Nosferatu and Modernist Horror

Available for over a year

1922: The Birth of Now - Ten programmes in which Matthew Sweet investigates objects and events from 1922, the crucial year for modernism, that have an impact today. 7. Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. F. W. Murnau's 1922 gothic masterpiece is the first vampire movie. It is German Expressionism in cinematic form and still influences contemporary film-makers. It’s also a film about disease: Count Orlok - a rip-off of Dracula that got Bram Stoker’s family lawyers on the case – brings plague to Mittel Europe. What does this disease mean, in a Europe that has just survived war and pandemic? Matthew Sweet and guests including Dana Gioia, the award-winning poet and critic who wrote the libretto to composer Alva Henderson's Nosferatu: The Opera, first produced in 2004, and the literary scholars Roger Luckhurst and Lisa Mullen. Producer: Julian May