Friedrich Gustav Max Schreck^[2] (6 September 1879 – 20 February 1936)^[1][3][4] was a German actor. He is most often remembered today for his lead role in the film Nosferatu (1922).

Early life[link]

Max Schreck was born in Berlin-Friedenau, on 6 September 1879. Schreck received his training at the Berliner Staatstheater (the State Theatre of Berlin) which he completed in 1902.^[3] He made his stage debut in Meseritz and Speyer, and then toured Germany for two years appearing at theatres in Zittau, Erfurt, Bremen,^[3] Lucerne,^[3] Gera,^[3] and Frankfurt am Main.^[3] Schreck then joined Max Reinhardt's company of performers in Berlin.^[5] Many of Reinhardt's troupe made a significant contribution to the cinema.^[5]

Career[link]

For three years between 1919 and 1922, Schreck appeared at the Munich Kammerspiele,^[5] including a role in the expressionist production of Bertolt Brecht's debut, Trommeln in der Nacht (Drums in the Night) (in which he played the "freakshow landlord" Glubb).^[6] During this time he also worked on his first film Der Richter von Zalamea, adapted from a six act play, for Decla Bioscop.^[5]

In 1921, he was hired by Prana Film for their first and only production, Nosferatu. The company declared itself bankrupt after the film was released to avoid paying copyright infringement costs to Florence Stoker, Dracula author Bram Stoker's widow.^[5] Schreck portrayed Count Orlok, a character analogous to Count Dracula.^[5]

In 1923, while still in Munich, Schreck appeared in a 16-minute (one-reeler) slapstick, "surreal comedy" written by Bertolt Brecht with cabaret and stage actors Karl Valentin, Liesl Karlstadt, Erwin Faber, and Blandine Ebinger, entitled Mysterien eines Friseursalons (Mysteries of a Barbershop), directed by Erich Engel.^[7] Also in 1923, Schreck appeared as a blind man in the film Die Straße (The Street).^[1][5]

Schreck's second collaboration with Nosferatu director F. W. Murnau was the 1924 comedy Die Finanzen des Grossherzogs (The Grand Duke's Finances).^[5] Even Murnau did not hesitate to declare his contempt for the picture.^[5]

In 1926, Schreck returned to the Kammerspiele in Munich and continued to act in films surviving the advent of sound until his death in 1936 of heart failure.^[8] On 19 February 1936, Schreck had just played The Grand Inquisitor in the play Don Carlos, standing in for Will Dohm. That evening he felt unwell and the doctor sent him to the hospital where he died early the next morning^[9] of a heart attack. His obituary especially praised his role as The Miser in Molière's comedy play.^[9] He was buried on 14 March 1936 at Wilmersdorfer Waldfriedhof in Berlin.^[1]

Personal life[link]

He was married to actress Fanny Normann,^[5] who appeared in a few films, often credited as Fanny Schreck.

Curiously, the word schreck is also the German word for fright, or terror.^[1] It comes from the Middle High German word schrecken: "to frighten, or terrify". Because of this, many authors who were unaware of Schreck's on-stage credits (and ignorant of the rather sparse details of his personal life) speculated that there was really no such person,^[1] and that Schreck was, in fact, some well-known actor who had chosen to adopt a pseudonym for his role in Nosferatu. One of the prime "suspects" was Alfred Abel; however, a careful examination of the photographs of these two actors is sufficient to dispel such notions.

Schreck's contemporaries recalled he was a loner with an unusual sense of humor and skill in playing grotesque characters. One reported he lived in "a remote and strange world" and that he spent time walking through dark forests.^[8]

Cultural references[link]

The person and performance of Max Schreck in Nosferatu has been fictionalized by actor Willem Dafoe in E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire.^[8] In a sort of secret history, Shadow posits that Schreck actually was a vampire.^[10]

Scriptwriter Daniel Waters created the character Max Shreck for the film Batman Returns and compared him to the character Max Schreck played in Nosferatu.^[11] Variety claimed the name was an in-joke.^[12] Shreck was a character created exclusively for the movie, absent from the comics, and serves as one of the main antagonists.

