We begin. The set deathly quiet. Hutter in his room in the castle, huddled behind the door. He opens it a crack. View deep into dining hall. By the fireplace the Nosferatu, motionless, arms down, confrontationally stark against the background. Horrible lack of movement. Hutter supports himself on the doorpost. Terrible realizations dawning. Shut the door, shut it quickly! No bolt. No lock. He rushes to the window. (View of the forest at night: undergrowth; wolves raising their heads, howling.) The contrast between Hutter’s movements and the Nosferatu’s: frenzied panic vs. the terrible evenness of the advance. Hutter on his knees by the side of the bed. Stares at the door, which opens to half its width; then fully. Superimpositions of progressively closer shots of the vampire produce movement without movement, the figure swelling within the frame, the mechanism of nightmare. Wagner has the genius idea of having the figure penetrate a powerful light emanating from the side just as he enters the doorway. Four days of work.

Two weeks left. Hardly eating. The same woman journalist from Der Film who interviewed Grau told me today that my face was like two profiles stuck together. Ellen’s room, her decision to sacrifice herself, the final approach of the vampire are all still left to do. Two days of work on Ellen reading The Book of Vampires, until my temples are throbbing, my cheeks burning, my whole frame shivering. A few hours in my room drinking hot soup, contemplating the mistakes I made by plunging on at such a pace; but besides the lack of time, I feel myself fighting to prevent any kind of indecision at this point from demoralizing the unit.

My headaches worse. My kidneys breaking down. Berliners are tactless and cruel. On a bus yesterday a young lieutenant seated me with a flourish. The spectacle of this disintegrating thirty-three-year-old seems to make people laugh.

Take after take of Ellen at the window, seeing the Nosferatu. She is at once pure (and therefore appalled by what she has to do) and impure (since she makes her bed available to the vampire). Greta not up to it. Wagner works with the inhumanity of all cameramen; he calibrates the lights at his own pace without noticing that Greta all that time is swaying on her feet. Grau looks on, his arms folded. The nerve storm finally breaks and she collapses. Wangenheim comforts her while we wait. The shooting goes far into the night.

This fear of coming to a standstill, of not being able to go on, of having to break off—it’s connected to all of my other undertakings: loving, observing, participating. Everything, in short, that has called for perseverance.