MovieChat Forums > Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) Discussion > The Night Scenes...

The Night Scenes...

posted 7 years ago by songod-95003
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The scenes in this film that are clearly supposed to be at night but are obviously shot during the day with no attempt to filter them take me right out of the mood of the film.

I had attributed this to technical limitations. However, I just watched Murnau's "The Haunted Castle" from a year before this was shot and night scenes were abundant and well done. Son what happened with "Nosferatu"??

Knowing almost all prints of the film were destroyed per legal order by Stoker's widow (she claimed and won copyright infringement ... though had anyone done their homework they would have realized she did not own the rights as they had already slipped into public domain) I wonder if unfinished or inferring prints were all that survived, with the night scenes not treated in post production? Clearly the tech was available!

[–] cheezdoodle96 7 years ago

In the original film, and in the most recent restorations, the night scenes have a blue tint, while day scenes have a yellow tint, and indoor scenes have a orange/brown tint depending on which restoration you're watching. I may be misremembering some of the colours, but the gist of it is that nighttime scenes are blue and the daytime scenes are some form of yellow or orange. The public domain prints, such as the one they have (had?) on Netflix are in black and white, with no tints whatsoever.