He is completely bald but his eyebrows are grotesquely hirsute; his ears and chin are both weirdly elongated, as are his bony fingers; and as he creeps up the stairs towards the bedroom of a young woman in white, his hunched frame casts a sinister shadow. Count Orlok in Nosferatu is as instantly recognisable a cinematic figure as Charlie Chaplin, Mickey Mouse or Superman.
The F.W. Murnau silent film that created this image (and found itself at the centre of a copyright battle with the estate of Dracula author Bram Stoker) is celebrating its 100th anniversary this year. It continues to be regularly screened, showing at two different cinemas in London alone in the run-up to Halloween.
But years before I saw it, my first proper experience of the Count Dracula story was musical rather than cinematic: ‘The virginal brides file past his tomb / Strewn with time’s dead flowers / Bereft in deathly gloom / Alone in a darkened room, The Count.’ These
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