In 1922 the film premiered at the Berlin Zoo Nosferatu, a symphony of terror by FW Murnau. It was the first film adaptation of Dracula (1897), the novel in which Bram Stoker had told the story of the famous Transylvanian count and which has been the fundamental reference, and almost a synonym, for all vampires since its appearance. After the premiere of Nosferatu There have been countless films and fictions that have also adapted the novel and reinterpreted the vampire already in the era of talkies. Some as well-known and influential as Dracula (1931), directed by Tod Browning, with Bela Lugosi in the title role, which definitively established the image of the slicked-back aristocrat. That of Francis Ford Coppola, despite being titled Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), departed from the original in many aspects, but consolidated in the popular imagination its association with eternal love, and empathy with a bloodthirsty prince of the 15th century called Vlad Tepes, until then very little developed in fiction.
Nosferatu, by Murnau, the film of which a new film premieres this Wednesday remake directed by Robert Eggers, occupies a fundamental place in the vampire myth because, in addition to being one of the most interesting adaptations of Dracula From a cinematographic point of view, he also created an exceptional being that recovered the rawness of the vampires of the original folklore.
Nosferatu exploits the darker aspects of a type of revived monster that had become known in the 18th century in treatises and news. The La Felguera publishing house has just published the translation of one of those pioneering texts, Of the chewing of the dead in their graves, by Michael Ranft, including a stake with the book, just in case. After its appearance in the Age of Enlightenment, the vampire gradually took shape in the European imagination during the 19th century. In the plastic arts through Goya's engravings, for example, and in literature in pioneering novels and stories such as that of John William Polidori. The Vampyre (1819), exploited by Lord Byron.
Interest in the bloodsucker has not waned in 300 years, and talking about vampires almost always becomes an exercise in enumeration. Another proof of this is the anthology titled Vampiresan annotated edition just published by Akal, or The Shadow of Dracula. Anthology of vampire poems (Kingdom of Cordelia), also appeared in 2024. The crude vampires of the 18th century stories became softer as they entered the halls, and especially in the theater, where the image of the elegant and attractive vampire was established, which dominates the imagination until today. The performances that began in Paris even reached Madrid, where at least two versions were performed during the first half of the century at the Teatro de la Cruz. About one of them, Mariano José de Larra made a devastating criticism in 1834, for being an incomprehensible and dark work in the face of “our political vampires” so obvious that “you can see them coming.”
Noël Carroll says in his Philosophy of terror or paradoxes of the heart (Antonio Machado Libros) that “terrifying beings are usually associated with contamination—discomfort, disease and plague—and are usually accompanied by infectious parasites—rats, insects and the like.” It almost seems like he is listing the attributes of the vampire that Murnau built in Nosferatu. Perhaps it is no coincidence that it was released shortly after the outbreak of what is known as the Spanish flu and that it marks 100 years just after the outbreak of the Covid-19 epidemic.
Actor Max Schreck memorably played Orlok, the proper name used instead of Dracula in the film, and his performance has had a determining influence on the development of the monster's image, especially since the late 1970s. At that time, Along with a great wave of vampire films of all kinds, several productions coincided that revitalized the legacy of Nosferatu through the image of a vampire similar to this one. Werner Herzog's film Nosferatu, ghost of the night (1979), with Klaus Kinski playing the count, echoed Schreck's interpretation of Orlok. The adaptation of Stephen King's novel in the miniseries The Mystery of Salem's Lot (Tobe Hopper, 1979), with the character of Barlow played by Reggie Nalder, also recovered the same appearance of the primal vampire, wild and raw.
King himself said in his essay Danse Macabre (Valdemar) that the “strongly sexual undercurrents are, with complete certainty, one of the reasons why the films have maintained such a long-standing romance with the vampire”, and he saw in this rebirth of unpleasant Nosferatus coming full circle after the interval marked by the performances of Lugosi and Christopher Lee. For the Maine writer, the vampire represents codified sex, sex without sex, and because of that absence he will always continue to fascinate. Thanks to the films that continued Murnau's path, the most sinister aspects of folklore reappeared in the 20th century; but with the sexual ingredient incorporated along the way, in what the film critic Robin Wood described as a return of the repressed or a descent into hell, in an article significantly titled The Dark Mirror (The dark mirror).
To avoid paying royalties for Draculain addition to using the expression “Nosferatu” for the title—which also appeared in Stoker's novel as a synonym for vampire, although it has no translation and is due to a transcription error in the writer's sources—the proper names and names were changed. locations. In Hollywood Gothic, David J. Skal dedicated the chapter 'The English Widow and the German Count' to recounting the struggles of the wife of the late Bram Stoker who held the rights, Florence Balcombe, to control her husband's legacy and manage to destroy all copies of Nosferatu which had been executed without his approval. The ruling in his favor contributed to Murnau's vampire legacy remaining semi-hidden from the general public for decades, but it resurfaced after many years of surviving in partial versions and distorted copies in video stores and film libraries. Luciano Berriatúa had to dedicate years to the search, study and reconstruction of Nosferatu until achieving an “almost definitive” version in 2006.
As Berriatúa himself has said, Nosferatu It was not intended to be a version of Dracula (certainly not alone); but to use the basis of this novel to make the first occult film in history. The perfect medium to transmit, through a new language of shadows, the invisible relationships that weave reality. Nosferatu It was a version of Dracula, but I wanted to be much more than that. As vampirism is also a virus that moves from Transylvania to the city. Faced with the appearance of a progressive empathy with the vampire and the illusion of a possible understanding between humans and vampires, which was promoted in sagas such as the one started by Anne Rice in Interview with the vampireand that has been maintained to this day in others such as Dusk o True Blood, Nosferatuthanks to the combination of artistic sensitivity and hidden message, in addition to the indelible image of a horrible monster, develops the concept of the complex, inexhaustible and indestructible vampire, which will continue to fuel revisions like Eggers's and trying to overshadow the vampires of lounge.
