Imaginary Worlds - Nosferatu Live

Episode Date: March 31, 2022

100 years ago this month, the vampire film Nosferatu was released in Germany. Not long after, it was hit with a lawsuit – which the filmmakers lost – and every copy of the film was to be destroyed. At least one copy managed to survive, and decades later, Nosferatu became a worldwide classic. Part of what’s kept the film alive has been live orchestras who infuse this old vampire film with fresh blood and original scores. I talk with Philip Shorey of The Curse of the Vampire orchestra and Josh Robins of Invincible Czars about their different approaches to writing music for Nosferatu and how audiences have reacted to them. I also talk with Carnegie-Mellon professor Stephen Brockmann about which aspects of vampire lore originally came from Nosferatu as the filmmakers tried to change the Dracula story enough so they could avoid blood-sucking lawsuits.   This episode is sponsored by Inked Gaming. Our ad partner is Multitude. If you’re interested in advertising on Imaginary Worlds, you can contact them here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. This episode is brought to you by Secret. Secret deodorant gives you 72 hours of clinically proven odor protection free of aluminum, parabens, dyes, talc, and baking soda. It's made with pH balancing minerals and crafted with skin conditioning oils. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Molenski. When I was studying film in college, I watched my first silent movies. And I was amazed that these films were so adventurous.

The cinematography was so fluid. Because once sound came about, movies had to be made in these hermetically sealed studios with cumbersome sound recording equipment. But in the 1920s, cameras were really lightweight, you could bring them anywhere, and I don't think filmmaking became that agile again until the 1960s or 70s. And one of the greatest films from the silent era was released 100 years ago this month, Nosferatu, the classic German vampire tale. And the amazing thing about Nosferatu is that the movie almost disappeared completely. There was a campaign to destroy it.

And the story of how it survived is inspiring to me because it's about the love of cinema and people using modern instruments, and I mean musical instruments, to infuse new blood into an old vampire tale. But before we hear about that, let's look at the movie itself. Stephen Brockman is a professor at Carnegie Mellon who teaches German language and culture. He says in the 1920s, the problem that the filmmakers had with Nosferatu was that they were basically ripping off

Bram Stoker's novel, Dracula. They definitely set out to film the book. They didn't get the rights to the book. So they had to make the film without the rights to the book. What happened when they tried to get the rights? Why weren't they not able to? Well, the widow of Bram Stoker wasn't willing to give them the rights.

She didn't want a film to be made, and she certainly didn't want this film to be made. So they thought, well, what if we change the names? Dracula became Count Orlok, although most people just call him Nosferatu, which is another word for vampire. His minion Renfield, the guy that eats spiders, is called Nock. The heroes from the novel, Jonathan and Mina, are renamed Hutter and Ellen, but some of the differences were more than cosmetic. Like in Nosferatu, there's no equivalent to the Van Helsing character. There's no expert vampire killer. In the novel, you've got all these determined individuals who are out there to kill the vampire, and they ultimately succeed in killing the vampire. And the way the vampire dies in Nosferatu is a totally different story, right? All the guys,

all the men who are there to be scientific and to make, you know, they don't wind up helping at all. Okay, so this is a spoiler from a hundred years ago. In the movie, the heroine, who's named Ellen, learns that a, quote, sinless maiden can defeat a vampire by offering herself to him. The vampire will be so enraptured as he feeds on her, he won't notice the sun rising until he starts to burn. And that's what she does to stop the vampire from killing more people.

That's one of the key things, her sacrifice, is kind of one of the main things that differentiates the film from the novel. So she plays a much more active role in the film. The whole film is set up around her sacrifice. And there are all sorts of hints from the very beginning of the film that the film is going to end in her death. Around halfway through the movie, just as Nosferatu is about to descend upon her husband and, you know, bite his neck and potentially kill him. At that moment, her husband is spending the night in Count Orlok's very creepy castle. That's when she wakes up in her town.

