POP FILTER

VS

NOSFERATU

 

 

 

Last time we were together as a class, we talked about Man With a Movie Camera. We discussed how much responsibility you have, as the viewer, to contextualize the 90 year-old film that you are watching, or if that’s bullshit and the movie should stand on it’s own. That was a documentary (ish), and, relatively speaking, the means of making a documentary haven’t changed all that much. Point your camera at your subject. Cross your fingers. Repeat. Edit. Easy stuff, I’m sure. This can also be said of melodramas of the time. The same shit that makes us cry now (dead children, dead puppies, poor economy) made us cry back then (See: Laurel and Hardy Get Laid Off From the Dead Children and Puppy Plant. Sad stuff). But what about genres that we see rapid change in over the course of a few years, much less almost a century? It’s so difficult to know if your comedy is still going to be original between the writing and editing stages that you don’t have the luxury of being concerned about whether or not it will stand the test of time. The other difficult one is horror. Horror is different than comedy, because the things that scare us remain mostly the same. It’s how they scare us, and how far the filmmakers are willing to push the envelope, that changes throughout the years, and only in one direction. So when tasked with watching for the first time, and reviewing, Nosferatu, the first(!) vampire movie, I appropriately said “Fuck all that shit!”, and then pissed all over the floor. When I woke up several hours later, I decided I was just sober enough to spend an hour and ten minutes getting the shit bored out of me. (That means that I was assuming the movie was not very entertaining, not that I was prepared for someone to fuck me in the ass.)

 

F.W. Murnau decided he wanted to film the novel Dracula, by Bram Stoker. In fairness, there’s no way he could have known that his actions would one day be indirectly connected to everything fourteen year-old girls use to jerk-off. He just wanted to make a scary movie about a guy who likes blood. Everyone thought this was a great idea, except for Bram Stoker’s widow. Ol’ Lady Stoker wasn’t going to just give up her moneymaker to some German homo, or Strudel Doodler, as she called him, so Murnau was forced to replace the word vampire with Nosferatu, and change all of the names of his characters. Other than that, it’s basically the same shit. This didn’t get past Ol’ Lady Stoker, who successfully sued the production company, forcing them out of business, but not before they had to destroy every copy. Or so she thought. Bwa-ha-ha. That means that this movie about vampires, in a way, rose from the dead, just like werewolves. Weird.

Anywhozlebees, you know the story. For one reason or another, Keanu Reeves wants to go visit Gary Oldman. Gary Oldman, whose turn-ons include blood and Winona Ryder, and turn-offs include the sun and Keanu Reeves, tries to kill Keanu and go bang his wife, who looks a lot like Winona Ryder. They all live unhappily ever after.

So, if you know the story already, is watching a 90 year-old movie really worth it, just to see how it fits into the history of film, and more specifically the history of vampire films. Honestly? Yes. Sorry. Do you know what your least favorite silent film of all time will be? Your first one. It’s slow, it’s antiquated, and there is no god damn talking. You can barely figure out why someone would watch this then, much less now. But, after you watch your tenth silent film, go back and watch the first one again. I bet you’ll like it a billion times more. I can’t think of a non-comedy silent film that is good to pop a virgin’s cherry. But if it has to be Nosferatu, you could do a lot worse. Here’s some things to watch out for as the seventy minute run time slowly grinds away:

-Max Schreck. Dude’s a pee-imp with a capital pee. His performance stands along side Duncan Regher’s from The Monster Squad as the greatest in vampire history. Think about all of the Draculas or Dracula-       substitutes you know. They’re slick, they dress nice, and you can understand why ladies love them. Not the case with our boy Orlok, here. He looks like a cross between the Batboy from Weekly World News and Sarah Jessica Parker, or, more accurately, the Batboy from Weekly World News. It makes the story completely different.

-The acting. Is it bad because it’s different than acting is today, or without the magic of dialogue, do the actors have to overact a little bit, just so you know what’s going on. Most people today are from the method school of acting, even viewers, who think that acting has to be lifelike in order to be believable. But when that wasn’t the trend, or when it was impossible, you have to look at it from a different lens. Did the acting help tell the story?

-Were you scared? Yes, this is another thing you’re going to have to analyze by taking the time the film was made into consideration. But not as much as you think. There is no Scary Hollywood Sound Machine in this film, so there are no points that the movie is going to trick you into being scared. To me, this is actually a good thing and makes the movie look better, but some people like to have that orchestra hit-filled “REEEET” in their horror films. And you know that the gore isn’t going to get to you, as filmmakers had not yet invented it. Again, an advantage as opposed to a knock, but that’s just me. Now that you’re going in knowing that those things don’t exist, still check to see when you’re creeped out. Murnau and Schreck do an excellent job of keeping things on just that side of fucked up. None of the characters have any idea what evil lurks around them, and those that do think of it more as a joke than a threat. So even if you’re smarter than the intended audience, the main characters are not. Cling on to them, and if you can pretend you’re not as smart as you actually are for ten goddamn minutes, you might just think to yourself that you understand why these black and white ignoramuses are losing their shit.

I try to write as if I’m talking to someone who has already seen the movie. It’s nice, because I don’t have to explain everything, and it removes all reason for actually reviewing the movie. I’m assuming most readers will not yet have seen Nosferatu, and hopefully this will convince you to spend 70 minutes with it. If not, I’ll try harder next time, when I take on the classic The Shawshank Redemption, which is apparently a little seen prison film that takes place in the thirties. I wonder what I’ll think.

– Ryan Haley