Nosferatu (1922)

Time for another silent film. This will almost certainly be the last silent film I see for quite a while. I wouldn't mind seeing some Chaplin (like City Lights) at some point, but I would much rather watch a "talking picture" than a silent one as narrow-minded as that may sound.

Reveiw (my 50th one!!!):

This film tells the story of Nosferatu or Dracula, whatever you want to call him. It's basically a Dracula story but they had to change the name to avoid copyright infringement. It didn't matter as they were still sued for copyright infringement and the studio went out of business after this film - its only film. All copies of the film were ordered to be destroyed which didn't happen obviously.

Anyways, the plot here was rather dull I thought. It didn't really focus all that heavily on Nosferatu. As typical for a silent film, the plot isn't overly complex and not all that much happens all that quickly. That isn't necessarily a bad thing as it can build drama, etc. but it was a major drawback here. The premise of the story seems decent but this left a lot to be desired.

This film stars some people that the average person has never heard of. I still don't know how to rate silent acting but this didn't feel all that impressive. Then again it didn't seem bad either. It was probably typical for silent acting.

Despite the fact nothing ever really happened in this film, you kept waiting for it to happen. I kept getting the feeling that something exciting might happen but it never did. Although the fact that nothing great ever happens is a major drawback, the fact that I could feel something about to happen is probably positive. This film had some moments that were pretty cool. The shadows at the end were quite neat to see and were probably quite creepy for audiences in 1922.

On a slightly less relevant level, there were two things about this film that really bugged me. First, I don't like tinted film. This film is obviously black and white and that's fine. All the tinted scenes seemed more distracting than anything. The Birth of a Nation makes heavy use of them as well and I don't really think they add much, if anything. Second, the intertitles were written in a terrible font. It was some sort of Gothic font and incredibly difficult to read. I realize this film was set in the 1830s and they wanted a font to match, but it was just awful to try and look at.

Overall, this film is rather groundbreaking in the horror genre of films but has some major flaws. It established some techniques that are still utilized today and it deserves some credit for that but this just has too many problems to be considered great. While I do appreciate the groundbreaking nature of this film, I will not reward a film all that heavily for groundbreaking work unless the rest of the film is excellent as well. Citizen Kane established a lot of techniques that were quite new at the time but the film was also outstanding so I have no problem rewarding that particular film for its work. This film, groundbreaking filming techniques notwithstanding, is poor at best.

63/100
D-

UP NEXT: Something with sound.

Here's one of the most memorable and best scenes in the film. If you're impatient, just skip to the 1:35 mark.