#nosferatu

#nosferatu

Nosferatu in Four Minutes You've always intended to watch the 1922 German expressionist horror film Nosferatu, but you keep putting it off because you never really wanted to spend an hour and a half watching a silent movie, especially one in which you know the plot already. We can't blame you for that. This video makes it all much easier. Mario Wienerroither made what he calls a "silentless" version, by condensing the entire film down to four minutes, and adding sound effects. You know how silent movie actors had to over-exaggerate their facial expressions and gestures to make up for the lack of sound? Adding sound therefore requires comparable over-the-top emotional expression, resulting in, well, whatever this is. Don’t bother turning the lights off, as you’re more likely to laugh than to scream.#Nosferatu #soundeffects      

The War Against the First Dracula FilmBram Stoker was not the first author to write about vampires, but his 1897 novel Dracula was the most widely-read up to that point, and established the concept of a vampire in the minds of his readers. It was the only novel Stoker wrote that was bringing in any money at the time of his death in 1912. Stoker's widow, Florence Balcombe Stoker, was not fond of Dracula, but she was fiercely protective of her husband's legacy, and the profit it produced. German expressionist filmmaker F.W. Murnau made a movie based on the novel, titled Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors, in 1922. The names of the characters were changed, but it was obviously the same story, which the producers admitted was "freely adapted" from the novel. But they did not ask the permission of Stoker's estate. When Florence Stoker heard of the movie, she went after the movie and its distributors with a vengeance, leading to a years-long court case. Thanks to a German version of "Hollywood accounting," there was no money to pay Stoker, so she set about destroying Nosferatu.As the greatest example of this phenomenon in film history, the copyright owner of what is essentially valuable intellectual property demanded every last print of an unauthorized adaptation be burned at the stake. Florence never saw Nosferatu; she had no interest in ever seeing Nosferatu. She only knew Nosferatu violated her rights and should be eradicated from the face of the Earth.This scheme not only destroyed Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors and came close to wiping it from history, but it also led to our popular image of Dracula that hardly resembled Stoker's character at all. Read what happened and the 100-year legacy of the cinematic Dracula at Den of Geek. -via Digg#vampire #Dracula #Nosferatu #BramStoker #FlorenceStoker #horror