So there's this cross cutting, cutting across the distance. So she wakes up and it's as if across this distance, there's this communication between her and the vampire. And so then he decides to go, the vampire decides to go for her rather than her husband. And I think there's an ambiguity throughout the film about whether she's doing it in order to save him and the town, or whether she's doing it because she's fallen under the spell of the vampire. So many later interpretations of Dracula have had that sexual tension to it. But Stephen says that wasn't in the original novel. That was added to the vampire lore by the director F.W. Morneau. So the original novel is very Victorian. And you could say there's a horror of sexuality

in the original novel. But in the film, although the Dracula figure Nosferatu is extremely ugly, he's not good to look at, and you think, why would anyone be fascinated by him? He clearly is. He does exert this fascination and he exerts this pull and a kind of weird attraction on both the male in the film, the leading man and the leading woman. And at this exact moment, the early 20s, was exactly when there was this sexual freedom in Weimar, Germany, especially in Berlin, that was unprecedented. freedom in Weimar Germany, especially in Berlin, that was unprecedented. And the film's director, Murnau, was long rumored to have been gay. He was also part of the avant-garde artistic movement known as German Expressionism. So Expressionism is very much, it draws on the traditions of German Romanticism,

but it takes it further and it makes it much more psychological and anguished and conflicted. But typically an expressionist film, and really typically for most German cinema of the Weimar Republic, it was all done in very careful studio work and it wasn't done on location. And this film is quite different from most of those expressionist films because rather than creating an expressionist set, he's taking this kind of expressionist aesthetic, but he's using it in real locations. That's kind of radically new. Then there's also kind of this innovative camera work

that he uses in the film. And I'm thinking particularly of the scenes on the ocean where Nosferatu is on this ship and they're coming to the town in Germany. And so you've got these very fluid scenes of motion on the ocean, and then you've got the scenes of the rigging, but it's all kind of real. I mean, the rigging of the ship is real,

whereas an expressionist film, like a typical expressionist film, would have kind of weird drawings, you know, on the ceiling or on the floor. The movie was groundbreaking in a lot of ways. But it still bore a striking resemblance to Dracula. Not that Dracula would notice because vampires can't see their own reflections. But Bram Stoker's widow, Florence Balcombe, hit them with a lawsuit right after the movie opened. And they lost, which is still surprising

to Stephen because he thinks they changed the story enough to make a plausible defense. Then again, maybe they shouldn't even have been thanked Bram Stoker. Maybe that's the problem. If they explicitly thanked Bram Stoker, you know, in the credits. And maybe if they hadn't done that, maybe, you know, there would have been no basis for a lawsuit. But they did. And so there was a lawsuit, which they lost. And I don't think they tried to appeal it. The court ordered them to destroy every copy of the film. But one of the prints had already made it to the United States, where Dracula was in the public domain,

because Bram Stoker never fully registered the American copyright. But Nosferatu wasn't shown widely again until 1962, after Dracula entered the public domain in the UK. Today, Nosferatu is one of the few silent films that's become a pop culture reference, which is remarkable. I mean, I can't help but push the vampire metaphor. They tried to stake this movie in the heart, but it wouldn't die. It's too good.

It's just too good a film. And then just, you know, also the way that it's filmed, right? I mean, you've got all these incredibly beautiful scenes throughout the whole movie, particularly as it reaches its climactic end. Just extraordinary cinematography. Think of the scene of the coffins going through the street. There's this march of death, you know, that's also kind of weirdly expressionistic, even though it's all

happening in a real town. It's just incredibly beautiful. And I think that has an impact on viewers. I have another idea why the movie is thriving. In recent years, it's been a trend of live orchestras playing in front of movies. But with silent films, you can go much further and come up with an entirely new score for the film. Now, there was an original score for Nosferatu by Hans Erdmann. And this is it, or this is actually a modern recording of it. It sounds pretty classical of its time, and you can play it with the movie if you want to, but you don't have to.

The soundtrack to Nosferatu is not baked into the film. These early sound films, it's harder to keep them alive, right? Because they've got, you know, they're stuck with the sound that they have. Whereas with a silent film, it gives you the freedom to dream, and the music was part of that. And of course, the other thing is with dialogue, then it's in a particular language, right? Whereas with silent film, it can be in any language. There's no language barrier at all. After the break, we'll hear from two composers

with different ideas and different approaches to scoring Nosferatu. A special message from your family jewels brought to you by Old Spice Total Body. to scoring Nosferatu. Hey, that's Old Spice Total Body Deodorant. 24-7 freshness from pits to privates with daily use. It's so gentle. We've never smelled so good. Shop Old Spice Total Body Deodorant now. Introducing Tim's new Infuser Energy Beverages, made with natural caffeine. They come in two refreshing flavors, Blackberry Yuzu and Mango Starfruit.

