Here then, Father Christmas, is Murnau’s dream: he is in an unimaginably modern theater, gazing spellbound at an immense screen. He sees projected a film by an unknown filmmaker that is awesomely beautiful, inconceivable, and totally unfamiliar. He cannot even imagine how it was composed. He’s not even sure he’s watching a film. He sees, illuminated there, the simplest and most elusive of miracles: the path to himself and his neighbors.

Mary Degele’s old gardens were still dark. He had not maintained her fastidiousness about keeping after the gardener after her death. The trees emanated a calm, pre-dawn hush. Two clouds hung above them.

He turned on his lamp. His kidneys felt swollen. He wrote himself a note: Be sure of having used to the full all that’s communicated by immobility and silence.

He pulled over The History of Witchcraft and opened to the chapter on vampires. The house was quiet. He paged through engravings. The osculum infame, the kiss of shame: witches kissing Satan’s backside.

For two days he’d been squabbling with Spiess, who wanted to accompany them to Slovakia. He claimed he could be of service. And he could keep Murnau out of trouble. One thing that was very strong in him was fidelity, he said. Promiscuity, too, but also fidelity.

He wanted to go along on salary, Murnau supposed. Of course, Spiess said. He was doing so as an artist, not a companion. The argument had been suspended.

He shut The History of Witchcraft. Work on something, he thought.

He considered an idea for the shot of the spider that Knock would see from his madman’s cell. What about backlighting it? Backlight would eliminate the problem of the transparency of the web in frontal light. With a dark background the strands should become silver and distinct, like frost on a window.

Fill-light from the front would be enough to give the spider definition. He made a note to call Wagner.

He moved on to an earlier note concerning the number of suitable bedrooms required for the vampire’s attacks. Who was ever attacked by a vampire in the kitchen? The gowned figure, virginal and exposed, aslant on her bed or dreaming unaware at the window.… Voyeurism was the central thrill of the vampire-story. The heroine left to herself at night, with the vampire at the window, tapping to come in.

Vampirism was something private and hooded, beyond the individual’s will to control. The arch—the cave-vault, the all-too-visible hiding place—should then be the visual leitmotif of the film. He made a few sketches.

When he finished, only thirty-five minutes had passed and he was no closer to going back to sleep. He sat gathering wool for some minutes. Then he dug out of his desk Galeen’s treatment, which he hadn’t yet had time to break down systematically.

NoSferAtu: A TaLe of HoRroR

by Henrik Galeen