Although FW Murnau’s pre-America years will always be defined by 1922’s Nosferatu, he’d already racked up nine films in the preceding three years. He made his mark on Hollywood with the 1927 landmark Sunrise but, although being overshadowed by Nosferatu, his earlier German films reveal how he reached these points. Schloss Vogelöd (also known as The Haunted Castle) is a Murnau obscurity, a stately, atmospheric meditation from 1921 that’s capable of giving the willies.
But they take a while manifesting themselves. The straightforward plot is drawn out. Every scene is a carefully staged set piece. There’s a lot of walking up and down stairs. Cigarettes and cigars are used to make a point, add punctuation. This then is silent drama, with an emphasis of building towards the pivotal moments.
A bunch of stiff-backed poshies – a retired judge, sundry counts – are at a countryside castle for a hunt. Rain stops play, so they have to hang out indoors. The creepy Count Oetsch rills up, uninvited. He’s the brother of the deceased former husband of an expected guest, Baroness Safferstätt – a fantastic, chest-heaving, hyperventilating Olga Tschechowa (Anton Chekhov’s niece). His arrival causes havoc as the Count, though never convicted, is assumed to have killed her former husband to get his hands on the title. The tension is racked up further by the expected arrival from Rome of the priest Father Faramund. Lord Vogelöd is stressed by Oetsch’s arrival and cannot get him to leave. Speculation is rife and imaginations run wild, leading to extraordinary, arresting scenes in the film’s third act - scenes that borrow the new-to-film Expressionism of (then most recent) 1920's Der Golem and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari, telegraphing where Murnau and Vogelöd's cinematographer Fritz Arno Wagner would be the next year with Nosferatu.
The restoration looks fantastic and crisp. The DVD extra is a half-hour documentary on Murnau’s early German years that’s illuminating, especially when it skirts around his liaisons. Schloss Vogelöd isn’t a classic, but it creates its atmosphere. As one character exclaims, “It’s getting downright eerie in here.”
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