Production
The studio behind Nosferatu, Prana Film, was a short-lived silent-era German film studio founded in 1921 by Enrico Dieckmann and occultist artist Albin Grau, named after a Theosophical journal which was itself named for the Hindu concept of prana (life force). Although the studio's intent was to produce occult- and supernatural-themed films, Nosferatu was its only production, as it declared bankruptcy shortly after the film's release.
As a lifelong student of the occult, Grau was able to imbue Nosferatu with hermetic and mystical undertones. One example in particular was the cryptic contract that Count Orlok and Knock exchanged, which was filled in Enochian, hermetic and alchemical symbols. Grau was also a strong influence on Orlok's verminous and emaciated look and he also designed the film's sets, costumes, make-up and the letter with the Enochian symbols. He also was responsible for film's advertising campaign, creating movie posters and advertisements. Grau's visual style was also deeply influenced by work of the artist Hugo Steiner-Prag who had illustrated other texts with esoteric subjects, such as Gustav Meyrink's Golem and E. T. A. Hoffmann's Die Elixiere des Teufels (1907).
Diekmann and Grau gave Henrik Galeen, a disciple of Hanns Heinz Ewers, the task to write a screenplay inspired by the Dracula novel, although Prana Film had not obtained the film rights. Galeen was an experienced specialist in dark romanticism; he had already worked on The Student of Prague (1913), and the screenplay for The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920). Galeen set the story in the fictional north German harbour town of Wisborg. He changed the characters' names and added the idea of the vampire bringing the plague to Wisborg via rats on the ship. Galeen's Expressionist style screenplay was poetically rhythmic, without being so dismembered as other books influenced by literary Expressionism, such as those by Carl Mayer. Lotte Eisner described Galeen's screenplay as "voll Poesie, voll Rhythmus" ("full of poetry, full of rhythm").
Actor Conrad Veidt was offered the role of Count Orlok, having previously worked with Murnau, but had to decline for scheduling reasons. In the search for an alternative the choice finally fell on the then-still-unknown actor Max Schreck.
Filming began in July 1921, with exterior shots in Wismar. A take from Marienkirche's tower over Wismar marketplace with the Wasserkunst Wismar served as the establishing shot for the Wisborg scene. Other locations were the Wassertor, the Heiligen-Geist-Kirche yard and the harbour. In Lübeck, the abandoned Salzspeicher served as Nosferatu's new Wisborg manor, the churchyard of the Aegidienkirche served as Hutter's, and down the Depenau a procession of coffin bearers bore coffins of supposed plague victims. Many scenes of Lübeck appear in the hunt for Knock, who ordered Hutter in the Yard of Füchting to meet Count Orlok. Further exterior shots followed in Lauenburg, Rostock and on Sylt. The exteriors of the film set in Transylvania were actually shot on location in northern Slovakia, including the High Tatras, Vrátna dolina, Orava Castle, the Váh River, and Starý Castle. The team filmed interior shots at the JOFA studio in Berlin's Johannisthal locality and further exteriors in the Tegel Forest.
For budgetary reasons, cameraman Fritz Arno Wagner only had one camera available, and therefore there was only one original negative. The director followed Galeen's screenplay carefully, following handwritten instructions on camera positioning, lighting, and related matters. Nevertheless, Murnau completely rewrote 12 pages of the script, as Galeen's text was missing from the director's working script. This concerned the last scene of the film, in which Ellen sacrifices herself and the vampire dies in the first rays of the sun. Murnau prepared carefully; there were sketches that were to correspond exactly to each filmed scene, and he used a metronome to control the pace of the acting.
The films traveled to English speaking countries and film production companies who received the original German or translations of translations would have to splice in their own English intertitles. Decades later, there were multiple restoration projects to save the degrading footage. The accumulating intertitle language difficulties are summarized by Brent Reid of silent film website Brenton Film:
The first decent quality, widely distributed copy of the MoMA (New York Museum of Modern Art) print came courtesy of German distributors Atlas Film in 1965. They legitimately acquired their own print directly from MoMA and as well as retaining its English intertitles, translated them yet again, back into both German and French. In case you've lost track, that means at minimum, they'd now gone from original German–Czech–German–French–English to German and French, with each step being a translation of the one before. Incroyable.
The MoMA 1981 restoration used a good condition B&W French print. The French intertitles were the source of the diary author's name Johann Carvallius or Cavallius and also the changing of character names from the original German film to the Bram Stoker Dracula book character names.
