100 Movies Every Catholic Should See #126: Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)

Directed by F. W. Murnau. Starring Max Schreck Gustav von Wangenheim and Greta Schröder.

There is no better place to begin our exploration of the horror genre than with F. W. Murnau’s seminal adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, Dracula. Lauded as the first true horror film, Nosferatu’s influence on the subsequent development of the genre is undisputed. With this series, we have set out to examine how this rather challenging genre can intersect with our Catholic worldview and how, when horror is done well, it can enrich the tenets of our faith. Horror, properly directed, can elicit an emotional response that drives us to consider spiritual realities, our own mortality, and instill a true fear of sin.

Nosferatu’s source material is well known for its Catholic imagery, as Irish Protestant Bram Stoker was well versed in his nation’s Catholic heritage. The novel emphasizes the use of Catholic sacramentals in repelling the unholy vampire. Dracula himself is shown as a dark spiritual entity—a sacrilegious inversion of Eucharistic theology—who draws blood selfishly to perpetuate his hellish existence. Rather than Christ shedding His blood selflessly so that we may have eternal life, Dracula greedily sucks the blood of his victims, consumed in selfishness and draining their life away in the process.

When F. W. Murnau set out to adapt the novel in 1922, he made a number of significant deviations from the text. Proceeding infamously without acquiring the rights from Stoker’s estate, locations, names, and certain plot elements were altered to avoid copyright infringement accusations. Much of the novel’s religious iconography was also stripped away, including the vampire’s aversion to sacramentals and the character of Van Helsing, who is introduced as a Catholic and highly educated, yet well aware that certain forces cannot be defeated by science alone.

A possible explanation for the removal of such overt religious references can be found in the occult origins of Murnau’s fledgling studio, Prana Films, which took inspiration from the Hindu notion of the “force of life,” a venture he founded with Albin Grau, who was a well-known occultist. Besides Nosferatu, the pair had their sights set on developing other films focusing on occult elements, including Höllenträume (Dreams of Hell) and Der Sumpfteufel (The Devil of the Swamp). The subsequent fallout with the Stoker estate regarding the copyright infringement left us with only Nosferatu, while the studio was rendered bankrupt.

The legal storm over copyright claims is a fascinating footnote, as we almost certainly would have lost this film entirely had not a few advance copies made their way to the United States for screening. The Stoker estate ordered every reel rounded up and destroyed, but thanks to an obscure loophole in U.S. copyright law, the infringement penalty was never enforced in the States. Thus, this landmark film avoided the unfortunate fate of so many other films of the era, lost to the annals of history after all their fragile reels were lost or destroyed.

Turning back to Murnau’s adaptation of Dracula, in removing overt religious symbolism, he stripped the work of Catholicism’s visible presence and much of its symbolic depth. However, there persisted an acute spiritual sense through which some fascinating connections can be made. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror is most certainly a spiritual film, in the sense that it deals with immaterial realities and the nature of evil. The most notable involves Murnau’s reimagining of the Count himself. Stoker renders Dracula in a materialistic manner—a sophisticated nobleman draped in all the trappings of Old World aristocracy—who hides his appetites behind the veils of the civilized world as he seduces his prey. The presentation is grounded in Gothic realism, where his evil comes from his human nature rather than something cosmic.

Murnau shifts this image to something outright demonic—a pure embodiment of spiritual evil. The Count is introduced in one of the film’s intertitles as the creation of Belial, a demon traditionally summoned by Goetic magicians who practiced dark sorcery. Gone is Dracula’s worldly charm, and in its place, a grotesque and repulsive being who emanates a sense of spiritual sickness, bent on satisfying his lust for blood. If ever there was a cinematic embodiment of the corruptive nature of evil and sin, then Murnau’s Nosferatu would certainly fit the bill. The name itself, coined by Murnau, draws from Romanian origin, possibly a derivative of nesuferitu, Romanian for “unclean” or “the Devil.”

Murnau’s Orlok: The embodiment of pure, unromanticized evil.