Selected filmography[link]

• Fight of the Tertia (1929)

See also[link]

• Category:Nosferatu for images related to the film
• Category:Images of Max Schreck for articles and wikipedia-hosted media related to Max Schreck

Notes[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Eickhoff, Stefan (2007) (in German). Max Schreck - Gespenstertheater. Munich: Belleville Verlag Inh. Dr. Willi Michael Farin. ISBN 3-936298-54-8. 
• Eickhoff, Stefan. "Max Schreck - Gespenstertheater" (in German). http://www.max-schreck.com/. Retrieved 2009-03-09.  (summary of Eickhoff's biography/tribute of Schreck)

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Max Schreck

• Max Schreck in the German National Library catalogue (German)
• Official Max Schreck Page

F. W. Murnau
F.W. Murnau before 1931
Born	Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe (1888-12-28)December 28, 1888 Bielefeld, Germany
Died	March 11, 1931(1931-03-11) (aged 42) Santa Barbara, California, U.S.
Occupation	Film director
Years active	1919—1931
Height	6'11 (2.10 m)

Friedrich Wilhelm "F. W." Murnau (born Friedrich Wilhelm Plumpe, December 28, 1888 – March 11, 1931) was one of the most influential German film directors of the silent era, and a prominent figure in the expressionist movement in German cinema during the 1920s. Although some of Murnau's films have been lost, most still survive.

Early years[link]

He was born in Bielefeld, Province of Westphalia. He attended the University of Heidelberg and studied art history. He took the name "Murnau" from the town in Germany named Murnau am Staffelsee. Openly gay, the 6'11 (210 cm) director was said to have an icy, imperious disposition and an obsession with film.^[1] He was a combat pilot during World War I and directed his first film Der Knabe in Blau ('The Boy in Blue') in 1919.

German films[link]

F.W. Murnau shooting a film in 1920.

Murnau's most famous film is Nosferatu, a 1922 adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula for which Stoker's widow sued for copyright infringement. Murnau lost the lawsuit and all prints of the film were ordered to be destroyed, but bootleg prints survived. The vampire, played by German stage actor Max Schreck, resembled a rat which was known to carry the plague. The origins of the word are from Stoker's novel, where it is used by the Romanian townsfolk to refer to Count Dracula and presumably, other undead.

Nearly as important as Nosferatu in Murnau's filmography was The Last Laugh ("Der Letzte Mann", German "The Last Man") (1924), written by Carl Mayer (a very prominent figure of the Kammerspielfilm movement) and starring Emil Jannings. The film introduced the subjective point of view camera, where the camera "sees" from the eyes of a character and uses visual style to convey a character's psychological state. It also anticipated the cinéma vérité movement in its subject matter. The film also used the "Unchained Camera Technique", a mix of tracking shots, pans, tilts, and dolly moves. Also, unlike the majority of Murnau's other works, The Last Laugh is considered a Kammerspielfilm with Expressionist elements. Unlike expressionist films, Kammerspielfilme are categorized by their chamber play influence, involving a lack of intricate set designs and story lines / themes regarding social injustice towards the working classes.

Murnau's last German film was the big budget Faust (1926) with Gösta Ekman as the title character, Emil Jannings as Mephisto and Camilla Horn as Gretchen. Murnau's film draws on older traditions of the legendary tale of Faust as well as on Goethe's classic version. The film is well known for a sequence in which the giant, winged figure of Mephisto hovers over a town sowing the seeds of plague.

Nosferatu (music by Hans Erdmann) and Faust (music by Werner Richard Heymann) were two of the first films to feature original film scores.

Hollywood[link]

F.W Murnau with Henri Matisse at Tahiti in 1930.

Murnau emigrated to Hollywood in 1926, where he joined the Fox Studio and made Sunrise (1927), a movie often cited by film scholars as one of the greatest films of all time.^[2] Filmed in the Fox Movietone sound-on-film system (music and sound effects only), Sunrise was not a financial success, but received several Oscars at the very first Academy Awards ceremony in 1929. In winning the Academy Award for Unique and Artistic Production it shared what is now the Best Picture award with the movie Wings.

Murnau's next two films, the (now lost) Four Devils (1928) and City Girl (1930), were modified to adapt to the new era of sound film and were not well received. Their poor receptions disillusioned Murnau, and he quit Fox to journey for a while in the South Pacific.

Together with documentary film pioneer Robert Flaherty, Murnau travelled to Bora Bora to realize the film Tabu in 1931. Flaherty left after artistic disputes with Murnau who had to finish the movie on his own. The movie was censored in the United States for images of bare-breasted Polynesian women.^{[citation needed]} The film was originally shot by cinematographer Floyd Crosby as half-talkie, half-silent, before being fully restored as a silent film — Murnau's preferred medium.

