In December 1878, Bram Stoker married Florence Balcombe in St Anne’s Church on Dublin’s Dawson Street. Once pursued romantically by Oscar Wilde, the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel James Balcombe of Clontarf was instead smitten by the future author of Dracula. A bust of the author can be found in the church today, celebrating the connections between the historic church and one of the most celebrated writers this city has produced. During a memorial service to mark the centenary of Stoker’s death, a copy of Dracula was carried to the altar of the church. I doubt that’s happened anywhere else!
Florence would outlive her husband by some twenty-five years, and lived to see Dracula become something of a classic. She also became entangled in a very bitter legal battle in 1922 over Nosferatu, the ground-breaking German Expressionist horror film. An unauthorised adaptation of Stoker’s work, Florence achieved a court ruling which ordered that all copies of the film be destroyed. Thankfully, this didn’t quite happen.
Nosferatu is a pioneering work of cinema, described by screenprism as “a film historian’s dream movie. It is a foreboding and influential picture that helped define German Expressionism and set a precedent for a century of horror cinema.” The work was directed by F.W Murnau, who would be responsible for an impressive twenty-one films over his career. The production company, Prana Films, was established in 1921 by the Occultist Albin Grau, who intended to produce many films centered on themes of the supernatural and the occult.
Promotional material for Nosferatu openly admitted that the work was “freely adapted” from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. It premiered in the beautiful Marble Hall of the Berlin Zoological Gardens, and a review in the Berlin Lokal-Anzeiger reported on how “the room darkened as the projectors began to whir and a title announced that a symphony of horror should roll across the screen.” The launch was lavish, a little too much so. As Nosferatu scholar Cristina Massaccesi has noted, “the launch of the film had cost Prana more than the feature itself”. Another problem was that nobody from Prana had sought any permissions from Florence and the Stoker Estate to utilise Dracula in the manner in which they had.
In April 1922, Florence received a programme and promotional material for Nosferatu in the post. Approaching the British Incorporated Society of Authors, they then commenced legal action against Prana. When Florence sued for copyright infringement, Prana believed the best course of action was to proclaim bankruptcy. Rather than financial compensation, her legal team sought the handing over of all copies of the film, and in July 1925 a Berlin court ordered the very same. Florence had never actually seen the film, but that mattered little to her. As David J. Skal has noted:
…in the case of Nosferatu we have one of the few instances in film history, and perhaps the only one, in which an obliterating capital punishment is sought for a work of cinematic art, strictly on legalistic ground, by a person with no knowledge of the work’s specific contents or artistic merit.
Thankfully for cinema lovers, Florence’s demand that the film be destroyed was not carried out entirely. A print of the film had already made its way out of Germany, and Massaccesi notes that “the German court did not provide any concrete evidence of the film’s obliteration and, although the original negative never resurfaced, Nosferatu reappeared almost immediately in England.” Skal has asked an intriguing question, “did Florence Stoker ever actually see Nosferatu? After seven long years of doing battle, and finally capturing the enemy, it would be strange indeed if she didn’t insist on looking the thing in the face.” By 1929, the film was even being screened in New York City.
Florence believed that Dracula had a life away from the printed word. She would grant the right for a stage adaption to Hamilton Deane, a Dubliner and a neighbour once upon a time in Clontarf. Actor,playwright and director, Deane first brought Dracula to the stage in June 1924. Much of the popular image of Dracula today – down to cape and evening clothes – is owed to Deane’s interpretation.
Nosferatu refused to die. In time, it would even make its way to the big screen in Bram Stoker’s home city, playing to packed crowds at the Irish Film Institute’s Horrorthon. It thankfully escaped the dustbin of history, and a place among the ‘lost films’ of the past.
Thank you for the very interesting insight into the story behind the film. Yours Paddy Behan
Great piece. Thank you.
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