From the outset, the Count’s appearance is unsettling. German actor Max Schreck delivers one of cinema’s most iconic performances, transforming into a sickly, corpse-like figure marked by rigid, inhuman movements. There is nothing appealing in this depiction, unlike many subsequent adaptations that eroticize Dracula’s obsession while turning him into a tragically misunderstood antihero.

Emanating from Murnau’s Count is an acute sense of disease, personified by the hordes of plague rats that accompany his infamous sea voyage and pour out into the city of Wisburg as the Count’s schooner docks. The vampire can be seen as sin personified, who attempts to spread its deadly disease to the unwitting souls of the city. The film’s images of rats scurrying forth, all done with primitive practical effects, along with the somber procession of coffins through the city, establish a foreboding sense of dread. This evil comes from something far more sinister than flesh and blood. Science alone does not seem able to provide deliverance from this scourge.

An eerie procession of coffins heightens the sense of spiritual dread.

It is in the vampire’s ultimate demise, however, where Murnau employs his most striking alteration, inviting—though probably unintentionally—a rich Catholic interpretation. In Stoker’s novel, Dracula meets his end through the strength of two men who utilize the facets of science and faith to bring about the Count’s physical destruction. With the utmost precision and planned efficiency, his throat is slit, and a stake is driven through his heart.

The film presents a drastically different scenario that lends itself to both a Christological and Marian interpretation. It centers around an ultimate act of pure faith and self-giving sacrifice by Thomas Hutter’s (Jonathan Harker in Stoker’s novel) wife, Ellen. As the Count’s plague spreads throughout the city, she stumbles upon a book on vampirology through which we learn, from one of the ornately Gothic intertitles, that “Only a woman can break his frightful spell—a woman pure in heart—who will offer her blood freely to Nosferatu and will keep the vampire by her side until after the cock has crowed.” One can’t help but draw a parallel to Genesis 3:15, which speaks to Satan’s ultimate destruction through the effects of a woman, who we know will be Mary. In more recent years, this same Marian sentiment is echoed in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, where a prophecy speaks that the Witch-King of Angmar will meet his end not by the strength of a man’s arm, but of a woman: “Far off yet is his doom, and not by the hand of man will he fall.”

In the film’s powerful finale, Ellen Hutter lures the Count into her room near daybreak, distracting him from his fatal weakness to sunlight (another significant Murnau embellishment worthy of an entirely separate exploration), offering herself as a sacrifice to bring about his demise. Her ultimate self-giving act, which cost her life, destroyed the demonic entity that had plunged the city into plague. With clear parallels to Christ’s sacrifice at Calvary to redeem humanity from sin and death, this moment offers perhaps the film’s most powerful spiritual allegory.

Ellen’s Christlike sacrifice, a most profound spiritual allegory.

While Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror appears at first glance to be stripped of the novel’s more overt Catholic symbolism, some of Murnau’s changes, though likely not purposely done to promote a Christian message, given his occult background, lend themselves to a nuanced interpretation. As we examined at the outset, a worthwhile horror film can bring to mind the spiritual realities of evil and the perversion of sin. Nosferatu, then, is an essential starting point in our exploration of this genre.

From a historical point of view, Nosferatu represents a pivotal milestone in the development of the art form. Universally recognized, the film appears on many best-film lists, from Sight and Sound’s “Greatest Films of All Time” to the Vatican’s own 45 Significant Films to mark the centenary of cinema. Today’s audiences may find it a bit challenging to adjust to, given the nature of silent film 100 years ago. However, with a bit of persistence, one can find themselves swept along in the atmospheric Gothic world it presents. Like the shadowy gate of Count Orlok’s castle, the question remains: will we dare to enter?

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Further reading on Dracula adaptions, F. W. Murnau, and German Expressionism:

Werner Herzog’s 1979 remake, Nosferatu the Vampyre.

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s chilling 1932 film Vampyr.

A German Expressionism staple, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).

'Nosferatu' Review

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