Try them today, only at Tim's. At participating Tim's restaurants in Canada for a. Try them today, only at Tim's. At participating Tim's restaurants in Canada for a limited time. It's time for Tim's. Philip Shorrie is the creator of the Curse of the Vampire Orchestra. He's based in Minneapolis, and his orchestra has performed his original score for Nosferatu in the US and Europe. In fact, he's planning on performing at a screening of Nosferatu in the U.S. and Europe. In fact, he's planning on performing at a screening of Nosferatu in Slovakia this summer at the castle where they film Nosferatu, if world events and the pandemic allow them to. But the origin of

how he got here was an epic journey in itself. It started when he was in college, studying to be a film composer. He was watching Nosferatu in class. And it brought me to tears, you know. It was quite emotional, quite surprising, and something about the power of love demonstrated through Ellen. Ellen is the character who sacrifices herself to the vampire so she can save her husband and the whole town. It just really shook me and got me at that moment, and I felt I need to do something with this story. I don't know if other people are telling it this way and how I just saw it or not. And in that moment, he thought about composing a score for the film, but it was daunting. I felt like I'm not at that point. I don't know if I'll ever be at that point.

You can't just write 95 minutes worth of music for nothing and just expect it not to be played. Then he went on spring break. He decided to work with a puppet theater troupe. It's a side project. And he fell in love with puppetry. He completely changed his direction in life. And for years after college, he toured the world with his puppet theater troupe.

Then one day, a friend invited him to a screening of Nosferatu. Somebody had composed their own original score for the film, which is something he had once thought about doing. And I went, I saw it, and it was cool. It was very, very nice music. But I could tell the composer had a different interpretation of the film than I did. The vampire was comically creepy. Ellen's love wasn't that strong. And I had just seen it vastly different. And I felt something inside of me say, okay, do something with it now. But this isn't the moment he goes back into composing.

He doubted himself. He was thinking, I haven't done this for years. Who do I even know in the music scene anymore? But he still had this vision of how he wanted the film to be portrayed. So we contacted a friend who was an artist and they made a Nosferatu comic book together. And when they were out promoting the comic book, he was talking with some friends in Poland who ran an arts festival. I pitched them this idea. I'm like, hey, you should show Nosferatu at your festival and translate this comic book into Polish.

It would be kind of a cool thing. And they loved the idea. And then they thought, well, it's a silent film. There should be music. Can you write music for this film? And that's where I was just like blown away. Like they had no idea that I went to school for that. That was my dream, my passion.

But I quit it 15 years ago. And I'm like, well, I guess I can. They gave me an orchestra that's a volunteer orchestra, 35 players at the time. People got word of this project in the film, and it bumped up to about 50 or more, plus a choir. And for the first time, after not having written music for orchestra, never heard my music played live, I was given an opportunity. By the way, this is from a studio recording of Philip's orchestra. Well, when you first started, I mean, you know, you've been waiting, you know, even if you didn't know it, you've been waiting all those years to do Nosferatu.

What were some of the first things, creative decisions you wanted to make? You're like, all right, from the outset, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do this and I'm not going to do this and I want this. Well, at first, the big challenge was I'm working with a volunteer orchestra and I needed to know who was playing, what instruments did I have, what was my palette. And then they would give me instruments and I was like, well, I didn't expect that. How am I going to fit that in? And so, for example, one of those instruments was I got like four saxophones and that's not a typical orchestral instrument usually. And I thought, what am I going to do with the saxophone? Like it doesn't fit. But I saw a knock and I thought, what am I going to do with the saxophone? Like, it doesn't fit. But I saw a knock and I thought, now this is a guy who's just very earthy in his nature. Like, he eats spiders.

His personality reminds me of a snake. He's very earthy. And I thought, I'm going to weave like this sort of saxophone-led melody for him that's reedy and woody and like earthy and just feels like a snake. It's comically creepy. He was like my comically creepy kind of character. What he just described is a leitmotif. Leitmotifs are themes that come up every time you see a character. That idea goes back to 19th century operas. But one of the first film composers to make leitmotifs a regular part of their work was John Williams. I mean, we all know the themes that go with Yoda, Darth Vader, or Luke Skywalker. So Philip decided that's what audiences will

expect now when they watch Nosferatu. I definitely made a conscious decision that this score is going to have themes. It's going to have leitmotifs. It's going to have character themes and emotional themes. So can you describe to me the themes that you came up with, the leitmotifs for different characters? Yeah, I'd love to. I love this part.

There's the leitmotif for when the vampire is present. You know, it's like this four chord, choral, dark, sub-mediant chord progression. I mean, I know that's very geeky of me to say. Nobody really knows what that means. But it's like, it's just this chord progression that's very dark. And it arises whenever the vampire shows up in all power and strength. Now, he's got a dominant theme for hunting, and I call it the vampire hunting theme.

