Nosferatu

In the history of cinema, this novel's protagonist and subject ranks as a founding father, not least for his legendary horror film, Nosferatu. But here he is revealed as a hermetic genius who turns, tragically, against himself, becoming in a sense his own vampire. What shadows Shepard's Murnau - through the airfields of the Great War to cafes and clubs in Berlin in the twenties, and to the virtual invention of filmmaking - is the conflict between his impossibly high ideals and the heartbreaking memories of love betrayed and the lover who died in the trenches. From provincial Germany, briefly…