Development of the Film: An Interpretive History

With events such as the remake of "Nosferatu" (1922) called "Shadow of the Vampire" (2001), It is good to have another's view on what makes the film so great. Alan Casty describes the movie as: "F.W. Murnau did 'Nosferatu' (1922), with a script by Henrik Galeen, who had worked with Wegener. While the latter is more strictly a horror film, vampire-concurred-by-courage-and-love variety, it is the most cinematically imaginative and artistic of all the versions of Dracula, at times a striking embodiment of nightmare images. Woods became a maze of white trees against a black sky, stop-motion gives a coach's journey a phantomlike quality, a spectral ship glides over hot, glowing waters, and, with the overlapping images if a cross-dissolve, the vampire is dissipated into the sunlight of morning. And in most cases Murnau does start with the physically literal and real as his raw material for fantasy." You can imagine what the rest of his descriptions are like, as most of the world of silent films is interpreted in his book.