Directed by F.W. Murnau with the great Max Schreck as Count Orlok
Watching Nosferatu again makes me rethink my allegiance to zombies. (Don’t worry George Romero, you’re still my favorite.)
Well, it’s October and that means I’m on a horror movie bender. Max Schreck’s Count Orlock is the most lovable creep. Here’s another film that has been restored since I first saw it. I’m on the fence about the color tinting - it distracts me as I am constantly trying to figure out what the colors signify. Mostly though, I think I am just attached to my memory of the darkness of this film in black and white. The scene that I remember most is the ghostly unmanned ship containing Orlok and his coffins filled with black plague earth sailing into the unsuspecting port. Haunting and beautiful. My memory gave much more screen time to this scene than there actually is. Perhaps I am compounding my memory of this filmed scene with the same from Bram Stoker’s Dracula which I read a few years ago while in Sligo, Ireland (a great fucking book, by the way). This time with Nosferatu, I was compelled by the visually stunning windswept scenes of Hutter’s wife Ellen at the seashore awaiting her lover - ah, but which one?