Explainers
A court ordered Nosferatu destroyed. How did it survive?
An unlicensed Dracula adaptation, a destruction order and prints already abroad: how the 1922 Nosferatu survived for your Halloween watchlist.
By ShowVision Movies Desk ·
A court ordered the 1922 Nosferatu's prints destroyed. It had adapted Dracula without permission, and Bram Stoker's widow, Florence, won her copyright case. But prints had already travelled abroad. Pursuing every copy was impractical, and some survived. [S1][S2][S4]
The filmmakers had turned Count Dracula into Count Orlok and moved the novel's English scenes to Germany. But the producers still hadn't secured the rights to Stoker's novel. The precise legal chronology is less certain: the Irish Times reports that records of the case appear not to have survived. [S1][S2][S3]
Prints preserved abroad later helped restorers reconstruct the film toward its original form. The Murnau Foundation commissioned an extensive restoration in 2005–06. [S3][S4]
The especially awkward detail is that Nosferatu's own credits and shooting script named Dracula as its source. [S2]
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Nosferatu release dates
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Sources
- [S1] BFI: Film 2: Nosferatu (1922)
- [S2] The Irish Times: Nosferatu and the fangs of copyright infringement
- [S3] Friedrich-Wilhelm-Murnau-Stiftung: 100. Geburtstag Nosferatu
- [S4] Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung: Nosferatu – Eine Symphonie des Grauens: Klassiker sehen – Filme verstehen
- [S5] German Historical Institute / GHDI: F.W. Murnau, Nosferatu (1922)