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NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE
One of the small handful of movie remakes that (I think) actually surpass the original, this is German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s stunning redo of F.W. Murnau’s legendary NOSFERATU. It’s a bit like the notorious Gus Van Sant shot-by-shot PSYCHO update in the way this NOSFERATU follows Murnau’s narrative nearly verbatim and was lensed in all the same locations, but Herzog adds a fair amount of his own inscrutable genius.
The Package
F.W. Murnau’s NOSFERATU was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s
DRACULA, but with all the names changed and the romantic sentimentality totally
expunged. In its place was an incredibly vivid sense of death, disease and
decay. The star was a bald, pointy-eared vampire, unforgettably portrayed by
Max Schreck, who resembled nothing so much as a giant skinned rat.
The renowned yet cantankerous Klaus Kinski, a Werner Herzog regular (from
the latter’s films AGUIRRE: THE WRATH OF GOD and WOYZECK), portrayed the Schreck
role in Herzog’s 1979 remake, alongside the French Isabelle Adjani (who’d just
made a splash in Francois Truffaut’s THE STORY OF ADELE H.), the German Bruno
Ganz and the famed French surrealist painter/writer
Roland Topor. The film was
shot in both German and English language versions (the latter heavily edited),
as was common in European productions of the time, and distributed by Twentieth
Century Fox. The release marked the fiercely idiosyncratic Herzog’s first
dealings with a major Hollywood studio, who forced him to test market the film
(with disastrous results) and commissioned a novelization by Paul Monette--which,
I should add, is an impressive piece of work in its own right that makes for a
fascinating companion-piece to the film.
NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE was released alongside John Badham’s expensive
DRACULA remake and the comedic LOVE AT FIRST BITE, and was the least financially
successful of the three--and, due to legal entanglements, took nearly twenty
years to reach home video in the US (not unlike Murnau’s original, withheld from
release for decades because of lawsuits filed by Bram Stoker’s widow). It has,
however, endured far longer than either of those other films.
The Story
In late-1800’s Germany, real estate agent Jonathan Harker leaves his
beloved wife Lucy to travel to the Transylvania castle of Count Dracula, who
wants to buy a house in Harker’s neighborhood. The trip is a scenic one through
rural mountains, whose superstitious inhabitants admonish Harker to advance no
further upon learning of his destination. He soldiers on, though, even after
his coachman elects to turn back. Harker reaches Dracula’s castle in the early
evening, where he confronts a pale, subhuman, blood-drinking, daylight-hating
freak--in short, a vampire. Later that night Dracula awakens Harker and drinks
his blood, in the process passing the vampiric contagion on to his victim. He
then locks Harker inside the castle.
The next morning Dracula departs for Harker’s hometown bearing several
dirt-filled coffins. He travels via ship and kills everyone on board; when the
corpse-littered vessel reaches its destination it disgorges thousands of rats
from Dracula’s coffins, which spread deadly plague throughout the land.
Jonathan’s wife Lucy, meanwhile, has felt Dracula’s pull for some time, and
upon his arrival falls irrefutably under his spell. It doesn’t help matters
that the now fully vampirized Jonathan, having managed to break out of Dracula’s
locked-up castle, arrives home and doesn’t even recognize his beloved. Lucy
decides to take drastic action against the monstrous Dracula, who despite his
vileness feels a real attraction to her.
The Direction
Werner Herzog always concerned himself with images above all else, and the
spare silent movie imagery of Murnau’s NOSFERATU proves a surprisingly potent
match for Herzog’s sensibilities. His narrative is extremely minimal and not a
little slow moving; shots are held far longer than normal, even by European art
movie standards. Furthermore, Herzog jettisons traditional vampire movie scares
in favor of a languid, atmospheric evocation of supernatural evil. The film
needs to be viewed more than once, but I didn’t find doing so at all difficult,
as it exerts a near-hypnotic fascination.
The cinematographer was Jorg Schmidt-Reitwein (replacing Herzog’s usual
photographer Thomas Mauch), who proves himself a true master of light and
shadow. It’s this aspect that really distinguishes Herzog’s NOSFERATU from
Murnau’s, which has always irked me with its “night” scenes shot in broad (if
blue-tinted) daylight.
And then there’s the extraordinary lead performance of Klaus Kinski. His
Nosferatu is one of the most unforgettable bloodsuckers on record, a
fundamentally evil yet profoundly soulful creature. Whether Kinski’s claim (in
his autobiography) that he prepared for the role by enclosing
himself in actual coffins is true or not, there’s no question Nosferatu remains
one of his absolute finest roles.
Vital Statistics
NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE (NOSFERATU:
PHANTOM DER NACHT)
Werner Herzog Filmproduktion/Twentieth Century Fox
Director: Werner Herzog
Producers: Michael Gruskoff, Werner Herzog, Daniel Toscan du Plantier
Screenplay: Werner Herzog
Cinematography: Jorg Schmidt-Reitwein
Editing: Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz, Roland Topor, Walter Ladengast,
Dan Van Husen, Joe Groth, Carsten Bodinus, Martje Grohmann, Rijk de Gooyer,
Clemens Sheitz, Lo van Hensbergen, John Leddy, Tim Beekman