https://vo.rs/tags/f.w.-murnau/Latest from the F.W. Murnau desk at vo.rs.Hugo -- gohugo.ioenThis work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.Thu, 03 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000https://vo.rs/screen/nosferatu-1922-the-vampire-film-that-outlived-its-lawsuit/<p>The most influential horror film ever made is a copy someone tried to burn. In 1922 a small German outfit called Prana Film adapted Bram Stoker&rsquo;s <em>Dracula</em> without buying the rights, changed the names, moved the action from Whitby to a fictional Baltic port called Wisborg, and released it as <em>Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens</em> — a symphony of horror. Stoker had been dead a decade. His widow, Florence Stoker, was not, and she sued. The German courts agreed with her, ordered every print and negative destroyed, and Prana Film went bankrupt trying to fight it. By any reasonable accounting the film should be a legal footnote, a title in a list of things that no longer exist.</p>Thu, 03 Aug 2023 08:00:00 +0000