The first screen version of Dracula is still the finest, thanks largely
to the sinister poetry of Murnau's direction. Understated
performances (Schroeder is especially touching) are set against
foreboding locations, distorted by expressionistic shadows and
techniques such as fast motion, so that the real world acquires a subtle
ambience of the supernatural. But the film is also genuinely
disturbing in its sense of human powerlessness; significantly, in
contrast to Bram Stoker's novel, bourgeois rationality is incapable
of overcoming the invading threat. Along with Dreyer's Vampyr, one of
the most profoundly unsettling of horror movies.
