The Filmic Construction of the Figure of the Vampire in Murnau, Lang and Mendez : An Explorative Analysis with Greimasian Semiotics

Abstract

This research seeks to the narrative elements and filmic features which contribute to the construction of the figure of the vampire in Nosferatu, M, El Vampiro and El Ataud del Vampiro through an explorative analysis considering Greimasian theories such as the actantial model and the theory of passions, all of which remain in an early stage in relation to their application to film studies. In this regard, this book is an analysis of a reduced, but culturally important body of research in order to construct a functional methodology to analyze films with Greimasian semiotic concepts considering aesthetics, anthropological and historical sources of the myth of the vampire and cultural and film history of Germany and Mexico. The ensemble of all these elements gives us a more accurate comprehension of the form in which the myth and the figure of the vampire were adapted and (re)constructed in the first vampire films in Germany and Mexico and their influence on subsequent vampire films. Likewise, this analysis will offer us avenues through the application of an interdisciplinary study, as we propose, with a special focus on Greimasian semiotics so as to understand how characters are configured in film.