Nosferatu F. W. Murnau

The studio behind Nosferatu, Prana Film, was a short-lived silent-era German film studio founded in 1921 by Enrico Dieckmann and occultist artist Albin Grau,[1] named after a Theosophical journal which was itself named for the Hindu concept of prana.[4] Although the studio's intent was to produce occult- and supernatural-themed films, Nosferatu was its only production,[25] as it declared bankruptcy shortly after the film's release.

Grau claimed he was inspired to shoot a vampire film by a war experience: in Grau's apocryphal tale, during the winter of 1916, a Serbian farmer told him that his father was a vampire and one of the undead.[26] As a lifelong student of the occult and member of Fraternitas Saturni, under the magical name of Master Pacitius, Grau was able to imbue Nosferatu with hermetic and mystical undertones. One example in particular was the cryptic contract that Count Orlok and Knock exchanged, which was filled in Enochian, hermetic and alchemical symbols. Grau was also a strong influence on Orlok's verminous and emaciated look[27] and he also designed the film’s sets, costumes, make-up and the letter with the Enochian symbols. Grau’s visual style was also deeply influenced by work of the artist Hugo Steiner-Prag who had illustrated other texts with esoteric subjects such as Gustav Meyrink’s Golem and E. T. A. Hoffmann’s Die Elixiere des Teufels (1907).[28]

Diekmann and Grau gave Henrik Galeen, a disciple of Hanns Heinz Ewers, the task to write a screenplay inspired by the Dracula novel, although Prana Film had not obtained the film rights. Galeen was an experienced specialist in dark romanticism; he had already worked on The Student of Prague (1913), and the screenplay for The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920). Galeen set the story in the fictional north German harbour town of Wisborg. He changed the characters' names and added the idea of the vampire bringing the plague to Wisborg via rats on the ship. Galeen's Expressionist style screenplay was poetically rhythmic, without being so dismembered as other books influenced by literary Expressionism, such as those by Carl Mayer. Lotte Eisner described Galeen's screenplay as "voll Poesie, voll Rhythmus" ("full of poetry, full of rhythm").[29]

Actor Conrad Veidt was offered the role of Count Orlok, he previously already worked with Murnau, yet he had to decline for scheduling reasons. In the search for an alternative the choice finally fell on the then-still-unknown actor Max Schreck.[30]

Filming began in July 1921, with exterior shots in Wismar. A take from Marienkirche's tower over Wismar marketplace with the Wasserkunst Wismar served as the establishing shot for the Wisborg scene. Other locations were the Wassertor, the Heiligen-Geist-Kirche yard and the harbour. In Lübeck, the abandoned Salzspeicher served as Nosferatu's new Wisborg house, the one of the churchyard of the Aegidienkirche served as Hutter's, and down the Depenau a procession of coffin bearers bore coffins of supposed plague victims. Many scenes of Lübeck appear in the hunt for Knock, who ordered Hutter in the Yard of Füchting to meet Count Orlok. Further exterior shots followed in Lauenburg, Rostock and on Sylt. The exteriors of the film set in Transylvania were actually shot on location in northern Slovakia, including the High Tatras, Vrátna dolina, Orava Castle, the Váh River, and Starý Castle.[31] The team filmed interior shots at the JOFA studio in Berlin's Johannisthal locality and further exteriors in the Tegel Forest.[1]

For cost reasons, cameraman Fritz Arno Wagner only had one camera available, and therefore there was only one original negative.[32] The director followed Galeen's screenplay carefully, following handwritten instructions on camera positioning, lighting, and related matters.[29] Nevertheless, Murnau completely rewrote 12 pages of the script, as Galeen's text was missing from the director's working script. This concerned the last scene of the film, in which Ellen sacrifices herself and the vampire dies in the first rays of the sun.[33][34] Murnau prepared carefully; there were sketches that were to correspond exactly to each filmed scene, and he used a metronome to control the pace of the acting.[35]