The 1922 German film Nosferatu, the earliest vampire film, was a blatant plagiarism of Bram Stoker's novel 'Dracula'. Stoker's widow won a court action in 1925 to have it destroyed (but fortunately copies of the original survived). Murnau made a number of subtle changes to the original story. The count's name was changed to Nosferatu, the locations were changed from Transylvania to Germany, and from London to Bremen, and the story was set in 1838. The brooding atmosphere, stark images, and chilling horror of Murnau's film are unique. Critics have hailed it as the greatest vampire film ever made. It certainly set a standard for all those that have followed. Murnau departed from the usual custom of German filmmakers working in studios and shot much of the film on location in his native Westphalia and on the Baltic coast. The inspired choice of actor Max Schreck as Nosferatu, in a performance that Christopher Lee has called 'the greatest screen interpretation of a vampire', was the inspiration for the film Shadow of a Vampire.

Pop quiz: what was the first sound film? Most people say The Jazz Singer, and yes, it was The Jazz Singer that stormed the world and killed off silent pictures forever. But in a way the first sound film was Sunrise. It was released 13 days earlier and boasted not just a recorded musical score but also synchronised sound effects ((mdash)) everything except speech. And although it flopped, it was Sunrise, not the megahit The Jazz Singer, that was the way of the future ((mdash)) not just because the sound-on-film method it pioneered is still with us, while the sound-on-disc method used by The Jazz Singer died within two years, but because The Jazz Singer became a historical curiosity before its first theatrical run had ended, while Sunrise casts a spell that is still hard to resist. The story is simple ((mdash)) a farmer, goaded by his mistress, takes his wife on a trip with the intention of killing her, but changes his mind, and they spend a day in the city together instead ((mdash)) but it's a myth, not just a story. Murnau calls it 'a song of two humans'. It is a kind of song, and we scarcely notice that nobody talks.