Death[link]

Grave and bust, by Karl Ludwig Manzel, in the Stahnsdorf Southwestern Cemetery

Murnau's memorial plaque in Berlin.

Murnau died in an automobile accident in Santa Barbara, California on 11 March 1931 ^[3] and therefore did not live to see the premiere of his last film. He was entombed in Southwest Cemetery in Stahnsdorf (Südwest-Kirchhof Stahnsdorf) near Berlin. Only 11 people attended the funeral. Among them were Robert Flaherty, Emil Jannings, Greta Garbo and Fritz Lang, who delivered the funeral speech. Garbo also commissioned a death mask of Murnau, which she kept on her desk during her years in Hollywood.^[4]

Derivative works[link]

In 2000, director E. Elias Merhige released Shadow of the Vampire, a fictionalization of the making of Nosferatu. Murnau is portrayed by John Malkovich. In the film, Murnau is so dedicated to making the film genuine that he actually hires a real vampire (Willem Dafoe) to play Count Orlok.

Filmography[link]

• Der Knabe in Blau (The Boy in Blue, released 28 June 1919)
• Satanas (released around 30 January 1920 but made in 1919)
• Der Bucklige und die Tänzerin (The Hunchback and the Dancer, released 8 July 1920)
• Der Janus-Kopf (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde / The Head of Janus, released 17 September 1920)
• Abend – Nacht – Morgen (Evening – Night – Morning, released October 1920)
• Sehnsucht (Desire: The Tragedy of a Dancer, released 18 October 1920)
• Der Gang in die Nacht (Journey Into the Night, released 13 December 1920)
• Schloß Vogelöd (The Haunted Castle / Castle Vogeloed, released April 1921)
• Marizza (released 20 January 1922 but filmed in 1921)
• Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror, released 5 March 1922)
• Der brennende Acker (The Burning Soil, released 16 March 1922)
• Phantom (released 29 October 1922)
• Die Austreibung (The Expulsion, released 23 October 1923)
• Die Finanzen des Großherzogs (The Grand Duke's Finances, released 7 January 1924)
• Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh, released 23 December 1924)
• Herr Tartüff (Tartuffe, released 25 January 1926)
• Faust (released 14 October 1926)
• Sunrise (released 23 September 1927, won a special Oscar for "Unique Artistic Presentation" at the first Academy Awards)
• 4 Devils (released 3 October 1928, is generally regarded as one of his best works and is a highly sought-after lost film)
• City Girl / Our Daily Bread (released 19 May 1930)
• Tabu (released 18 March 1931)

References[link]

External links[link]

Biography portal

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau

• Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Foundation, the legal successor to UFA, Bavaria, Terra, Tobis, and Berlin-Film
• F. W. MURNAU at internettrash.com
• F. W. Murnau at AllRovi
• F. W. Murnau at the Internet Movie Database
• F.W. Murnau at filmportal.de
• F. W. Murnau at Find a Grave

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)

Count Orlok (ger. "Graf Orlok") is a fictional character portrayed by Max Schreck in the silent movie Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens. He was based on Bram Stoker's character, Count Dracula.

Profile[link]

In Nosferatu, Count Orlok is a vampire from Transylvania, and appears to be the haunt of many nightmarish creatures, including a werewolf (which was actually played by a hyena in the film). Orlok, known locally as the eponymous "Nosferatu", is a living corpse also known as "The Bird of Death", which feasts upon the blood of living humans.

Count Orlok dwells alone in a vast castle hidden among the rugged peaks in a lost corner of the Carpathian Mountains. The castle is swathed in shadows, and is badly neglected with a highly sinister feel to it. He is in league with the housing agent Knock, and wants to purchase a house in Wisborg. Local peasants live in terror of Orlok and never venture out after dark. Thomas Hutter scorns their fears as mere superstition, and ventures to the decrepit castle, however the coach-driver will not take him over the bridge. A black-swathed figure in a black coach (Orlok in disguise) drives him the rest of the way. He is greeted by Orlok, who claims as it is past midnight all his servants have gone to bed, and the two dine together and discuss Orlok's purchasing of a house in the fictional city of Wisborg, Germany. Hutter accidentally cuts his hand when slicing bread and Orlok is barely able to control himself from drinking from Hutter's wound. After Hutter collapses in a chair, Orlok feeds off of him, but this is not shown on screen: Hutter discovers two bites on his neck the next day but is unaware that his host is a vampire.