He's very singular-minded. He does really just one thing. He hunts and he feeds. That's pretty much it. So I got a lot of inspiration for his vampire hunting thing from Jaws, like you say, John Williams. What they did with Jaws really revolutionized film music. They did something by mistake or by default where they didn't have the robot shark working throughout some of the filmmaking process. So how are you going to provoke fear when the

shark is supposed to be there, but you can't see it? Well, it's in the music. And that's something that I played off as well, like where you can feel the vampire is coming, you don't see it. And even when we perform it live with the Curse of the Vampire Orchestra. I show flashes of the vampire shadows throughout the theater with different lights. I have some multiple Nosferatu characters wandering throughout the theater, hiding, peeking out,

wandering here and there. Now they're over there. You think it's the same person, but it's like he's shapeshifting and moving throughout the theater. Oh, wait a second. So you have actors dressed up as-shifting and moving throughout the theater oh wait a second so you have you have actors dressed up as nosferatu and some of the other characters popping up in the in the like like in the audience basically yes just nosferatu and people don't expect it and then all of a sudden he's there there's a flash of him over there and now he's in the movie that's

cool i've got a theme for ell First, it is just this gentle piano. Again, I'm not trying to be like cliche. It's a little more like sophisticated on the piano, the classical. It's very light. It's very gentle. It's very soft spoken. She's not a very dominant character at first. And then it kind of develops.

It's an anguish at times and then at the end which is our favorite part i mean she kicks butt like i mean love love rules you know like it is the most powerful force in the whole show and we use a grinder during that scene. And it's like you can smell the rotting flesh of the vampire as he's burnt by the sun. So a grinder, like what is it? I mean, I know what a coffee grinder is, but what does a grinder mean exactly?

A grinder like for sheet metal, you know, like a. Oh, right. OK, got it. Yeah, with a grinding blade. So it's very loud. And I try to place it in the orchestra where the brass is because it'll just destroy any woodwinds near it. And I have a really tough orchestra.

Like one time we didn't have a plexiglass shell. We were performing in Germany. And later I saw a video of the grinder, and it's just like sending sparks like right into the trumpet player. of the grinder, and it's just like sending sparks like right into the trumpet player. Philip is one of many people who have written original scores for Nosferatu. Josh Robbins runs a musical group in Austin

called The Invincible Czars. And when he first got into the scene, he says in Austin, there were so many live orchestras and bands creating original scores for silent movies like Nosferatu, Metropolis, or Buster Keaton's The General. He wasn't sure how they could stand out. So they hit the road and they played all these towns where people wouldn't compare them to all the other groups in Austin. Somewhere in there, I think it was when we were doing a movie called The Wind, which is a great movie with Lillian Gish. Everywhere that we went on that tour, I think we did 20 dates or something. Everywhere that we went, somebody asked us, when are you going to do Nosferatu? And so it,

it got asked enough that I considered it. And I thought, well, it not only has it been done in Austin. I mean, virtually every town with an art house cinema has had the idea, let's get a local band to score Nosferatu or just play in front of Nosferatu. And that's what most of these are, as far as I can tell. They're either orchestras, which are great, or, you know, maybe it's a heavy metal band or a DJ. I watched tons of them on YouTube just to see like, who's done this? What have they done? What's it like? What could we possibly add that hasn't already been done? Josh sent me a video of a live performance. It was recorded from the audience, so it's not mixed for sound, but this will give you an idea of what he's talking about.

And in coming up with his own score, he didn't want to be too modern or too classical. He tried to aim for something in between. We try to be, what do I say, tastefully modern with it. So not overdo that kind of thing. So like the guitar that goes, shun, shun, shun. People don't even know that's a guitar. That's just my heavy metal setting with a tremolo effect.

But that effect being so extreme, it just makes the instrument sound unrecognizable. I do think, though, that what the modern sounds do, regardless of how much you use them, they do draw in a modern-day audience. And even though modern audiences have come to expect leitmotifs, he didn't want to use them. We're spoiled by a hundred years of cinema, video games, TV. We're used to being told through music, through visuals, what's happening. They didn't do that in the silent era. They were developing that. What they were doing back then was reacting to what's on screen with music. So that's what he set out to do with a modern twist.

