First Word

German silent of the expressionism period, directed by Murnau. An adaption of Dracula.

Dracula or “Count Orlok” is played with stunning presence by Max Schreck– what a happy coincidence is his name! Orlok desires to buy a house in the German town of Wismar; the local real estate broker sends his bubbly, naïve agent Hutter to Transylvania to convey an offer of a vacant building that is available. That’s when all the creepy things start to happen. Orlok and Hutter head back for Wismar, but separately. Meanwhile Hutter’s wife has strange omens at key points, as does the broker, who appear to have some kind of psychic connection to Orlok, including the fact that he can read Orlok’s letters written in Kabbalistic and hieroglyphic characters.

It is of course a horror story, but there is lots of black comedy. For example, during his stay in Transylvania, Hutter writes to his wife, “the mosquitoes are a real pest. I’ve got two bites on the neck, very close together, each on one side.”

The story plays on doubling of personalities. Hutter and Orlok are strangely like two sides of the same coin: both attracted to Ellen, though in different ways (and neither one very good for her). The broker is a mirror of Orlok– or is he merely insane? Ellen, too, seems to have a strange bond of attraction and repulsion to the Count. The use of the mirror heightens this aspect.

Another theme is the question of reality vs. illusion. The arrival of the Count is coincident with the arrival of Plague– or is the Plague the only reality, and everything else just a play of the mind?

These questions are what make the film intriguing.

Some critics have complained that the movie is anti-semitic; that Orlok is intentionally given Jewish stereotypical features. And indeed, this is made a bit plausible by a detail not in the movie, but supplied by the commentary track, that in the actual story, when Orlok is stabbed at one point, out gushes, not blood, but gold coins.

On the other hand, the wise and good physician Bulwer also has Jewish characteristics to my eye, though this has not been noted by the commentators. For example, he wears a skull cap that smacks of a Kippah; and he is a metaphysician/alchemist. But if I am right, this is not necessarily an inconsistency. Perhaps the hidden theme is the evil Jew as a figment of popular myth and hysteria, balanced by the good Jew that actually comes to the rescue. But then again, the evil one may be real, and the good one doesn’t actually do much good. So there is an ambiguous thematic weaving that needs to be explored further.

The imagery of the film is stunning, effortlessly inventing techniques that would later be imitated again and again by the horror genre; the fact that it is silent is hardly even a deficiency.

The DVD includes some marvelous shots of Wismar and Lübeck both before and after the war: these were typical German storybook-like towns before Bomber Harris worked his genocidal destruction against the German citizenry.

There is a choice of two musical sound tracks, one traditional and one modern: to each his own.