Based On, If Any: Nosferatu (1922)
The Shadow of the Vampire: on Murnau’s Nosferatu and Bram Stoker’s Dracula
Brittany Menjivar is watching adaptations for her monthly column, Based On, If Any. Today, the original Nosferatu, from 1922. Previously, Britt watched The Polar Express, Secretary, and Rave Macbeth.
The Shadow of the Vampire: on Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula
by
Count Orlok, the fearsome bald antagonist in 1922 horror classic Nosferatu, is a master of disguise. Not only is he secretly the film’s titular monster—he’s also a thinly veiled iteration of Dracula, as reimagined by screenwriter Henrik Galeen and director F.W. Murnau. If your only knowledge of the fanged fiend comes from the SpongeBob episode in which he briefly appeared, you might not know that Galeen and Murnau initially intended to package their film as an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s novel, until his widow sued for copyright violation. Dracula became Orlok, hero Jonathan Harker became Thomas Hutter, his wife Mina became Ellen, and so on. Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake of the film reverts the characters’ names; Robert Eggers’ 2024 remake goes back to Galeen’s choices. But we know the truth now; like a vampire hissing and melting with the sunrise, we’ve seen the light.
As Eggers’ Nosferatu takes theaters by storm, the Internet is awash with comparisons between his film and the original. I’m more interested in putting Orlok and Dracula side by side (in a room awash with German expressionist lighting) and seeing how Orlok’s silhouette lines up with Drac’s shadowless frame. Nosferatu (1922) isn’t just the first adaptation of Dracula put to screen, beating Universal’s version to the punch—it’s a definitive text for fans of vampire stories, setting in stone so many of the themes that would come to define the genre.
Novels that set the standards for future work do so because they once defied the standards of the past, and such is the case with Dracula. Crack open the cover, and you won’t find traditional prose, but a hodgepodge of letters, diary entries, transcripts, and articles composed by a vast array of ensemble characters, from Harker to sage scientist Van Helsing to Dracula’s servant Renfield. The epistolary novel was hardly new in 1897—the form peaked in the 1700s, to the point that it was oft ridiculed and parodied—but Stoker injected it with some fresh blood by incorporating a variety of characters as well as a variety of newfangled technologies. The writings presented included telegrams as well as memos “recorded” with phonograph machines; in her narration, Mina extolled the joys of clacking away on her typewriter. By reinventing a tried-and-true genre through the lens of current tech, Stoker could anchor readers in a sense of realism, making fantastical sequences all the more horrifying.
Nosferatu, too, was technically innovative. Murnau was an early adopter of the montage technique, allowing viewers to leap back and forth between characters and settings—much like Stoker had. Additionally, while full-color film was still a dream yet to be realized, Murnau used tinting techniques to alter between sepia-colored and blue-hued shots, distinguishing place and time of day in addition to creating a visual spectacle. Crafting a fable that lives on, undead, isn’t just about the story itself—it’s about the way you tell it, and both Murnau and Stoker understood this.
Nosferatu also expands upon an oft-discussed aspect of Dracula—its gestures toward sexuality. The sexual implications of Stoker’s text are unavoidable: Dracula attacks victims via the inherently intimate act of biting and “dominates” them psychically by sending them into trance states or fits of madness. Yet the psychic link that the Count establishes with Mina never takes on an erotic dimension: she remains grounded in logic, using her superpower to track the vamp’s whereabouts. Nosferatu’s Count Orlok, on the other hand, is down bad from the beginning: as soon as his bulging eyes land on a picture of Ellen, he comments on her “lovely neck.” Ok, cool!
Murnau also shakes up Stoker’s narrative by revising the ending. In Stoker’s novel, Dracula gets both decapitated and stabbed in the heart; Harker and Mina get married, have a son, and name him after their cowboy co-conspirator. In Nosferatu, Ellen reads that a vampire can be killed if a pure-of-heart woman allows him to suck her blood until the sun rises, therefore extinguishing him. The film ends with Ellen willingly sacrificing herself to Orlok, luring him to her bed to feed on her. Orlok was killed; a legacy of strange, eroticized, guilt-ridden relations between vampires and maidens was born.
Another distinction of Nosferatu: it understands the original text’s obsession with magic dirt. Those who have read Dracula will know that it’s not all thrills and chills: when the characters discover that Dracula can only sleep in coffins filled with dirt from his homeland, they spend a decent chunk of the novel traveling around Europe, blessing the dozens of boxes of soil he has saved up over the years to cancel out their dark power. Reading this segment feels a bit like scrolling through a video game walkthrough.
Nosferatu, it turns out, is also dirt crazy. In a stop-motion sequence from the film that my boyfriend and I rewatched three times in a row, Orlok forms a tower out of dirt-filled coffins, scales it, and lies down in the topmost coffin before two horses in reins drag the entire structure into the distance. I point this out not for a chortle, but to call attention to Nosferatu’s role in establishing concrete vampire lore. When we think about vampires, we consider the rules that govern hypothetical interactions with them: don’t invite them in; deter them with silver, garlic, or sunlight. Did I forget to mention that Nosferatu is the first piece of media to portray a vampire dying due to solar exposure, rather than merely being annoyed by it?
It’s hard to kill a vampire—and despite being slayed on the page and onscreen, respectively, Dracula and Orlok keep coming back to haunt us. Thankfully, just like the fearsome creatures themselves, we audiences have quite the appetite for blood.
Thanks for this take on the differences between Orlok and the original Count. I wrote about a change in Ellen’s character in the latest version, if you’re interested in reading… https://storyenergies.substack.com/p/new-life-for-nosferatu