For example, in Nosferatu, there are several scenes where characters are feeling this unseen force. And visually, the way it's portrayed is they kind of like look up in the air, force. And visually the way it's portrayed is they kind of like look up in the air, move their eyes around and kind of, oh, I'm feeling something. And maybe audiences a hundred years ago got that. But audiences

today do not get that. They're just, what's, what is he doing? Is he looking at the ceiling? He tried out a lot of different sounds for that moment in the film. And one night we were rehearsing and that sounded very Texan. We were rehearsing. One night we were rehearsing and had all of our stuff set up and we were

trying to figure out what to do for those moments where there's a part where Ellen does it. You know, she looks up in the air like, Oh, she's feeling something. And she even bends over the chair like, oh, she's feeling something. And she even bends over the chair, like, oh, something's affecting me. And a few other characters do it. She's kind of looking in the, looking up mysteriously. So I knew we needed a sound. It was like, we need a sound to really convey what's happening throughout the movie. Whenever this happens, we took a break, you know, we were trying various different sounds on guitar. We tried looping some things, tried some violin sounds, some sample backwards cymbals. None of this was working. So we took a break and all of our stuff was set up

and the PA was still turned on. We had this microcord synthesizer. I pressed it and it made this sound that sounds like screaming. It sounds like... I just about peed my pants with our sound system was turned all the way up. And I looked and I went, I found the sound and everybody went, yeah, that's the sound. Another sound cue he was really excited about happens every time one of the characters looks at a book. It's about vampires. So anytime that that book is, anytime it cuts to a page from that book, I run this sample that's just

me reading one of the pages. I can't remember which page. Whispering it like this. And then I flipped that sound to be backwards. So it sounds like this. And then I doubled that. So it sounds like two different voices. And it's quiet, but unnerving. It's unsettling. Anyway, so I'll fade in the whisper.

When it fades in, if you've never seen us do it, and you see it for the first time, like, is somebody next to me whispering? What is that? It's pretty unnerving. And so people will ask every time, like, what was that whispering? How are you doing it? You know, um, we did another movie before, uh, we did when we did Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, we did the whispering and we had audience, we had the audience do it. So anytime that Mr. Hyde was on screen, just whisper. We did it here in Austin at the old Ritz Theater. It was an Alamo Drafthouse. It's not anymore, but this server came into the Alamo Drafthouse with food, and I heard later that she was so freaked out that she asked to just work a different screen. I'm not going back in that auditorium. But I feel like the

best compliment that we can get, and we do get it often, is you guys were so perfect with this, I forgot you were even there. That tells me we did it. And musical groups are not just reinventing silent films for new audiences. They can also play a role in bringing people back to movie theaters, or at least bringing them back for something other than superheroes. The silent film with live music is really a live experience, or best experienced live. And for that reason, the novelty of just having a band with a movie

is enough to be cool to get people to come out. Philip agrees. You know, with the advent of the home theater and how cinema has just, you know, entered into the home in not many different ways than what you can get it in the cinema. I think silent film with live orchestra has a unique role to play where this is an experience you will never get in your living room. What kind of audience reactions have you had either during or even are at when people come up to you afterwards? Man, some really powerful ones. To be honest, like the story of this Ellen and this love theme and her love destroying the darkness that is within us and the resurrection.

And it is, I think it is spiritual. Like I've seen some people after seeing our show come up and just needing to talk. So I think that a lot of people are going through a lot of dark stuff and to show that the power of love and self, not just any love, but like self-sacrificial love and this power resonates with people. I think that's why I do it. It's not for just the art and the orchestra. It's actually for people who really need this message.

the orchestra, it's actually for people who really need this message. During the pandemic, streaming has been controversial in terms of which movies are deemed big enough to get theatrical debuts versus which movies go straight to streaming. And I have to admit, it is really convenient when a new movie pops up on one of my devices the moment that it's released. But as I've started going back to movie theaters, it's also been incredibly refreshing to experience the joy of being in a dark room full of people all having the same emotional reactions at the same time. It can make you feel less lonely, less isolated, and less like a vampire. That's it for this week. Thank you for listening. Special thanks to Stephen Brockman,

Philip Shorey, and Josh Robbins. I have links to their music in the show notes. My assistant producer is Stephanie Billman. You can like the show on Facebook and Instagram. I also tweet at emolinski and Imagine Worldspod. If you really like the show, please leave a review or if you get your podcast or a shout out on social media. That always helps people discover Imaginary Worlds. And if you're interested in advertising on the show, drop us a line at contact at imaginaryworldspodcast.org and I'll put you in touch with our ad coordinator. The best way to support the podcast is to donate on Patreon.

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