Robert Wiene creates the look of a demented, Edvard Munch-like painting brought horrifically to life in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, expressing the nightmarish disorientation of an authoritarian society slowly driving everyone insane.
Gaunt-faced, wide-eyed, hunched over, the mere profile of Count Orlok strikes a terrifying image that has persisted in our collective consciousness for almost a century, and yet through F.W. Murnau’s sharp, expressionist lighting, Nosferatu still holds up as being more than just one remarkable performance.
