Live score 3 Stars (out of four)
I just saw an interesting performance of FW Murnau's 1922 film classic Nosferatu last night, 25 Oct 2013. It was a showing of the original silent film with five musicians playing their own original score to accompany it. They are called the Not So Silent Cinema, and they are a touring group who accompany different silent films that are presumably in the public domain. For Halloween, they have been doing Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligeri (which, incidentally, I have never seen. Still want to as being one go the great films of German expressionist cinema in the 20's). Anyway, for those of you who don't know, Nosferatu was the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker's seminal horror novel, Dracula. The director, FW Murnau, was a genius filmmaker from the German expressionist school of filmmaking that was moving film storytelling in new and exciting directions that previously had not been imagined or attempted. At this time, the late teens and early twenties of the twentieth century, filmmaking was in its infancy and not considered great art. The great filmmakers at the time were working in studios in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and Spain, not really in America as the large studios were not yet established. Not much later, many of these European filmmakers would travel to America to greater acclaim, but for now, Europe was the center of filmdom.
Details remain sketchy, but it appears Murnau never approached the Stoker estate to acquire the rights to film Dracula, simply just rewrote the plot and changed a few names. Dracula is now Count Orlok, vamp it is now nosferatu, instead of being Romanian and traveling to London, he is now German and traveling to Bremen, etc, etc, etc. when the Stoker estate, specifically Stoker's widow, found out the movie was made, it successfully sued for copyright infringement and a court ordered all prints destroyed. However, several pirated copies survived and serve as a true masterpiece of gothic, expressionist cinema. An ironic postscript to this story is that Dracula has been in the public domain in America since its publishing, due to the fact the Stoker estate never correctly filed for copyright. Due to the controversy over the legal brouhaha, the movie got great attention and was a success and has spawned several copiers over the years. But none of them, including the Lugosi-starring 1931 Universal production, have ever achieved such an original, and horrifying, take as the Murnau version.
The movie is truly great, although to modern eyes and sensibilities, it seems quaint, trite and campy. The necessary overacting of silent film doesn't translate well today in the era of sound. The challenge is to transport yourself back in time and see it how early twenties audiences saw it. The moodiness, the use of shadow and dread, the ugly and horrifying images of Orlok, they all set precedents for all the great horror films that would follow. The movie, for its time, was quite sophisticated. It told parallel storytelling, which was only in its infancy at the time and had sequential editing, another new innovation at the time. Unfortunately, most people today look at these images and laugh; the scenery chewing, the iconic images, it all comes off as stale and humorous. It is precisely because this was the image which all the rest were built on that it seems trite. It set the actual standard. If you are interested in seeing cinema as it was being born, this is one of the first great films and should be seen by anyone who wants to see horror or filmmaking in its infancy.
The Not So Silent players were fun, but the score was a tad trite. The music was also a little
loud for the size of the room, but it was still quite fun. This is what is great about silent cinema and gives an opportunity to interpret the story through music, and the exercise is a lot of fun. If you get a chance to see these guys the next time they are in town, check them out. They are a lot of fun.
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