why does nosferatu look like a german romantic painting?

Drawing on 19th century Romanticism's rebellion against industrialization, Nosferatu uses its visual style to reflect the anxieties of techno-capitalism for today’s audience.

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Mornin!

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This post contains spoilers for Nosferatu.

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On a foggy Bay Area evening, I bundled up in a puffer jacket, and fur-lined clogs for a 7:30pm showing of Nosferatu.

I snuck a foil-wrapped burrito in for dinner, which was very risky because I almost choked on a piece of asada at the first jump scare-induced GASP!

It had been a few weeks since the film’s release, so I felt like I was late to the party in terms of discussing its reception. My expectations had already been shaped by a few Letterboxd reviews and Orlock thirst trap edits that popped up on my TikTok fyp, but still! I was excited to see Lily-Rose Depp do her haunted corpse bride thing (she was actually great in The Idol, I was singing “I’m just a freak yeahhhh” that whole summer).

The bruise colored palette. Photo: Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection

Depp plays Ellen Hutter, a woman whose psychic abilities lead her to make contact with a demonic spirit (the vampire Nosferatu). He torments her in nightmares and takes over her body—causing seizures and sleepwalking.

She is generally enjoying newlywed life with Thomas, her devoted husband who is eager for a good performance review at his real estate agent job. So when his creepy boss tasks him with the journey to Transylvania to help a mysterious Count Orlock buy property, he reluctantly leaves Ellen (with her chatelaine locket dangling from his hip—loved this jewelry detail).

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While the film’s most apparent stylistic influence is all things Gothic, I was struck by the subtler nods to the visual (and philosophical) codes of the German Romantic movement.

Because FW Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror (1922) was a quintessentially German Expressionistic film, I’ve seen some reviews calling Nosferatu a Gothic-meets-German Expressionist work as well.

However, Jarin Blaschke, the film’s cinematographer, specifically states in an interview that it is not:

“What’s important to him is having it told through the eye of the culture of the time, which was not expressionism, not black and white,” says Blaschke. “Rob was clear it should be romanticism […] You just get a feeling from romantic paintings; there’s something to the light that is a little other.”¹

Photo: Focus Features/Courtesy Everett Collection

Ok, brief art history lesson.

The German Romantic movement of the late 18th and early 19th century was a revolt against the values of capitalist industrialization, manifested through artistic mediums like poetry, music, and painting.² It was a reaction to the European Enlightenment, which ushered in a new world order that prized rationality and logic.

You could think of them as the original anti-STEM movement.

The “romantic” in Romanticism doesn’t refer to love, but rather the condition of being prone to emotional intensity and chaos. Of standing on a cliff with crashing waves, overcome with the awe and fear of the elusive sublime. If Beethoven’s later life works were the sound of Romanticism—stirring “mists of terror, of grief”³, then Caspar David Friedrich’s paintings are its visual embodiment.

As I watched Nosferatu, I kept thinking—this looks exactly like a Friedrich painting.

Indeed, Eggers mentions in an interview that he looked at Friedrich’s paintings as moodboard inspiration.⁴

I argue that Nosferatu uses the visual language of German Romanticism to convey the movement’s values to a contemporary audience. This is the message I took away from the film:

A society ruled by rationality and industrial progress (ahem, AI and climate change) is at risk of self-destruction, as it fails to value the mystical, the folk traditions, and the deep cultural wisdom that technology cannot convey.

We are Wisborg—the paradox of the “scientific” society that is destroyed by a supernatural demonic plague. Nosferatu speaks to the epochal anxiety of techno-capitalism and horrors it will bring.

The shot of Thomas overlooking the mountains resembles the most famous German Romantic painting: Wanderer Above a Sea of Fog by Friedrich. The images are compositional twins: man seen from the back, facing a blustery natural landscape that conjures both fear and awe (the sublime).

The back shot was central to the Romantic style, which emphasized the power of natural phenomena. Man is faceless, rendered a shadow, looking onward with a sort of reverent communion with the landscape.

During his long journey to Orlock’s castle, Thomas seeks respite in a small Transylvanian village for a night. The villagers urge him to stay away from the castle, speaking of its darkness and general cursed-ness. He decides to stay anyways.

So begins the tension between the rational and the mystical…at night, he has a nightmare that the villagers went out into the forest to perform a ritual that ends with exhuming a vampire corpse.

The contrast between the Transylvanian "folk superstitions” against Wisborg’s “scientific doctors” reflect the Romantic philosophy: the people who believe in vampires seem to be protected from Nosferatu’s evil, while those who scoff at the talk of the supernatural are the first to succumb to the plague.

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Here’s another film + painting pairing:

Ellen and Anna strolling along the sandy shores of the cemetery. The outdoor scenes were my favorite fashion moments, because the women always wore these incredible hats with brims, long ribbons, and dark florals.

Photo: Focus Features//Courtesy Everett Collection

Doesn’t that look so similar to this?

Sunset (Brothers) by Caspar David Friedrich

Again, we see compositional parallels: two figures, closely connected as a unit, surrounded by a natural landscape with a distinct horizon line. Ellen and Anna’s friendship is meant to evoke sisterhood, and Friedrich’s painting implies the pair in his scene are brothers.

Paintings in the Romantic tradition never depict a sprawl or a crowd—that would conjure the dense population of the industrialized urban center. Rather, these images zero in on a stirring individual connection with nature, or 1:1 human relationships with depth.

Here’s another Friedrich painting that echoes those themes:

Moon Rising Over The Sea by Caspar David Friedrich

One woman drapes her hand on the other’s shoulder—a gesture of care and familiarity. This image brings up a sense of wistfulness. Romanticists believed that good art should move the viewer, and stimulate emotions that could not be explained by reason.

It is on this outdoor nature walk that Ellen opens up to Anna about her psychic experiences (being possessed by Nosferatu). Ellen looks out into the gray skies and water as she explains the inexplicable to Anna.

Whenever Ellen speaks more openly about her connection to Nosferatu, there’s an element of letting the “outside” in. Like when she opens the window on the final night, luring him in to find her. Applying a Romantic reading to this observation suggests that inviting in the tumultuousness of nature is a portal to connect with your inner emotional world—especially the parts that feel dark and shameful.

I am left wondering if Nosferatu is indicative of a resurgence of Romantic values for modern times, as technology tightens its firm grasp on every part of our lives. The Met Museum is running a Caspar David Friedrich exhibition this Spring, and there’s talk of more Gothic movie adaptations on the way (Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights).

The direction of art and literature is tied to our collective cultural psyche. It seems that we are hungry for answers to questions that the Romantics asked centuries ago.

Where does humanity fit into the larger natural order?

Why do we feel a bittersweet longing for an unknown past?

Where do we go to seek the sublime?

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Thanks for reading! I would love to hear what you thought of Nosferatu.

Personally, I didn’t think it was meant to be a huge “fashion” film in the same way as say, Poor Things was, but I liked Ellen’s floaty nightgowns and period-specific dresses.

xoxo viv

What Free Subscribers Are Missing Out On

1. https://www.screendaily.com/features/into-the-shadows-creating-the-deep-dark-look-of-nosferatu/5199708.article

2. https://www.thecollector.com/german-romanticism-revolt-against-capitalism/

3. https://www.esm.rochester.edu/beethoven/transitional-composer-and-heroic-objective/

4. https://i-d.co/article/nosferatu-robert-eggers-making-of-moodboards-costumes/