Dracula Meets the "Zeitgeist": "Nosferatu" (1922) as Film Adaptation

Murnau may have, as a director of considerable merit, a personal vision that permeates his oeuvre,1 but the particular configuration of Nosferatu-especially the absent Van Helsing and the new endingcan be construed as owing much to the structure of social-psychological variables operative in Germany at the time that Murnau was making his film. "4 The artistic movement that flourished was, fittingly, expressionism, described by Manvell and Fraenkel as "essentially a movement designed to get away from actuality and to satisfy the desire to probe seemingly fundamental truths of human nature and society by presenting them through fantasy and dramatized mysticism.