Director Robert Eggers’ 2024 Nosferatu (photographed by Jarin Blaschke, ASC) is making quite the splash this awards season. But while we’re heaping well-deserved praise upon it, we should also toss a nod to F.W. Murnau, director of the original, 1922 version (shot by Fritz Arno Wagner and an uncredited Günther Krampf).
A German native, Murnau was an imaginative stylist who would find himself very much at home in today’s image-making playground. I recently discovered this quote from him that tells us how he approached the process. Its quaint-sounding nature is a product of his time, but the sentiment would serve us just as well if it was embraced with the same passion today.
“To me, the camera represents the eye of a person through whose mind one is watching the events on the screen. It must follow the characters at times into different places…it must whirl and peep and move from place to place as swiftly as thought itself when it is necessary to exaggerate for the audience the idea or emotion that is uppermost in the mind of a character. In this way, it photographs thought.”
I have enjoyed this film may times. I love the perspective and the concept in the quote from Fritz. What a perfect comment on the power of cinematography.