Finally, after almost three years of preparation, this is the full length Nosferatu 1922 silent film with some new music recorded live and played on a synth keyboard. Being now in the public domain, the film has also been edited with some new text, some if it put in speech bubbles, some slight colour filters, as well as some scenes taken from the Mad Doctor cartoon.
The most important element here is that the music was recorded during the first public live performance, with no editing whatsoever. It then becomes an acoustic experience rather than pure, abstract synthesizer sounds. Playing the music live also makes one step closer to acting, as the performer (i.e. me) needs to follow the action in real time. Being in the room among the audience also creates an intimate bridge with the characters in the film.
Needless to say that in spite of being almost a century old, this historic film is loaded with emotions and images that are still very powerful in today's light. Every person will see a vampire story such as this one with a different eye. As far as I'm concerned, this seems to be almost archetypal of some kind of ancient evil force rooted within the human species. It was made during a time in Europe when dictatorships were rising (see also Eighty Years), leading millions of people into an abyss of hate and casualties. The film compares the effects of the vampire to those of the plague, which in turn can be compared with a large scale human conflict such as a world war. The main difference being that the origin is naturally bacterial in the case of the plague and psychological in the case of political manipulations, both at a scale that go beyond human control and towards what we may perceive as supernatural - hence the vampire character.
It is also extremely rich visually, if you imagine what it must have been at the time to shoot such a film, which is something I tried to match with musical diversity. One last but still very important aspect is the fact that the story was based on Bram Stoker's Dracula novel without authorisation, which led to a copyright lawsuit. Many of the original film reels were destroyed, and so was the original music composed to go with it. This version is yet another attempt at filling that gap.
