The ironic thing about the classic silent vampire film Nosferatu is that it probably wouldn’t be the masterpiece that it is were it not for the Bram Stoker estate. F.W. Murnau, the German filmmaker genius, had wanted to make a movie of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, but Stoker’s estate denied him the rights to film the book. And so Murnau simply changed the names of the characters--Count Dracula became Count Orlok, and so on--and in doing so, by being forced to create his own take on the story, Murnau gave us a unique version of the vampire tale. His Nosferatu, released in 1922, remains genuinely creepy, with plenty of unsettling, nightmarish imagery that still sends chills down the spine of a viewer almost a hundred years after its original release.
When Werner Herzog, another brilliant German filmmaker, remade Nosferatu in 1979, he kept the character names from Stoker’s novel (the Dracula copyright had long since fallen into the public domain) while still retaining Murnau’s original story. And so it’s Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) who travels to see Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski) at the behest of his employer, Renfield (Roland Topor). But while he’s named Dracula in this remake, Kinski’s vampire still retains the same ghoulish make up as from the 1922 film. This time it’s applied by Reiko Kruk (actor Reggie Nader would also wear a similar Nosferatu-inspired make up design in Salem's Lot, the TV mini-series based on the Stephen King book that aired the same year, in 1979).
Klaus Kinski was infamously known as being notoriously difficult to work with on film sets--stories about his on-set temper tantrums have become legendary. But Herzog, who had worked with the volcanic Kinski in the past, knew how to deal with the actor by provoking him into a tantrum very early in the shooting day. By the time it came to film his scenes, Kinski would be worn out from his raging, and as a result, his performance here is actually very subtle and better suited to the character.
Isabelle Adjani also gives a great performance as Lucy Harker, who starts out as a shrinking violet who literally faints when she receives bad news. Yet as the film carries on, with Dracula arriving in her hometown and bringing death and despair with him, Lucy rises to the occasion--especially when the traditional heroes of the Dracula story, Jonathan Harker and Dr. Van Helsing, both fall short in dealing with the threat. Lucy becomes a steel-willed heroine, without becoming a full-on superhero caricature, who’s not afraid of doing the dirty work required to deal with this unnatural menace.
It’s admirable that Nosferatu the Vampyre was one of several movies released in 1979--another being Alien--that had a strong female character taking charge. Yet bear in mind that this remake was simply retelling a cinematic story that had been first told in 1922, when the strong-willed heroine--named Ellen in that film--bravely took on the task of bringing the vampire to heel by herself.
When he shot Nosferatu the Vampyre, Herzog had been asked by the distributor to shoot it in both the original German, as well as in English. That meant that every scene was shot twice in both languages. Herzog has stated in interviews that he prefers the German language version, and Roland Topor’s Renfield isn’t as over the top giggly in the German version as he is in the English print. But Nosferatu the Vampyre remains a superb film in its own right, regardless of what version you see. While it lacks the striking visuals of the original silent film, it still adds much more meaning and hope to a storyline that essays the importance of standing up to the darkness, whatever form it takes. --SF
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