Nosferatu

Jim Shepard

Shepard gives us a rather ambitious fictional life of F. W. Murnau, director of Nosferatu. He focuses on Murnau's adolescent relationship with a poet killed in the trenches during WWI and how it affects Murnau until the latter's death not long after the completion of the filming of Tabu. The first half of the book is a narrative, the second half given to us as Murnau's journal entries during the filming of Nosferatu, The Last Man, and Tabu.

It's quite well put together, and Shepard is certainly good enough at what he does. The pages keep turning, and with the sudden interest in Murnau of late, this should be finding its way back into print relatively soon. Certainly worth seeking out for those interested in Murnau, and a pretty decent time-waster for the rest of the world.