What does Nosferatu mean? A guide to all your burning questions

Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu” brings to life a 102-year-old vampire who first appeared in F.W. Murnau’s 1922 black-and-white silent film “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror.” /Nouveau’s own film review – “Nosferatu” raves about it as a truly terrifying horror pictureis as frightening to a modern audience as Murnau was a century ago.

It’s incredible that cinema is now old enough for some classic films to have survived a century or more. Heck, the 100th anniversary of “The Wizard of Oz” is only 15 years away. (In the meantime, you can celebrate the 85th birthday of the color blockbuster “Oz” with “Wicked: Part One.”) However, “Nosferatu” is technically older than it seems — because the character is, in everything but name, Count Dracula.

Now, the vampire himself is not named Dracula in Murnau’s film (nor is he called “Nosferatu”), but rather Count Orlok (played by Max Schreck). The story follows the main beats of Bram Stoker’s novel, apart from moving the setting from England to Germany. Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) – barely renamed Jonathan Harker – He is a real estate agent visiting Orlok’s Transylvanian Castle. After some time in captivity, Hutter escapes, but Orlock follows him to Germany across the sea. Orlok almost traps Hutter’s lover as well, but is ultimately defeated. Not with a stake in his cold heart, but with the rising sun, creating a weakness typical of vampires.

Werner Herzog’s 1979 color reproduction of “Nosferatu the Vampyre” It dispels the claim that the film is not an adaptation of “Dracula” and uses the names of Stoker’s characters (but also Murnau’s German settings). Klaus Kinski’s Nosferatu looks like Max Schreck’s bald dwarf Orlok, but he’s called Dracula. On the other hand, Eggers’ film returns to the names invented by Murnau.

If none of the vampires in any iteration of “Nosferatu” were actually named “Nosferatu,” why did the title still exist? This is because the word itself is intrinsically linked to Stoker’s novel Dracula, which was commonly associated with vampires.

In the movie “Dracula” by Bram Stoker, The word “Nosferatu” is introduced as an old Eastern European term meaning “vampire” and is used as such by vampire hunter Dr. Abraham Van Helsing. After Dracula turns Lucy Westenra into a vampire, Van Helsing explains to her lover Arthur her condition and the danger she poses:

“My friend Arthur, if you had met that kiss you know before poor Lucy died; or again, last night when you opened your arms to her, she would in time, when she died, become Nosferatu, as they call it. In Eastern Europe, and we will always make More of these Un-Deads that fill us with terror.

Stoker appears to have gotten the word from the English writer Emily Gerard, author of the 1885 book Transylvanian Fables. Gerard writes of “Nosferatu” as the local word for “vampire” – “in whom every[Romanian]peasant believes as much as In heaven or hell.”

The word dates back another twenty years, to the writings of the German writer Wilhelm Schmidt in 1865, which were published in the magazine Book 1866 (roughly translated into English) “The Year and Its Days in the Opinion and Customs of the Romanians of Transylvania.” Schmidt’s writings implicitly name “Nosferatu” as the Roman word for “vampire”.

However, the origin of the word “Nosferatu” before the nineteenth century is still shrouded in legend, because no Part of the Romanian language. In the 2011 edition of Borgo Post (Newsletter of the Canadian Branch of the Transylvanian Dracula Society), Elizabeth Miller speculates that the word could be “a local one that never entered the Roman lexicon,” since Gerard did not cite Schmidt and it is unlikely that the two did. They both made the same mistake.

Other proposed etymologies for the word include the Roman “nesuferit” (“unbearable”) or the Greek word “nosophoros” (“disease-bearer”, which fit the concept of the vampire as a cursed individual who spreads his scourge through his continued existence).

Wherever Nosferatu’s trail ends, it eventually finds its way to Stoker, who used it in Dracula. Because “Dracula” is the most famous vampire story ever published, “Nosferatu” has become a label for vampires outside of Transylvania. Unlike vampires, language itself never dies, but is constantly changing.

If you know how “Nosferatu” copied “Dracula,” it’s easy to assume that the title change was plausible deniable if copyright fraud was discovered. But if you dig deeper, the answer doesn’t seem so simple. The opening credits of “Nosferatu” indicate that the film is based on Stoker’s novel “Dracula” and “loosely adapted” by screenwriter Henrik Galén.

in “The Story of Nosferatu: The Influential Horror Film, Its Antecedents and Lasting Legacy” Author Rolf Jessen suggests that the filmmakers “may have been misled by bad legal advice that they would not have to pay copyright holders for the rights to the film if they changed the story and names significantly.”

As for choosing “Nosferatu” specifically for the changed title? Evidence suggests they thought it was a creepy and strange name, the perfect premise for a film called “Symphony of Horror.” The title card of the film’s first act says:

“Nosferatu. Does not this word sound like the midnight call of the bird of death? Take care never to utter it, lest the images of life fade into pale shadows, and ghostly dreams rise from your heart and feed on your blood.”

While Stoker died in 1912, his widow Florence Balcombe was executor of his estate until her death in 1937. After discovering in 1924 that Nosferatu had been produced without her permission, she launched an aggressive legal campaign (through the British Society of Authors) to obtain reward. When the production company Prana Film refused to pay (even declaring bankruptcy), the widow Stoker demanded that all prints of “Nosferatu” be destroyed. A German judge ruled in its favor, but several copies slipped through the cracks, and Nosferatu survived. (Dracula eventually entered the public domain in 1962, making proper licensing for any adaptations a controversial issue from now on.)

Although Nosferatu couldn’t exist without Dracula, the film has built a classic reputation on its own — enough to be remade not once, but twice.

“Nosferatu” is scheduled to open in a wide theatrical release on December 25, 2024.