Nosferatu

greenygal and I went to see Nosferatu at the AFI last night. It was certainly different -- because it's a silent film, in some ways it was closer to a dance performance than a movie. Also, it's so old that the standard acting methods have changed enormously since it was filmed.

The soundtrack was by Silent Orchestra, a duo that has specializes in live performance of semi-improvised scores to silent movies. I kind of want to see their take on Salome now.

There were some unintentionally hilarious parts to the movie -- mostly because everyone in the audience has *seen* a vampire movie before, and knows what's coming -- but there was a bit where the movie cut to what supposed to be some sort of 'monstrous' wolf threatening the horses during the Transylvania sequence. It was an striped hyena, of all things, and not remotely scary.

But most of the scenes with Count Orlock were genuinely creepy. Shadows attacking is just spooky, no matter how old the film is.