Robert Eggers’ lushly gothic remake of “Nosferatu” is a loving homage to silent films, with its dramatic black-and-white scenes and overpowering sense of creeping dread.
The eerie images of Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård) hand sweeping over the entire city of London and — in one of the film’s most striking shots — the face of his obsession, Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp), is a nod to F. W. Murnau’s original 1922 film, in which Count Orlok’s shadow falls across his victims before the monster himself enters the frame.
If you’re ready to do a deeper dive into the classics that influenced Eggers, start with these seven films.
Long before Bela Lugosi donned a cape to play Dracula, German director F.W. Murnau brought his terrifying bat-eared, clawed monster Count Orlok to the screen. The character, whose name was changed to (unsuccessfully) avoid plagiarizing Bram Stoker’s novel, was played by the aptly named Max Schreck: “Schreck” means “horror” or “fright.”
There are silent film classics and then there’s the monumental, hand-tinted opulence that is the original “Phantom of the Opera,” with Lon Chaney’s iconic, self-designed make-up that surely influenced future villain Voldemort’s no-nose look. The bowels of the opera house are a maze of elaborate traps and torture chambers, scenes are tinted, variously blue, red, gold and green, and there’s a stunning color sequence in which the phantom attends a masquerade ball.
Murnau takes on the folklore figure of Dr. Faust (played here by Gösta Ekman), who sells his soul to the devil in this sweeping epic. The film’s heroine, Gretchen (Camilla Horn) is seduced and abandoned by Faust. Her wide-eyed distress seems like a template for Depp’s tortured Ellen.
German director Fritz Lang is better known for his silent sci-fi master piece “Metropolis” and later films including “M” and “The Woman in the Window,” but this earlier film, in which a young woman must defeat Death himself to save her lover, is a better pairing for “Nosferatu” fans.
In this landmark Swedish film, the person who is last to die on New Year’s Eve is fated to serve for a year as the driver of the phantom carriage, which ushers dead souls to the next world. Like “The Phantom of the Opera,” it features colored tinting, in this case, to differentiate the various timelines. Victor Sjöström directed and starred in the film, which was released in the US as “The Stroke of Midnight.”
Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s dreamy, impressionistic horror film is technically from the sound era, but still relies on silent film techniques to tell its story, which involves a vampire, a ghost and a mysterious castle.
Benjamin Christensen’s film, a faux documentary about witchcraft and devil worship through the ages, was a clear influence on Eggers’ first feature film “The Witch.” But this still also bears a remarkable similarity to one of the final shots in “Nosferatu” as well.
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