Into the shadows: creating the deep, dark look of 'Nosferatu'

FW Murnau’s 1922 silent shocker Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror is a black-and-white classic of German Expressionism, with the shadow of Max Schreck’s monstrous, skeletal vampire creeping up the stairs one of the most influential and iconic images in all of cinema.

Writer/director Robert Eggers had wanted to remake Murnau’s film ever since he was a boy, even staging it as a play in high school and later in local theatre. After the Sundance success of his debut feature, 2015’s The Witch, Eggers got his wish, basing his script on Murnau’s movie – which was remade in 1979 by Werner Herzog – and Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel Dracula, of which Nosferatu was an unauthorised adaptation. But it would take eight years for Eggers’ film to finally come before the cameras in Prague in February 2023. 

Nosferatu stars Nicholas Hoult as junior estate agent Thomas, who travels to Transylvania to complete a property sale to the mysterious Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard), while his wife Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) – who is increasingly plagued by disturbing visions, and emerges as the film’s dramatic and emotional focus – stays at the home of their well‑to-do friends (Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Emma Corrin).

But as Orlok’s evil spreads to their German town and his connection to Ellen is revealed, Willem Dafoe’s Van Helsing-like professor is called on for help. (Dafoe was Oscar-nominated for playing Schreck in 2000 drama Shadow Of The Vampire, which detailed the making of the original Nosferatu, with John Malkovich as Murnau.)

Eggers’ cinematographer Jarin Blaschke, who shot all the director’s previous features – The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman – first read his Nosferatu script back in 2015. “I knew it might take a few years, and it took a few more than that,” says the California-born UK resident, who was Bafta- and Oscar-nominated for The Lighthouse. “I don’t think I’ve watched the [Murnau film] since then. I wanted it somewhere in the back of my brain, but I wanted [the new film] to be ours.” 

The director had spent years in his research, trying to be as historically accurate as possible – the film is set in 1830s Baltic Germany, in the fictitious town of Wisborg – with paintings of the period the main reference for his film’s look, rather than the stark black-and-white cinematography of Murnau’s picture. 

“What’s important to him is having it told through the eye of the culture of the time, which was not expressionism, not black and white,” says Blaschke. “Rob was clear it should be romanticism. I know the world of photography better than filmmaking, so that’s where I tend to go first. But it’s 1838, so it needed to go off painting. It’s not a literal transmutation. You just get a feeling from romantic paintings; there’s something to the light that is a little other. We’re full Gothic, rich and lush, which is the first version to do that.”

Eggers’ Nosferatu is all dark shadows and deep blacks. There is a version of the famous shadow scene from Murnau’s film, but, as with Skarsgard’s Orlok, who looks distinct from Schreck’s creature, it is different. The cinematography is more reminiscent of the late, great Gordon Willis, who was dubbed the Prince of Darkness for his work on The Godfather. Blaschke is a fan.

“We have more silhouettes than any of our previous movies,” he says of Nosferatu. “But we are less modernist than Gordon Willis. Or rather Rob is. I love modernism.” 

Utilising the same custom filter they employed on The Lighthouse, but this time with colour film stock, gives Nosferatu the look of a black-and-white movie shot in colour, especially in its monochromatic moonlight sequences. “Rob wants gloomy days and crisp nights, so you’ve got to light the nights,” says Blaschke. “It doesn’t make sense logically, but the crisp shadows sell it.”

The pair favour long, uninterrupted takes – “There’s a danger of being self-indulgent and serving what’s interesting as opposed to what’s best for the film, but you have got to push it,” says Blaschke – and classical blocking, a style particularly evident in Viking adventure The Northman.

On that film Eggers called his director of photography the “authorial voice of the cinematic language”. So how does their collaboration work? “It varies from film to film. In The Northman, I was designing whole sequences and would give Rob options. A little less so with Nosferatu because it’s more of a dialogue-driven movie. We’re trying to find ways to break away from shot, reverse shot, whenever we can.” 

The director and cinema­tographer spent months prior to filming in Prague shotlisting the movie. And once Eggers’ regular production designer Craig Lathrop started designing the sets, Eggers and Blaschke adjusted their shot composition or the sets themselves, asking for moveable walls and ceilings to better position their camera. 

“We are building sets to give the blocking some interest, playing with what information to give the audience and when, when they should be hungry and when they should be satisfied,” says Blaschke, who will sit in on the actors’ rehearsals, often redesigning shots based on their performance. 

“The more holistic you can make it, the stronger the ideas, because you see what Lily can do physically and that inspires where the camera should be. And that freed us up even further in our visual design.”

Blaschke first met Eggers in the autumn of 2007, when the latter was looking for a cinematographer on a short film he was intending to make based on Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart. Eggers had been advised to look at another cinematographer represented by Blaschke’s agent but did not like his work. 

“He saw my name [on the website], which looked exotic, then wrote an earnest letter to me about The Tell-Tale Heart. That was the first period film I ever did.” 

At the time, the two were in “the same scrubby New York scene doing no-budget shorts,” recalls Blaschke. “He was doing production design for fashion videos or short films. Sometimes he would be the production designer and I’d be the DoP. Sometimes I’d be on some short film and they didn’t have a production designer, and I would say, ‘Well, there’s this guy…’”

Focus Features will release Nosferatu in North America on December 25, with Universal Pictures beginning the international rollout on the same date. Blaschke, who worked with M Night Shyamalan on Knock At The Cabin and Apple TV+’s Servant, has no more features awaiting release or lined up. 

“I’m getting [offers for] a bunch of horror movies, but I have other interests,” says Blaschke. “I’d like to shoot a romantic epic. I’d like to shoot a western. I’m trying to be as picky as I can, because I’m incredibly spoiled with this guy [Eggers]. 

“I want to see what this movie does, as far as how people see me, because it is a culmination of stuff I’ve been working on and picking at for a long time,” he continues. “The moonlight stuff I’ve been thinking about since film school. So, it’s an important movie for me, on a creative and technical level.”