Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922)

Nosferatu is the first silent film I ever saw, and what an introduction to silent film it is. Nearly 90 years after its premiere it still rates highly in numerous 'Best Film' polls, and it's easy to see why.

The most famous of all of director F.W. Murnau's Weimar films, this was one of his first, created 4 years before he left Germany to move to the United States to create films for Fox Studios. Nosferatu was based on Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula but due to the studio's unwillingness to licence rights for the novel all of the names of the characters were changed. So instead of Count Dracula, we get Count Orlock (which I actually prefer), and instead of Jonathan Harker we get Thomas Hutter. Amusingly, Murnau appears to have believed that by simply changing the names any potential libel would be avoided, despite the fact that the story itself heavily draws on the novel. So it must have been a surprise to him and the film's ill-fated production company, Prana Film, that upon release the Stoker estate sued the company and demanded all film prints were destroyed. Fortunately for the history of film, not all prints were destroyed, however due to the ongoing legal ramblings Nosferatu became the one and only film ever to come out of Prana Film.
One of the biggest strengths of the film is the inspired casting of Max Schrek as Count Orlock. In a departure from Stoker's novel, the Count isn't portrayed as a handsome, suave gentleman, but rather as a monsterous rat-like creature. Schrek gives Orlock an incredible amount of otherworldliness, which even led to specualtion at the time that Schrek was a vampire himself, so naturally did he take to the character. So ingrained into public conciousness was this that the 2000 film Shadow of the Vampire starring Willem Dafoe is based on this suspicion that Schrek was indeed a vampire, set during the filming of Nosferatu.

Though undoubtedly tame by today's standards, Murnau was unafraid to inject some strong visual horror into the film, and certainly the iconic moment late in the film when Orlock rises from a coffin smuggled onto a ship, surrounded by rats, cannot fail to shock. Unfortunately not all of the acting maintains this standard, with Hutter, here played by Gustav von Wangenheim, appearing pretty hammy throughout. One scene in particular when he tries to crawl up stairs on his back, apparently terrified, just made me laugh and wonder what he was trying to achieve.
The film is full of iconic scenes, and its influence has spread far; Nosferatu was the first film to establish a vampire that is afraid of daylight, a trait that has endured to this day. The story, though slow at times, does keep attention throughout, which is not something which can be said of many silent films, especially when judged against contemporary affairs, making it an especially good starting point for anyone wanting an introduction to early cinema.
By the time of Nosferatu, Murnau was really starting to get to grips with silent film, and this is certainly a high point, both in Murnau's then-fledging career, and also in silent cinema itself.