Film Nitrate

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 com...