What Is Nosferatu An Example Of German Expressionism

The most obvious comparison between the novel Dracula and the film Nosferatu is its use of Jewish propaganda. The appearance and portrayal of Dracula includes a hooked nose, pointed ears and bushy eyebrows. This appropriation of Dracula reveals the fear of jews at the time and the disease and destruction that was feared that they carried. Most notably, the film’s title Nosferatu reveals its post-war isolation through the use of the German word for vampire. This shows that the film was created to appeal primarily to its German audience The dramatic use of contrast lighting and shadows, to the extent of painting shadows on backdrops, is evident and heavily used. This technique can be seen where Dracula is represented as a shadow (33:12). Throughout the film, Nosferatu reveals its context using a variety of

The story of Nosferatu is a tale of xenophobia that used heavy expressionism to display its stances. Without all of the expressionist elements for it, it would just be a bunch of people fearing migrant citizens as they don’t want their culture to be taken over by them. The added expressionism in the makeup, cinematography, acting, and set design added a more fearful and anxious tone to the film. The people of yesterday and today fear everything that Orlok stood for such as madness, disease, and lust as they still believe foreigners will bring all of those things to their home countries. The imagery in the film warned us about the power of Nosferatu and that he was something not to be tampered with. All of these techniques formed Murnau’s masterpiece film and it set the standard for the horror films of yesterday and today.

German Expressionism is a kind of art that is supposed to make you feel something. When you look at a painting such as “The Scream” by Edvard Munch (1863-1944), you ask yourself what kind of emotions does this painting give you. A group of early 20th century German artists used the term “expressionism” to desribe the way they produced art. The title later turned into “German Expressionism”. This art movement was prominent during 1905-1925. In German it is known as “Die Brucke” and “Der Blaue Reiter”. Unlike Impressionism, its goals were not to reproduce the impression by the surrounding world, but to express the artists feelings on the surrounding world. Expressionism comes from the route word “expression” which

The film M by Fritz Lang (1931) is a timeless masterpiece that not only reflects the fear and distrust present in German society after WWI, but also uses sound in ways it had never been used befor. M was made during a time of paranoia in Germany, set against the backdrop of a rapidly deteriorating Weimar Republic. The country was in the midst of heightened poverty due to unemployment and increasing criminal activity after the stock market crash of 1929. It was also a time where psychopathic serial killers were at large in German cities. In the film, the panic felt by the townspeople to try and catch the murderer, and the paranoia that it could be anyone among them, is reflective of the fearful emotions felt by the German people during the early 1930s. The use of high camera angles show the vulnerability and innocence of the children, the murderer’s victims. The use of shadows and reflections show that the murderer has two sides, and it is because of these two varying characters that he can walk amongst society unknown for what he is. For example, when the townspeople see a man telling a little girl what time it is, they immediately assume he must be the murderer. Because of their paranoia, they jump to conclusions,

FW Murnau’s 1921 film Nosferatu is an appropriation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula. Despite it being an appropriation, explicit gothic conventions remain evident, which explore societal fears and values. These fears and values differ from Dracula, due to distinct contextual influences of different time periods.

Defined by www.news.artnet.com/, German Expressionism is defined as “an artistic genre that originated in Europe in the 1920s, and is broadly defined as the rejection of Western conventions, and the depiction of reality that is widely distorted for emotional effect.” In Nosferatu, the film contains a plethora of distorted realities in an attempt to evoke the “emotional effect” from the audience. This is shown by the director of the film, F.W. Murnau’s usage of lighting and makeup & costume design.

In the film an atmosphere of suspense is created using various film techniques such as lighting, music and through the plot itself. The film also takes on a Gothic tone using different characteristics and techniques such as the settings, symbolism, emotions such as fear and the different atmospheres in the film. The director explores the theme of good vs evil through different elements and characters in the film generally following normal good vs evil stereotypes with some exceptions.

