Fritz Arno Wagner

In 1910, while still attending the University of Leipzig, he managed to secure a job as a clerk at the Pathé film company. In 1912, he became both secretary and chef at the Pathé offices in Vienna and later in Berlin.

He made an education at the Academy of Beaux Arts in Paris and in 1912 he joined Pathé in Paris as a clerk. He already made first cinematical experiences as a cinematographer for documentaries and newscasts - among others also about the Mexican Revolution. Moreover he also was active as a war correspondent during World War I.

He briefly worked out of New York in 1913, reporting for Pathé Weekly, then returned to Germany for wartime service in the cavalry. After being invalided out, he progressed from still photographer to 2nd Cameraman.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, he returned to Germany to enlist in his country's elite Hussar cavalry whilst still filming war reports. However, after being wounded, he decided to take the job of stills photographer and then 2nd cameraman at Projektions-AG Union PAGU. In 1919, he went to work as a primary cameraman for Decla-Bioscop.

He worked on many more prestige films (to name but a few: Pabst's Westfront 1918 (1930), M (1931), The Testament of Dr.

By 1919, he had advanced to full director of photography. Wagner was noted for his moody, atmospheric lighting. He did outstanding work for the directors F. W.

Regarded as one of the foremost exponents of cinematic expressionism in the 1920's, Fritz Arno Wagner was trained at the Ecole de Beaux Arts in Paris and began in the film industry working for Pathé Freres in 1910. Within just two years, he was promoted to head Pathé's offices in Vienna, and, subsequently, in Berlin.

He worked with some of Germany most prominent directors, including Ernst Lubitsch, F.W. Murnau on The Haunted Castle (1921), The Burning Soil (1922) and his classic Nosferatu (1922), and G.W. Pabst on four features.

Murnau and Georg Wilhelm Pabst, best exemplified by his chilling, eerily-lit gothic masterpiece Nosferatu (1922), with its shadows and distorted images (the jerky, unsettlingly grotesque movements of Count Orlock -- as played by Max Schreck -- have undoubtedly served to inspire more recent examples of the genre, such as The Ring (2002)).

Wagner photographed Arthur Robison's hallucinatory thriller of obsessive jealousy, Schatten - Eine nächtliche Halluzination (1923), in a similar vein, using mirrors and light effects to convey delusions and subconscious desires.

Wagner's career remained prolific during the 1930's.

After the Nazis took over in 1933, causing many of the country's leading film directors to flee Germany for the U.S. (including his main collaborators: Murnau, Pabst and Lang) Wagner's career began to decline. To make ends meet he abandoned his unique style and turned to making glossy costume epics and musicals for The Ministry of Propaganda at Universum Film AG [Ufa] where he had once worked under Erich Pommer.

He continued his film career during World War II with "Robert Koch, der Bekämpfer des Todes" (1939), "Der Fuchs von Glenarvon" (1940), "Friedrich Schiller" (1940) and "Ohm Krüger" (1941).

During the shooting for his last movie "Wehe, wenn sie losgelassen" (1958) Fritz Arno Wagner fell from a dolly in such an unfortunate way that he died from the fall.

In Shadow of the Vampire, a fictional film about the making of Nosferatu, Wagner is portrayed by Cary Elwes, who also played Lord Arthur Holmwood in the 1992 adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula.