Creeping Shadows: Why 'Nosferatu' Still Holds Up 100 Years Later. There is only a handful of films a hundred years old or more that are still preserved, watched, and acknowledged as masterpieces.
That's right, F.W. Murnau's original classic vampire tale Nosferatu is over 100 years old, and to this day, it still delivers a more haunting world than most directors dare to today.
But the original Nosferatu almost vanished into celluloid history, because its screenplay was an unauthorized blatant rip of Bram Stoker's Dracula. That author's estate successfully sued for copyright infringement, with the result that the producers declared bankruptcy.
The film might have been lost forever had a small number of prints not made their way abroad. Florence Stoker successfully halted Nosferatu's London premiere in 1925 but not its American debut in 1929. See Can Copyright Infringement Kill a Vampire? for more on the legal battle over Nosferatu.
The problem is, Nosferatu director F.W. Murnau adapted the 1897 novel without permission from Stoker's estate. The film's producer, Albin Grau, was inspired to make a vampire movie after learning about the lore in Serbia while serving in World War I.
Nosferatu is not technically an adaptation of Dracula, in the sense that it was produced without the permission of Stoker's estate and changed the names of all major characters, as well as the setting and some of the story.
Bram Stoker's widow Florence successfully sued Nosferatu's production company for copyright infringement, and all prints were to be destroyed by court order.
These archetypes, each spawned by two early, competing film adaptations of Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula, re-contextualize Stoker's eponymous villain in entirely divergent ways. Nosferatu, F. W. Murnau's 1922 silent vampire film, begins with a declaration that it is adapted from Stoker's Dracula.
What horror movie is banned in multiple countries?
Cannibal Holocaust
Cannibal Holocaust's disturbingly realistic violence led to Deodato being charged with multiple counts of murder. He was later cleared of all charges, but Cannibal Holocaust was banned in several countries, including Italy, Australia, the US, Norway, Singapore, and Finland.
They usually have replacement American intertitles and are always in black and white; the film was originally color tinted throughout and only meant to be seen that way.
In Stoker's novel, sunlight weakens vampires, but that doesn't stop the title villain from walking around during the day. Nosferatu's fiery demise was added by the filmmakers to make the climax more visually interesting.
Just a few years after the first filmmakers emerged in the mid-1890s, Mellies created “Le Manoir du Diable,” sometimes known in English as “The Haunted Castle” or “ The House of the Devil,” in 1896, and it is widely believed to be the first horror movie.
Roundhay Garden Scene is a short silent motion picture filmed by French inventor Louis Le Prince at Oakwood Grange in Roundhay, Leeds, in Northern England on 14 October 1888. It is believed to be the oldest surviving film. The camera used was patented in the United Kingdom on 16 November 1888.
Jure Grando Alilović or Giure Grando (1578–1656) was a villager from the region of Istria (in modern-day Croatia) who may have been the first real person described as a vampire in historical records. He was referred to as a štrigon, a local word for something resembling a vampire and a warlock.
It contained many elements that were considered too shocking or in bad taste for the Victorian population. This included frank descriptions of blood, violence, and sexuality. Many readers were especially disturbed by the portrayal of Dracula's three brides and Lucy Westenra after she is transformed into a vampire.
Count Dracula is an undead, centuries-old vampire, and a Transylvanian nobleman who claims to be a Székely descended from Attila the Hun. He inhabits a decaying castle in the Carpathian Mountains near the Borgo Pass.
At the end of the film Nosferatu, Count Orlok is burned up by the sunlight after spending the entire evening with Ellen. In Stoker's Dracula, The sunlight was pretty much harmless to vampires. The idea of vampires being killed by sunlight has become very popular in the Vampire-verse.
They usually have replacement American intertitles and are always in black and white; the film was originally color tinted throughout and only meant to be seen that way.
"Nosferatu" has been presented as archaic Romanian word, synonymous with "vampire". However, it was largely popularized in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Western fiction such as the gothic novel Dracula (1897) and the German expressionist film Nosferatu (1922).
Meaning:Vampire. One of the most famous, creepy names over the centuries is Nosferatu. It is synonymous with the word "vampire," but it actually predates that word. Nosferatu was an archaic Roman word but it eventually was popularized in fiction with Bram Stoker's Dracula and the titular film.
So the original 1922 film with the original 1922 soundtrack is in the public domain. A derivative work based on the 1922 original is copyright. So if a publisher changed it by adding a new soundtrack, or colorized it, or did something else that adds value to the original, those changes are protected by copyright.