The world of copyright was just as convoluted in the 1920’s as it is in our world today. The film studio Prana Film, which produced the 1922 German Expressionist film Nosferatu, was sued for copyright infringement by the estate of Bram Stoker, the author of the 1897 Gothic Horror novel Dracula, and ended up filing for bankruptcy after only distributing one film. While this may seem like an immense failure for the studio behind the silent film, it ended up influencing almost a century of vampires, in novels, television, and other films, and made the name ‘Nosferatu’ synonymous with the equally influential novel that it was based upon. On the surface, Nosferatu is a blatant copy of Dracula, from it’s plot, to the characters (besides the change in names), to the portrayal of vampires in general; in reality, many aspects of both bodies of work differ immensely from one another, providing both Stoker and director F. W. Murnau pieces that have influenced generations of vampire media. The structure, characterization and overall tone of Nosferatu is developed differently than Dracula in order to differentiate itself from it’s source material and provide an alternate adaptation of an iconic tale.

The first inspiration that the Dracula novel has on horror movies is the use of

Silent horror films continued throughout the early 20th century. Some of the most famous horror films of this era included; The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919), The Golem (1920), and Nosferatu (1920). These films feature a mad doctor, a vampire, and a monster that is never seen. (Wilson) These monsters were some of the very first to be introduced to horror but certainly not the last.

After World War II, the American motion picture studios began releasing films shot in black and white, with a high contrast style known as Film Noir. Though the roots of this style of film was greatly influenced by the German Expressionist movement in film during the late 1910-early 1920’s, and films that resembled this style were made prior to the war, including the early films by Fritz Lang, a German director who fled Germany prior to the war to work in America, this film style would become prevalent during the post WWII era. Besides the shadowed lighting style and the psychologically expressive mise-en-scène, the film noir plot-lines often surrounded crime dramas and were greatly influenced by the pulp fiction novels of the period by authors like Dashiell Hammett and

Stylistically, M appears to be a continuation of the style that was established in cinema through the German Expressionist movement and developed through the Kammerspielfilm, which focused on the actors, lighting, and set design to further investigate the psychological foundations of characters in middle and lower-class environments (150). M can be considered to be part of the third type of film that was produced during the Weimar period that is known as die neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity), which portrays "fatalistic and grimy lower-class realism" through the cinematic lens (150). M is able to marry characteristics found in each of these three periods of German cinema.

In the silent era, most American horror movies were somewhat nervous efforts, more likely than not to have their supernatural elements explained away, and to be leavened still further by the insertion of the most painful kind of “comedy relief.” As far as actual screen horror went, the Germans expressed their films in their way; this would not change the way horror films were created until sound cinema. The year 1931 would prove to be a landmark in the history of screen horror. Horror films during this period reflected the need of the population for entertainment that bore little resemblance to their real-world circumstances. The viewer's favorite movies had highly fantastical creations and featuring supernatural creatures from 19th-century literature. Universal Pictures was undoubtedly the studio that most successfully tapped the audience’s desire for escapist horror during the period. There were successful horror films produced by other studios in the 1930s.

In class we talked about German Expressionism, and how it deals with many different characteristics from body movements, plot/storyline, character appearance, acting, and camera angles. German Expressionism stands out in Nosferatu through the use of the characters, in particular that of Count Orlok. The one thing that stands out about him is the fact that he takes on such a mysterious identity. According to German Expressionism, this represents terrors of that time period. Count Orlok’s exaggerated, dead, and unrealistic appearance helps create or define German films at the time. The fact that he has this pointy nose, large eyes, and sharp, nails/fingers gives off an abnormal interpretation of the main character. Mainly everyone in the film

As we look deeper into the historical contexts that came about in Germany during the 1920’s, Germany was confined due to the isolation the country was experiencing during World War I. During this solitude, the German government banned foreign films. German Expressionism was formed in result of the conclusion of World War I which compelled Germany to establish its own style of cinema. German Expressionist films produced in the Weimar Republic