Music > Live Reviews

Minima score Nosferatu

Norwich Theatre Playhouse

16/11/24

The Norwich Film Festival is showcasing a varied mix of short films, features, and panel discussions during November, with Nosferatu at the Playhouse one of its key events. FW Murnau’s vampire movie had its hundredth birthday a couple of years ago, and is considered a classic of the silent era. It's the sort of film you buy on DVD and keep meaning to watch, but as much out of a sense of duty, as pleasure. I've got a copy of it knocking about somewhere, no doubt still in its shrink-wrap. Seduced by the idea of seeing the definitive article lovingly assembled from various incomplete versions and accompanied by a live score, it was nonetheless with some trepidation that I settled in to watch and learn, but not necessarily enjoy, the experience of a full length silent movie. As a card-carrying film nerd, it's a movie I felt duty bound to see.

What I ended up seeing was little sort of a revelation, as Murnau's tautly choreographed masterpiece gripped from the outset, helped in no small part by Minima's musical interpretation of the action on screen. This was a screening with the band coaxing out the emotional core of the film with guitar, cello, percussion and synthesiser. Despite the musicians being discretely tucked either side of the screen, I did wonder how big a part they would play. Were we about to see a film with added music, or witness a live concert enhanced by diverting visuals? I found myself pondering in which section of Outline this review should go. The film, as it turned out, entirely dominated the evening, such was its powerful impact. Such was, too, Minima's subtle and sensitive contribution, enhancing rather than dominating the images on screen, only occasionally explicitly mirroring a door opening, a chiming clock, or a madding crowd. For the most part, the music served as a subliminal reinforcement of the mood projected up on screen. And what a disconcerted mood that proved to be.

Nosferatu is a very odd film. Ground-breaking and innovative in a way it is hard to appreciate today, it is undeniably creep and unsettling. Max Schreck, as the eponymous vampire is most obviously repellent, but Alexander Granach's Knock is a just a grotesque as his acolyte. Even Gustav von Wangenheim is an unconventional protagonist. Suffice to say that Eddie Izzard was perfectly cast as him, in the dramatization of the film's creation. The heavy makeup, the wild gestures and some extraordinary set pieces, combine to produce a heightened fever dream that, devoid of speech, seemed all the more nightmarish.

I thought it telling that the Playhouse audience frequently laughed at what we would now see as overacting. It clearly wasn't supposed to be funny, so they were laughing at, not with, what we were seeing, and it wasn't that funny. In hindsight, I think this was a defence against images not easily processed. Watching a hundred-year-old film in a theatrical setting is akin to time travel, with the audience experiencing the movie as their forebears would have. Laughing is perhaps a way to avoid jumping down the rabbit hole of being truly immersed, and truly unnerved, as cinema goers would have been by the astonishing visual fest the movie offers up. Quite apart from the inherent horror of the story unfolding, there's something chilling about watching images of people that have long gone, only adding to the unease. It's a reminder that the audience that first saw the film has long gone too.

Famously, Murnau ripped off Bram Stoker's Dracula, copying the detail of the novel's opening scenes to the extent he was successfully sued. Seeing the film in full this is a puzzle. Nosferatu is certainly closer to Stoker's vision than either the Universal or the Hammer incarnations, but really only pilfers the early part of the book. Hunter's experience mirrors Harker's very closely, while Knock (despite serving no real narrative purpose) is obviously inspired by Renfield. Once the Count arrives in Wisborg (standing in for Whitby), however, the film goes its own way, somewhat hastily concluding with little reference to the source text. Instead, a poetic and impressionist narrative emerges - tellingly, many of the classic images come from this part of the film - quite different in tone to what has come before. It left me wondering if Murnau originally had grander ambitions to adapt the whole book. Like so many aspects of this hypnotic, nightmarish movie, it's something we can never know.

What we can know, and with confidence, is what a hugely enjoyable evening the Playhouse presented, combining a rare opportunity to see a classic film as it was meant to be seen with an innovative and thrillingly contemporary score brilliantly executed. It left me feeling mildly embarrassed that I'd never got around to unwrapping that DVD, but also very pleased that this, as a consequence, was the way in which I'd first experienced the film.