Comparing and Contrasting the Films Nosferatu and Dracula

F.W. Murnau and Tod Browning, two great directors who both set out to make a movie based on Bram Stoker's classic horror novel Dracula. Both of these two films, Nosferatu (Murnau) and Dracula (Browning) share similarities and differences. In this paper I will compare and contrast the similarities and differences of the two films.

When it comes to directors F.W. Murnau is certainly one name that is prominent. Because he is one of the three great German expressionist filmmakers of the silent period his works have become significant in the course of film history. In 1922 he set out to adapt the book Dracula by Bram Stoker into a film, which he called Nosferatu. Nosferatu is very significant in film history because it is credited as the founder of the horror film genre. Nosferatu was filmed before the invention of sound so it is silent, but that is what German expressionism was all about and Murnau plays off of it well. In this film he tended to use the stationary camera, and the majority of the film is shot in medium shots as opposed to long shots or close ups. Murnau was a genius when it came to shot composition and the majority of the shots are filmed with the characters framed inside of doors or widows in the background. The different scenes were generally linked effectively with iris effects as many films of this time period. Murnau also used quite a bit of stop-motion photographic techniques in order to produce the eerie effects for this film. Examples being when the vampire seems to vanish into the other side of the wall, and the ending sequence in which he is pursuing Nina and the door seems to open by itself after the covering is slowly inched off seemingly by thin air. The film has an overall visually poetic feeling. The expressive camera work draws you in and doesn't let you go. It is the way in which the actions in the film represent the feelings and mindset of the characters and the environment. An example being the runaway stagecoach in which fast-motion is used to show the chaos and represents the danger ahead for John Harker. The women in the film were portrayed as being helpless, but in the end it is Nina who sacrifices herself in order to bring demise to the creature. Overall the film stuck mainly to the events of the book, and was characterized by the expressionistic camera.

Carl Laemmle and Tod Browning's Dracula is very similar to Nosferatu and plays off of some of the techniques used by Murnau, however the film is far from German expressionism. Dracula is an example of Hollywood classical cinema, which is totally different from the expressionistic qualities of the German filmmakers. Dracula was released in 1931 in sound format, as opposed to the silent format of Nosferatu. It used both stationary and moving camera techniques with a wide array of shots, unlike the prominent stationary medium shot used in Nosferatu. Unlike the prominent use of the iris technique in Nosferatu, Dracula uses no irises and instead is composed of mainly straight cuts and a few fades in order to express the passing of time. The character of

Count Dracula in this film is portrayed as a normal person as opposed to the tall, skinny, freakish looking vampire with long sharp fingernails in Nosferatu. Rather than the ugly depiction of Murnau's vampire, Browning instead played him off as attractive, hypnotic, and somewhat of a womanizer as well as the seductive portrayal of the female vampire cohorts of Count Dracula. Many of the scenes in Dracula are similar to that of Nosferatu, generally containing only slight variances in the scene. An example of this is the scene in which Harker first arrives at the castle of Count Dracula and he cuts his finger open; in Nosferatu Harker hid in a corner as the vampire pursued him. A quite different approach was used in Dracula in which the vampire is being drawn toward the blood until the cross necklace falls in front of him and the vampire shields his eyes and backs away. Probably the biggest difference in the two films is the endings. In Nosferatu the vampire is destroyed by the sunlight after feasting upon Nina. In Dracula a wooden stake through the heart leads to the elimination of the vampire.

Both of these films were very well done and played out the tone and style set by the directors. These films show that there is not one right way to make a film, there are many. And it also shows that film can portray a story effectively as either silent of with sound.