Hutter only realises the horrific truth later in his chambers after further reading from "The Book of the Vampires", and he discovers that he is trapped in the castle with the Nosferatu. Orlok advances upon Hutter, and Hutter's beloved wife, Ellen, senses through telepathy that her husband's life is in mortal danger; she screams for him and somehow Orlok is powerless to touch him. The next morning Hutter searches the castle, and discovers to his revulsion that Orlok is "sleeping" in the basement in a filthy coffin filled with earth. Hutter then witnesses Orlok loading a cart with several coffins filled with soil, one of which he then hides in and they are driven off to be loaded on to a ship headed for Wisborg. This soil is later revealed to be unhallowed earth from Orlok's grave; according to "The Book of the Vampires", all Nosferatu must sleep by day in the unholy earth from their graves to sustain their power.

On board the ship, he kills every crew member until only the captain and his first mate remain. Later when the first mate goes to the cargo hold to investigate, Count Orlok rises from his coffin, terrifying the first mate who jumps overboard in fear. The captain ties himself to the wheel of the ship when Count Orlok creeps up on him and kills the captain. His journey by sea spreads plague all over Europe.

Upon his arrival in Wisborg, Orlok infests the city with rats that sleep in his coffins, and countless people fall victim to the plague, forcing the local authorities to declare a quarantine and provoking hysteria among the citizens. Rather than come back as vampires, however, his victims simply die. Ellen and Hutter know the causes of the plague but fear they are powerless to stop the vampire. Ellen watches sullenly as lines of coffins are carried through the empty streets, and she realises Orlok must be stopped. Ellen learns from "The Book of the Vampires" that - rather than a stake through the heart - the Nosferatu can only be vanquished if a woman pure in heart willingly allows him to feed off her long enough to prevent him from seeking shelter from sunrise. Ellen coaxes Orlok to her room and lies in bed whilst he drinks from her neck. The sun rises, and Orlok is burned away in a cloud of smoke. Knock is able to sense Orlok is dead. Ellen dies soon after.

Legacy[link]

Orlok is the main model for a style of fictional vampire that is often nicknamed Nosferatu after the movie. Although based upon Count Dracula, Orlok possesses none of his predecessor's aristocratic charm or seductiveness. He resembles something between a rat and a spider and is much more analogous to historical folklore accounts of vampires, which were described as walking corpses inhabited by a demonic presence. He sleeps in "unhallowed" soil infected with the Black Death, and brings plague and disease with him. He is followed everywhere by rats, traditional carriers of the feared Black Death. Orlok is famous for being the first vampire in history to be destroyed by sunlight. In earlier folklore, vampires were disgusted by but could survive sunlight.

• The 1979 film Nosferatu the Vampyre was a remake of the original. Some of the characters reverted to their original Stoker names, including Dracula, but he was clearly based on the Orlok variation. Dracula was portrayed by Klaus Kinski as a pathetic, lonely creature yearning for human love.
• The 2000 film Shadow of the Vampire presented a fictional account of the filming of Nosferatu in which Max Schreck (played by Willem Dafoe) is actually a vampire.
• In Kim Newman's Anno Dracula, Orlok serves in the Carpathian Guards of Dracula and is the Governor of the Tower of London. Orlok appears as part of the German forces, along with other silent film characters such as Doctor Caligari and Doctor Mabuse, trying to create the Red Baron in Newman's sequel, The Bloody Red Baron.
• Orlok has also been featured on several occasions in the popular Castlevania video game series. First, he served as a boss in Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, in which he is referred to as Olrox (in the Japanese version of the game, his name is Orlok). Also, in Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow and Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, Olrox's Suit can be equipped as an armor.
• In White Wolf's "Vampire: The Masquerade" and "Vampire: The Requiem" franchises, there is a vampire clan known as the Nosferatu. They look extremely similar to Count Orlok.
• Count Orlok has appeared in comic books as well, such as Viper Comics's 2010 graphic novel titled Nosferatu, which features Orlok in a modern setting.^[1]
• He also appeared in a episode of SpongeBob SquarePants entitled "Graveyard Shift". He is revealed to be the one flickering the lights just like in Squidward's scary story. When he is discovered, he smiles and the episode ends.

See also[link]

• Count Dracula
• Nosferatu, Phantom der Nacht
• Varney the Vampire
• Vlad III the Impaler
• Elizabeth Báthory
• Kurt Barlow

References[link]