HAMSTER RATING:
DIRECTOR: Werner (that’s pronounced “Verner”) Herzog. Probably the most well-known non-American director in America. His other two most popular films are Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972) and Woyzeck (also 1979).
WRITERS: Herzog penned the script, which is a retelling of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent masterpiece Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. Murnau was attempting an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but was forced by Stoker’s widow to change key story elements and the name of his undead count to Orlock. Herzog’s version, however, replaces what Murnau was forced to take out – including, thankfully, the name Dracula.
STARRING: Notorious Polish actor Klaus Kinski (who also starred in Aguirre and Woyzeck) plays the nosferatu, Count Dracula. French actress Isabella Adjani plays Lucy Harker. Swiss thespian Bruno Ganz is Jonathan Harker. French artist and writer Roland Topor is Renfield.
SYNOPSIS: The plot is basically a liberal adaptation of Stoker’s vampire classic,
centered in Germany (and filmed largely in Holland) instead of England. Jonathan Harker is
dispatched by Renfield, his employer, to Transylvania, where he is to negotiate the sale of
some real estate to the mysterious Count Dracula. But Dracula is not your average backwoods
noble looking to relocate: he is nosferatu, a Plague-bearing vampire, seeking to extend his
realm of death. It’s up to Jonathan and wife Lucy to stop him, at all costs.
"Cross? Where?!"
PRESENTATION NOTE: Herzog made two versions of the film: Nosferatu: Phantom der
Nacht in German, and Nosferatu the Vampyre in English. Much was made (starting
with Herzog himself, apparently) about the difference in “texture and style” between the two
versions, which he shot and edited simultaneously. I’ve seen both versions, and I must say I
didn’t notice any profound differences between them, aside from the spoken language. Which
really doesn’t make much of a difference, since only Ganz and Kinski actually speak both
languages; all the other voices are dubbed, and only rarely do the actors appear to be even
attempting English. If you can’t stand subtitles, then go with Nosferatu the Vampyre.
But I recommend Phantom der Nacht – since it’s in the native language of much of the
cast, the German dialogue is far more expressive. It just adds a sharper edge to this highly
stylized movie.
REVIEW: I’ll begin with a sentence that has now become cliché to Americans who read
and write foreign film reviews: “This is not a Hollywood movie.” To those of you who aren’t
familiar with the sentiment, it simply means that you shouldn’t expect any explosions, fist,
gun or sword fights, snappy, tongue-in-cheek dialogue, jerky editorial sequences, or a
dominant, relentless music track. What it doesn’t mean is that Herzog’s Nosferatu: Phantom
der Nacht is boring, or that it is somehow inferior to Hollywood takes on the story, like
Coppola’s misleadingly titled Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992), or the version staring
Frank Langella that came out the same year as Nosferatu and buried it at the box office.
Nosferatu simply has a different objective than most American movies: it doesn’t want
to tell us a story as much as allow us to experience that story through the emotional lives of
its characters. As an audience, we are invited to empathize, rather than supervise. And if
we allow it to sweep over us, we’ll do just that.
Nosferatu is all about setting and atmosphere – the mountains, the oceans, the
waterfalls in the wilderness as well as the canals running through towns are as much players
in the drama as the actors. This is very different from the Hollywood style we all know and
love, where setting is merely the place car chases happen. It takes some getting used to.
Nosferatu is composed of long, striking images of blowing mist, decaying ruins and
terrifying shadows, and its characters are often seen frozen in tableau, conveying raw emotion
physically instead of talking about it. To some, this will be boring; but it is a necessary
component to creating the right emotional and visual atmosphere.
Nosferatu rounds second base...
Herzog isn’t interested in pushing plot. And he doesn’t have to do be, because we all know
how this story goes. Instead, he is trying to create an emotional world, a dream realm in
which seeing and feeling become the same sense. In Nosferatu, the utter despair of the
antagonist is the emotion that hangs over everything. The dialogue, at times childishly
blunt, and the archetypical characters bring us easily into the world of the Count, and we
soon begin to feel the crushing loneliness and silent rage that dominate his existence. We
may have always suspected that vampires like him existed, but never before have we seen one in
action: a decaying nosferatu, so deeply human and tragically vulnerable. Credit must be given
to Kinski, who plays the role so perfectly that we have no difficulty losing ourselves in it.
I happen to find Herzog’s nosferatu infinitely more accessible than those hot-blooded,
charismatic pretty-boys who populate Anne Rice novels: euro-elegantes who pay lip service to
the torment of their existence, but seem to rather enjoy laying oozing hickies on
model-actress hookers. Kinski never stops frowning once during the entire film, even when
Dracula drinks, which we have often seen is the vampire’s chief delight. Instead, Herzog’s
nosferatu exists in unrelenting misery, hoping for a natural death that will never come. He
still drinks, but probably because it is the only human contact he can get, which he wants so
badly. There is nothing romantic about it.
The movie ends on a cliché. If hatred, embodied by the nosferatu, is the root of all evil,
then evil can only be counteracted – the vampire can only be stopped – by love. A tired
theme, but Herzog manages to give it a freshness it’s lacked for years. By the end we relate
to Dracula so completely that we’re desperate for him to find even a semblance of love,
anything to save him, us, from such total despair. Herzog delivers, and we feel complete. A masterful director, he has been leading us to this conclusion all along.
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht is a vampire movie, but also a commentary on human
behavior, religion and philosophy. It isn’t Blade or Van Helsing, a spectacular
orgy of action and gore meant to pack the house. And Herzog’s Dracula as played by Kinski
isn’t Oldman’s Dracula or Cruise’s Lestat. Women don’t want him, and men don’t want to be
him. He doesn’t have the emotional support of a clan, and he doesn’t have the magic power to
hypnotize innocents into becoming his love-slaves. He is an utterly lonely creature, and in
Herzog’s vision inhabits an utterly lonely world. But it is in that loneliness that we find a vampire more real than any other in cinema, one we can relate to, one we can at last
understand. At final glance, Herzog has created a vampire, and a vampire movie, with a soul.
SUGGESTED DRINKING GAME: Take a drink everytime Klaus Kinski looks like this:
