Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror (1922) - by Faro

A shadowed hand stretching across her luminous night gown to steal her heart. A dead man rising straight up out of his casket; a heavy wooden box filled with spoiled earth from his cemetery and crawling with plague-bearing rats. Mysterious and unknowable death spreading through the city. The shattering consequences of a real-estate deal gone horribly wrong. And then, the rising sun spreading its life-giving light everywhere, even into the pestilent and lonely heart of Nosferatu... and with one hand stretched out in protest and another clasped to his breast in anguish, he disappears from this world that he knew of only under the light of the moon.

These are but a few of the haunting images from F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu that continue to resonate with us across the nearly 90 years since they were captured to film. There is no sound, no dialogue, and no need of either. The film communicates solely with the spaces between light and dark,  night and day, sun and moon. Black and white images of fear and loss, something that Germany understood all too well in 1921. This is a film to be savored... take a moment before viewing to remember the context, then sit back and enjoy.

For the film neophyte: If the idea of 81 minutes of silent film worry you, don’t despair... you may be pathetic and unworthy of the time-traveling joy of viewing early cinema,  but I have a solution for you anyway. This is a film with only visual information, slowly developing pictures that can be expanded or contracted without much loss or skewing of understanding. In short, feel free to fast forward the entire DVD and watch the whole thing in ten minutes, like I did yesterday on my second viewing of the film. If you don’t blink it will still grab a hold of you and make you remember it, and in the process, just might steal your heart.