central European locations for his vampire tale, and he created a foreboding atmosphere through such cinematic techniques as negative exposures and stop-motion photography. Shot by Fritz Arno Wagner, the dramatic shadows and low angles that made Max Schreck's Dracula-esque vampire tower over his environs intensified the already frightening presence of Schreck's deathly vampire makeup. The effect of the low angles was not lost on Orson Welles and Gregg Toland when they made Citizen Kane (1941). Though some critics have noted that the stop-motion effects have not aged particularly well, Nosferatu's air of almost apocalyptic doom remains timeless, and Murnau's combination of real locations and a superhuman monster is a key precursor to, among others, Alfred Hitchcock's horror of the everyday and familiar. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi