Whether from a place of nostalgia, historical appreciation, or rebellion, we young people love to love old media. Nowhere is this tendency more pronounced than a college radio station, where individuals take music knowledge very seriously, both as an avenue to build expertise and to contextualize contemporary work. IU Cinema’s March 4th screening of Nosferatu (1922) with a score by Radiohead was a perfect opportunity to engage with this act of finding the old in the new; discovering modern meanings in material from the past.
Back in October, I attended a screening of L’Inferno (1911) live scored by Montopolis at IU Cinema. That was one of the most interesting theatergoing experiences I’ve had in recent memory, so when I saw that the Cinema would again be showing a classic silent film with a modern score, I promptly bought a ticket. I’m referring now to the recent screening of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 German Expressionist sensation, Nosferatu, with a soundtrack by revered British alternative group, Radiohead. Screened at IU Cinema on the heels of substantial Nosferatu hype surrounding the release of Robert Eggers’ 2024 remake, this combination was destined to be chilling and transfixing from the start.
Nosferatu: eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922) is widely considered to be the first ever horror film. Based closely on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Nosferatu follows the bloody, terrifying story of a vampire wreaking havoc on the lives of a young couple. The original score by German composer Hans Erdmann has been lost, but since entering the public domain in 2019, many re-scores have emerged online; These scores are predominantly classical ones that attempt to capture the sound of Erdmann’s original. Though the pairing of Nosferatu with classical scoring is traditional and accurate, I also think a modern score is eerily well-suited to this classic work of horror.
The score for this screening, drawn entirely from "Kid A" (2000) and "Amnesiac" (2001), was constructed as part of the Silents Synced film series. This unique project began in 2024, when Texas-based entrepreneur and author Josh Frank set out to build a series of soundtracks to classic silent films using ‘90s rock and alternative music. The project grew out of his desire to look for “what’s next in what was," and make silent films more immediately relevant and entertaining to modern audiences. Nosferatu with Radiohead premiered in Los Angeles in September of 2024 and has been screened across the country since. This is the first of the series to come to IU Cinema, and after my experience on Tuesday, I sincerely hope it’s not the last.
Photo By F. W. Murnau - Nosferatu, PD-US
Excited to learn just how well Radiohead’s cold, atmospheric sound would pair with Murnau’s 1922 masterpiece, I trekked through an appropriately rainy evening for the packed screening. I knew that the soundtrack would pull from "Kid A" and "Amnesiac," and I was eager to see how they would pair such fragmented albums with a film of such consistent visual style.
The theater was filled to the brim with an eager crowd. Following remarks from IU’s own Dr. Jeffrey Holdeman (who fittingly teaches a class on the vampire in European myth), we watched a brief filmed address from Josh Frank. He explained the Silents Synced series and urged the audience to continue support for community and arthouse theaters. Then, the film itself was underway. The intertitles for Nosferatu were written in a beautiful gothic font that sometimes sat on top of the frame, while moments of dialogue were captured in plain white text on a black background. And, to my surprise, the opening shot of fictional Wisborg included color.
Obviously, I expected a unique sound experience, but what I did not anticipate was the immersive visual one. Added to the Silents Synced version of Nosferatu are subtle colored highlights, mostly appearing to emphasize movement and to liven up some of the intertitles. Restrained flashes of reds, golds, purples, blues, and greens appeared as strange auras around characters and objects; some even subtly pulsed in time with the music. This was certainly an unexpected detail, but not one that detracted too much from the experience of the film or soundtrack. Color was particularly striking in scenes with the sun and ocean, as well as a helpful point of characterization for the evil (red!) characters, like Orlok, Knock, and the werewolf.
Honestly, the music fit with the content of the movie far better than I anticipated. It goes without saying that the music was phenomenal. I expected that the albums might have to be rearranged or substantially cut in order to fit the film’s storyline, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that both "Kid A" and "Amnesiac" were played in order, in their (near) entirety. "Amnesiac" played first. “Packt Like Sardines in a Crushed Tin” perfectly matched the ringing church bell in the opening shot of the film. I think some standouts were “Motion Picture Soundtrack” as a particularly haunting way to frame the final scene of Nosferatu’s defeat, and “Everything In Its Right Place” as the plague ship ominously sails toward civilization. The brief “Untitled” was even appropriately placed over the film’s final shot, as the magenta-tinted sun shines through the window of Ellen’s bedroom alongside the twinkling final 30 seconds of the track.
Overall, I’d say that Radiohead gave this film a necessary weight and beauty which I may not have tapped into with a traditional score. In addition to "Kid A" and "Amnesiac" fitting the content of the film with their sonic and emotional weight, I feel that their familiarity also acted as a sort of entry point for the audience. As I mentioned earlier, and at length in my L’Inferno review, silent film can feel really scary or inaccessible without the proper context. And music, though not quite in the same kind of context as my harsh academic-style preparation for L’Inferno, is a perfectly valid in-road. If this context allowed me and a theater full of other modern people to feel the artistry of a film over a century old, there is truly no limit on the power of creative reimaginings of the past.
I said earlier that a modern soundtrack is ‘eerily’ well-suited to classic silent films, specifically horror, and I think this notion of familiarity is part of the reason why. We like to feel genuinely scared by the contents of horror films. This soundtrack brings the possibilities of the movie, the horror of it, into a modern era. Pairing an old movie with old music places it appropriately and safely in the past. But as soon as it becomes a hybrid, then we must acknowledge its proximity. The result isn’t the sort of terror I might feel watching a good modern horror film, but it was a true connection, and for this it was notable.
At the moment, Silents Synced films are only available in theaters and drive-ins. But lucky for us, this spooky pairing was just the beginning, as Frank has a few more ‘90s/’20s blends on the way. In the works for 2025 are Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. (1924) with R.E.M., Keaton’s The Cameraman (1928) with They Might Be Giants, a Charlie Chaplin short with Girls Against Boys, and unspecified film picks with Pearl Jam and the Pixies. I think this is a series well worth keeping an eye on.
