Nosferatu eine symphonie des grauens - 1921

Well, obviously it looks so old, and the story has been represented so many times that it can’t surprise anybody anymore, so the scary-effect is now lost, but in 1921 or 22 it must have been something! The shots were very good, pity I didn’t like the actor playing Hutter the husband (Gustav v. Wangenheim), but the women playing his wife Ellen (Greta Schroeder) and Ruth, rich Harding’s sister (Ruth Landshoff) were better, and Nosferatu was very effective - Count Orlok=Max Schreck. It must have been something, this tall figure so pale, appearing and disappearing, coming out of the coffin all stiff with his white hands with long long fingers, his shadow approaching slowly... that was the best part of course. Very effective, all the scenes with Count Orlok were truly impressive. 
The story is obviously based on Dracula, although he had to change all the names because, as I read on the internet, he couldn’t get the rights to Dracula, and was later sued by Stoker’s heirs and lost. 
A real horror movie in 1921, one hour and a half with a complex story, well developed plot, all very interesting and well done, I can clearly see why director Murnau made history. 
The story:
Set in Wisborg in 1838. Real estate agent Knock reads a letter from Count Orlok, from Transylvania: he wants to buy a house here, so he sends young Hutter to arrange the deal, and to offer him the house in front of his own. Hutter calls Transylvania the land of thieves and spirits, or ghosts, I don’t remember exactly, and his wife Ellen is so worried for this long journey that she goes to stay with their friend Harding and his sister. She cries and hugs him as if he was going to war.
Hutter reaches the place, and in the village everybody falls silent when he names Orlok, and they refuse to take him to the house itself. 
Count Orlok appears to be rather eccentric, he sleeps during the day and they can only talk before sunset; when Hutter cuts himself while slicing a loaf of bread, Orlok sucks his finger totally shocking him. He then falls asleep and wakes up to find two small wounds on his neck, and writes to Ellen to say that the place is full of insects. When he meets Orlok again to talk business, the count sees a picture of Ellen and says she has a beautiful neck, and yes he’ll take that isolated house right in front of his own...
Ellen has terrible nightmares and sleepwalks. Hutter has nightmares too, and searches the place for Orlok, and finds him sleeping in a coffin, whose lid is broken and he can see the face. Hutter is locked inside and sees outside Orlok loading coffins full of earth on his carriage, and then he lays in the last one and goes away. Hutter tries to escape but hurts himself and is cured at a hospital (I guess, or some place anyway). While loading the coffins, a sailor opens one of them finding it full of earth and rats and is bit by one.
Knock is locked up in an asylum, talking about his Master and eating spiders..
Aboard the ship that is transporting Orlok, the men die one after the other. It is believed to be the Pest, but it’s Orlok killing them all. The scene when a sailor went down to the coffin, and saw him appearing and disappearing, and then saw him rise up all stiff with those hands.. it’s a great scene, I guess it must be real horror back then. 
As soon as Hutter is well enough he leaves to go back home. They get to Wisborg roughly at the same time. We see Nosferatu carrying again his own coffin full of the earth in which he was buried and that he needs to maintain his power. A powerful image, no man could carry it as if it was as light as a feather. Ellen reads about Nosferatu in the book Hutter brought with him: it says that the only way to stop him is if a pure girl offers him her blood so to make him forget the sunrise. 
Eventually she does just that, at the cost of her own life, and he’s still in her room when the sun rises, and disappears leaving only smoke behind. From that moment the ‘pest’ stopped making victims....
I saw a version made in 2005/6, restored by “L’immagine ritrovata”-Bologna, combining various versions available: a French 1922 copy, a Czechoslovakian 1920s copy, a 1930s copy, and a copy from 1939 kept in the Berlin archives. That is if I understood everything correctly..
ITA Nosferatu op. Nosferatu il vampiro