When people think of Dracula, they often imagine a suave, aristocratic vampire. But in the 1922 silent film Nosferatu, he's renamed Count Orlok and has an entirely different, grotesque appearance. So why not just use the name "Dracula"? It turns out that this result of copyright evasion would make a legacy.
Count Orlok is one of the most uniquely memorable monsters ever put on film, and it is from this uniqueness that filmmakers like Werner Herzog in 1979 and Robert Eggers in 2024 found what they were working with in making their remakes.
Renaming the movie provided director F.W. Murnau with a means around this legal restriction and created for the world a new, chilling character that would go on to influence many on-screen vampires. In brief, Nosferatu survives as Dracula's eerie twin: a legend born of expediency and now one of the classics.
Nosferatu is just Dracula by another name
In 1922, when director F.W. Murnau and producer Albin Grau wanted to adapt Bram Stoker's 1897 novel, Dracula, they faced a critical obstacle: none other than securing permission from Stoker's widow, Florence Stoker, to use characters and plot from the novel.
To avoid this, Murnau altered some elements of the book—and such a change, for instance, would make Count Orlok instead of Count Dracula, London a fable German town, and Orlok's appearance grotesquely not the dashing vampire of the book by Stoker.
The title became synonymous with the vampire, but it was selected partly to evoke an aura of Eastern European folklore that Stoker had invoked. However, the word's provenance is murky, possibly due to a Western misunderstanding of Romanian phrases.
Copyright evasion was no more successful since Florence Stoker sued and secured a court order requiring all prints of the film to be destroyed. Fortunately, Nosferatu survived to this day because some prints had survived.
Nosferatu went from Herzog to Eggers
Like the 1922 film's infamously apocalyptic imagery and atmospheric style, it dispersed much darkness over the light of many filmmakers, most famously Werner Herzog's incredibly haunting vision of the film in 1979. Herzog's remake, Nosferatu the Vampyre, combined the characteristics of the silent film and Stoker's novel.
That filled the gap between Orlok and Dracula. Unlike the silent film by Murnau, in Herzog's version, the character of Orlok was deepened with added dialogue while keeping his terrifying physical form.
"Orlok is more of the vampire as atavistic animal than aristocratic foreigner,” commented a Reddit user.
This reflects Herzog's decision to keep all the animal-like characteristics of Orlok. Fast-forward to 2024, and a new remake by director Robert Eggers, infamous for atmospheric films, reflects horror returning to its roots.
Silent film blog Silentology said the "creepy atmosphere" brings about the Gothic intensity of the original. Many fans expect an homage to classic silent horror in his work on Orlok.
Nosferatu has also set vampire tropes and a legacy
Despite its gestation in the mode of a virtual remake of Dracula, Nosferatu introduced fresh vampire features that shape the genre to this day. For instance, the concept that sunlight kills a vampire originates from Nosferatu, whereas in Stoker's novel, all that daylight does to Dracula is weaken him.
Murnau also played an angle on the shadow of Orlok, which seems to have life itself. This evokes some dark visual representation, symbolizing the creature's hold on his victims.
As horror historian Rolf Giesen notes, the movie is monumental enough to make it:
“One of the OG horror movies.”
Today, the eerie look and character design in the film have made their way into everything from Stephen King's Salem's Lot to the children's show SpongeBob SquarePants, and a century later, the figure of Orlok is recognizable in both.
By transforming Dracula into Orlok, Murnau created a vampire legend that now endures. Eggers' 2024 remake will allow a whole new generation to experience Orlok's shadowed menace.
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Nosferatu will see its release in cinemas on December 25, 2024.
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