Jackie Lambert 2024-1 (M)

A Symphony of Horrors: Oravský Castle, Slovakia by Jackie Lambert

“You were quick! I haven’t even finished my first cup of tea yet! Did you go in?”

Oravský Castle doesn’t allow dogs even within its grounds, so with four small cuddly pups in tow, Mark and I had to visit separately.

“Yes, I went right to the top, but I didn’t like it,” Mark said. ”It was busy and commercial, and I got fed up of being asked at every junction to show which ticket I’d got.“

With this reaction, I was glad I visited the castle first.

Slovakia’s castles had been getting better and more impressive, but Oravský surely took the prize. Towers and curtain walls somehow sprout from a sheer crag that soars 112 meters (367 ft) above the Orava river. When we arrived, Mark and I both exclaimed,

“Wow. That’s what I call a castle!”

When Mark said, “It looks like a real Dracula castle,” he was not far from the mark. Oravský has no direct connections with the infamous Transylvanian Count. However, Friedrich Murnau used it as a location for parts of his silent 1922 film, Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors.

I found out later that in keeping with its protagonist, Count Orlok, this vampire classic came back from the dead, but more of that later.

When we arrived at the castle entrance, two maidens in period dress accosted us. They were selling old-fashioned river trips on a wooden raft at very modern prices.

“Twenty-five euros per person,” one said, then looked at us again, “Twenty euros for seniors.”

Thanks!

“Can dogs come?” we asked.

“Of course. Five euros each.”

As full-time travellers, we’re on a budget, and decided against a €70 float down a river. Like Nosferatu’s Count Orlok, those maidens knew a thing or two about how to extract blood.

Stalls filled with tourist tat sprawled around the base of the castle cliff and lined the edges of the parking lot. Between the two, we found a pleasantly shaded little green area by a tinkling stream for The Pawsome Foursome to have a leg stretch and – their favourite pastime – some puddle diving.

Oravský Castle is on three levels: Lower, Mid, and Upper. Each is an individual tour with a separate price tag. It was already late afternoon, and the ticket office recommended at least 90 minutes for The Big Tour, which incorporated the lot.

The following morning, I coughed up €13 for a Big Tour, plus €3 extra to take photographs. The castle has only one entrance and exit. Solid oak gates protect a Barbican passage, then a drawbridge closes off a long, curved tunnel through solid rock. Even without the vertiginous defences above, I wouldn’t fancy anyone’s chances of taking this castle.

There is a one-way system in place to cope with tourist numbers. Early on, I skipped past a guided tour, which caused a blockage in the flow of individuals. It meant I missed the treasury, but then had the castle mostly to myself – apart from an astonishingly un-self-aware American couple. Their oblivious bonces appeared in many of my photographs as they walked straight in front of my camera when I had quite obviously stopped to take a snap. Waiting to re-take bonce-free shots probably extended my tour by about an hour.

I found the Parsonage and the Thurzo Palace in the main castle courtyard. The Parsonage is restored to its painted terracotta and white appearance from the 1800s. Francis Thurzo founded the Palace in the late 16th century. In the early 17th century, his son, George, finished it and included a flamboyant chapel. Now dedicated to St. Michael, the chapel was an explosion of multi-coloured marble, gilded reliefs, and brightly painted friezes. It also boasts a functioning baroque organ.

In the first castle gallery, a Venetian mirror claims that any woman who looks into it will stay young forever. I can vouch that it definitely works, although there is a caveat.

Now, I must never look in another mirror.

The most sumptuous room in the palace is the Thurzo Salon. Filled with Renaissance murals, the coats of arms of George Thurzo and his wife Elizabeth Czobor appear above its two doorways. My favourite story from this room concerned George’s granddaughter, Eve. After a passionate affair, she married an important Hungarian noble, Paul Esterházy. Unfortunately, as is so often the case, the passion burned out once he’d married his muse. After four years, she left him with a claim that he neglected her and paid more attention to his dogs.

As Dogma and Dogfather to four, Mark and I know the feeling!

The tour from the lower to the upper castle is a trip backwards in time. In the middle courtyard, I regressed to the 13th century walls of the Residential Tower, the 15th century Corvinus Palace, and the 16th century Palace of John of Dubovec.

I particularly enjoyed the Knight’s Hall in the Corvinus Palace.

It was definitely a masculine room.

German artist Maximillian Mann painted the friezes of intertwined vegetation and hunting scenes on the wall. Apparently, he included three women, but they are very small. So small that when I scanned carefully, seeking two astride horses and one leaning Rapunzel-like from a tower in the upper right corner, I couldn’t find them.

Then I learned that dining decorum allowed only men to sit around the table.

