Examples Of Expressionism In Nosferatu

Nosferatu is a silent, expressionist film made in 1921 during the Weimar years in Germany by Fredrick Wilhelm Murnau. The film is based on Bram Stocker’s 1897 book Dracula. German director F.W. Murnau was one of the top Expressionist filmmakers. “Expressionist cinema is a cinema of objects and mists and obtrusive sets, of space obsessively filled. Murnau’s cinema, on the other hand, is primarily a cinema of empty space.” Expressionism sought to convey subjective emotion based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions rather than a strictly realistic view. German films were mainly associated with expressionism mainly because of their “self-conscious stylization of décor, gesture, and lighting.” Part of the reason for this

They plan on selling him the one across the way from Hutter’s own home. Hutter leaves his innocent wife, Ellen, with some friends while he is away. Hutter’s journey is an unusual one, with many locals not wanting to take him near the castle where strange events have been occurring. Once at the castle, Hutter does manage to sell the Count the house, but he also notices and feels unusual occurrences, primarily feeling like there is a dark shadow hanging over him, even in the daytime when the Count is unusually asleep. Hutter eventually sees the Count’s sleeping chamber in a crypt, and based on a book he has recently read, believes the Count is really a vampire or Nosferatu. While Hutter is trapped in the castle, the Count, hiding in a shipment of coffins, makes his way to Wisborg, causing death along his journey, which most believe to be a plague. Hutter himself tries to rush home to save his town and most importantly save Ellen from Nosferatu’s imminent arrival. In Wisborg, Ellen can feel the impending darkness as Nosferatu gets closer. She realizes that she is the town’s only hope of getting rid of the plague (who is Count Orlok). Ellen opens her window, inviting Orlok into her room and gives herself to him. She sacrifices herself and distracts Orlok until dawn when he is

The quiet town of Wisborg appears to be a more or less a typical small German town until the arrival of Count Orlok. Nosferatu’s physical appearance in the film personifies him as a representation of death. He is loominly thin, with long predatory arms culminating in claws, the two front teeth protruding like rodent’s, and between pointed ears a pale bald head like a bare skull. Nosferatu monstrously suggests a cross between a human skeleton and a rat. His skeletal aspect, the way his figure evokes the skull and bones beneath his skin, helps establish this vampire as a specter of death. His resemblance to a rat makes more pronounced his association with pestilence. The rats he carries with him in his coffins filled with Transylvanian earth he needs for his diurnal rest, carries plague everywhere he goes. In the film, the exact nature of the plague is left ambiguous; it is spread by rats, yet the vampire’s marks are on the victim's necks, as Nosferatu had visited each personally. Nevertheless, he portrays the grim reaper that will claim us