Murnau's Nosferatu and Kirchner's Expressionist Painting

Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's 1922 film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens drew heavily on the visual language of German Expressionist painting, particularly the works of Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. The film's opening shot of Wisborg's square directly references Kirchner's Der rote Turm in Halle (1915), replicating its distorted aerial perspective and ominous tower. Murnau also adopted Kirchner's stark chiaroscuro and color contrasts, as seen in scenes like the nocturnal harbor arrival, echoing Kirchner's Nollendorfplatz (1912). The vampire Count Orlok's stylized makeup and mask-like face recall Kirchner's abstracted figures in paintings such as Die Straße (1913) and Potsdamer Platz (1914). Film historian Siegfried Kracauer, in his 1947 book From Caligari to Hitler, interpreted Nosferatu as a metaphor for the social and economic crisis of the Weimar Republic and a premonition of Hitler's rise. The film's expressionist aesthetic thus serves both as a narrative device for horror and as a historical allegory.