They sat astride their chairs and leaned into the backrest with their swords. Thus, at the end of the feast, servants could carry the intoxicated knights to their rooms in their chairs and dump them in bed. Decorum indeed!

I have always yearned for a window seat, and there were two in the Knight’s Hall. I sat on them for a while and ran my hands over smooth wood infused with history. It would be a perfect place to write, looking over shingle-tiled turrets, through a diamond pattern of centuries-old leaded glass.

Murals and Francis Thurzo’s coat of arms adorned the last room in the palace. Three lady violinists added to the atmosphere as I passed through and left behind the creaking floors and smell of old furniture. Once again, I found myself outdoors, high above the middle courtyard.

Next came the upper castle: the oldest part of the citadel. It used to be accessible only by ropes and ladders. Today, lines of tourists scale vertiginous stone stairs that cling to a sheer cliff.

The upper castle was best for its views. I could see our truck, The Beast, in the parking lot by the river, but I could also see as far as the high Tatra mountains. Apart from a rainwater well and a folk exhibition, the collections were rather eclectic. It featured art from a clearly renowned painter. There was also a small exhibition featuring films that used the castle as a location. It included a life-sized cast of Max Schreck as the hook-nosed vampire, Nosferatu.

I promised to tell you the story of Nosferatu’s resurrection, so here goes.

During WWI, German film producer and follower of the occult, Albin Grau, served in Serbia. There, a peasant told Grau stories that he had encountered real vampires in Romania. This inspired Grau to make a vampire movie. He approached the estate of Bram Stoker for the rights to Dracula, but Stoker’s widow, Florence, refused to sell them.

Grau made his film anyway and implemented a cunning plan to dodge copyright. He renamed his bloodthirsty protagonist Count Orlok and made him more animal than human. Stoker’s description of the Count includes aquiline features, thick hair, and broad hands with hairy palms. Orlok is bald, has long curving claws, and sharp rodent-like incisors in the centre of his mouth. Then he adjusted the setting and story slightly, and called the movie Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors. Nosferatu is a term used by Stoker in Dracula. He took it from the writings of Emily Gerard, who mistakenly thought it was the Romanian word for vampire. (It’s not – Romanian’s call vampires vampir!) Grau might also have made another teensy trademark mistake. The program for the film’s Berlin premier included a phrase along the lines of ‘freely adapted from Dracula by Bram Stoker’.

A copyright infringement lawsuit followed, and the judge ordered all copies of the film to be incinerated.

The court implemented its orders with the meticulous efficiency of Blade The Vampire Slayer.

That would have been the end – had one copy of the film not found its way to the United States.

In Germany and the rest of the world, Dracula’s copyright would not lapse until 1962, fifty years after Bram Stoker’s death. But in the US, an error in registering the copyright meant that Dracula was already in the public domain.

How could a US court order the destruction of a public domain work?

And that is how Nosferatu rose from the dead, despite the judicial stake through its heart. This single copy of the world’s first vampire film begat all other copies and left an astonishing legacy.

Vampire lore has incorporated many of Nosferatu’s copyright-dodging ruses. For example, (spoiler alert!) exposure to sunlight killed Count Orlok. Now, this is a common theme in vampire movies, yet sunlight does not kill Bram Stoker’s vampires. It just weakens them. The spine-tingling use of shadows and other techniques pioneered in Nosferatu appear in horror movies to this day. Even if you’ve never seen the film, Count Orlok’s dark, hooked outline is probably one of cinematography’s most recognisable shadows.

Yet more than that, Nosferatu’s popularity proved there was a public appetite for vampire movies.

Before his death, Bram Stoker’s dream was a stage production of Dracula. After reading the script, Stoker’s friend and prospective lead man, Sir Henry Irving, reportedly said it was, “Dreadful.”

Without Grau’s heroic and blatant copyright infringement, Dracula might have lurked forever in the shadows of the undead. We may never have seen Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, and Gary Oldman swish around with fangs and a cape. Plus, Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film Bram Stoker’s Dracula might never have entered the film charts at #1 and grossed $215 million.

There are more than thirty Dracula film adaptations. Huge wads of cash, and the elevation of Stoker’s creation to one of fiction’s most recognisable, iconic, and enduring characters. Surely, that is good news for his estate.

And a curiously positive outcome for the victim of a copyright breach!

When I got back, I gave Mark my Big Tour pamphlet and told him,

“Pay for the Main Tour, but at the top of the Mid Castle, wave this pamphlet at them. They will probably let you go up to the top for the view. You won’t be interested in the exhibitions.”

As I mentioned, Mark whipped through the entire castle in moments. As is so often the case, castle exteriors are the most impressive. Here, the crowds and queues detracted from the atmosphere, but I’m still glad I went.

Sometimes, you just have to be a tourist.