Nosferatu the Vampyre | | Cast : | Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz | | Director : | Werner Herzog | | Studio : | Anchor Bay Entertain | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | January 01, 1979 | | DVD Released Date : | July 09, 2002 | | Language : | English (Dubbed), English (Subtitled), German (Dubbed) | | Audience Rating : | PG (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 03, 2005 | | Summary | Beautiful remake of the F. W. Murnau classic | Content
 | This is a film that takes a few viewings to fully appreciate Herzog's attempt at recreating a movie in the style of the German Expressionist film movement of the early 20th Century. Although very well done, it doesn't quite compare with the creepiness of the Murnau original. However, this is still a fantastic film and the commentary by Herzog is very insightful for the student of the horror film classics. |
| Rating | | | Date | April 16, 2005 | | Summary | A review from the author of YEARS OF RAGE | Content
| Werner Herzog's Nosferatu (1979) is less a film about the struggle between good and evil than it is a film about the triumph of all-consuming Eros over theology. Each of the film's personages-Count Dracula, Lucy, Jonathan Harker-are seized by a destructively violent passion. Their desires are one. They are victims of a violent desire that exists on the other side of mortality, on the other side of good and evil.
All three characters mirror each other at certain crucial points.
Kinski's Nosferatu is He-Who-Desires: an incarnation which is curiously effeminate but also strangely virile, virtually androgynous, neither man nor woman. His vampire is leechlike, parasitical, much frailer and sicklier than other, more robust screen vampires (Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Frank Langella, etc.). When Jonathan eats his dinner, Nosferatu stares at his quarry's neck like a hound in rut. He has no existence outside of the living beings upon whom he feeds. So intensely enamored of Lucy's neck is Nosferatu that he is willing to leave his castle in Transylvania just to be near her. And when Nosferatu comes to Bremen, he brings the plague with him. His untrammeled desire for Lucy is pestilential, a cloud of rats. His all-enveloping love, his polymorphic attraction, is what brings the pestilence. Sexual desire is the plague. In this film, desire is figured as disease. A plague that ends in the "festive" destruction of Western civilization, a round-dance in which animals and humans mingle, a joyful plague of "perverse" sexuality.
Jonathan Harker is Nosferatu's double-willing to give up everything, willing to risk death, to go any extreme for the sake of his beloved, Lucy. And at the eerily open-ended conclusion of the film (and this is Herzog's most drastic departure from the original), Jonathan assumes the vampire's role completely. He effectively becomes his nemesis. There are no end-credits; the film continues infinitely. The final image is of a spreading desolation, the reign of negativity and the annihilation of civilization (which, as usual in Herzog, is affirmed as a joyous event---from what we see of civilization in this film, it doesn't appear worth saving; the annihilation of all social laws is here seen as something positive). Nosferatu nowhere dies in the space of the film. Indeed, Nosferatu's tragedy is not death but the impossibility of death.
In her conversation with Nosferatu, Lucy makes a startling proclamation: She is willing to refuse to God the love that she gives to Jonathan. Her unreserved (unholy?) desire for Jonathan surmounts her piety, her faith in God. Does this not bind her intimately with Nosferatu, the force of entropic negativity? By refusing God the love she gives to her man, she migrates to the country of darkness. With her spectral pallor, she is uncannily resemblant of Nosferatu. When he visits her in the bedroom, she embraces him, her dark lover, pulling him to her neck. Is this a self-sacrifice for the sake of the people of Bremen? For Jonathan's sake? Perhaps. But after Nosferatu is vanquished, why does the blood rush to her cheeks? And why, after Nosferatu has sapped her blood, why does she bask in what seems to be a post-coital glow?
Each of these characters are victims of the suicidal character of all sexual desire.
There are so many details in this film that will haunt your mind... Kinski's ghastly rat-like features. The way in which the camera makes you his victim, fresh for vampirization. The way in which all relations are inverted. Sickness surmounts health. Survival surmounts both death and life.
Unlike F.W. Murnau's 1922 original, the images in Herzog's film are not symbolic-that is, they do not subserve character or language. As in all of Herzog's cinema, the images are restored to their purity and form a pre-conceptual, pre-rational, pre-critical visual language all their own.
Joseph Suglia, the author of YEARS OF RAGE, the novel inspired by the Columbine High Massacre
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| Rating | | | Date | March 16, 2005 | | Summary | Nosfer-ego | Content
| Whose ego is bigger? Klaus Kinski or Werner Herzog...I think it's a tie.
The real surprise (lost within all this ego tripping)is Bruno Ganze--who gives a heartfelt performance as a helpless Jonathan Harker and, let's face it, Isabelle Adjani is one of the most angelic women who ever walked the earth.
Kinski gives another one of his patented performances while Herzog allows the story to slowly (and I mean slowly) unfold.
The final scene, where Harker rides off into a bleak landscape, is unforgettable.
Filled with existentialist dread, "Nosferatu" leaves the viewer pondering the questions of life, death and love.
Maybe this film falls short of F.W. Murnau's masterpiece but, it is a worthy remake by one of the great filmmakers of the 20th century. |
| Rating | | | Date | March 09, 2005 | | Summary | Inferior to the Original | Content
| The problem with remaking classics films is that they can rarely live up to the standards of the original. Such is definitely the case in the anemic remake of the classic German silent film, Nosfaratu. Often times the vampire in this remake seems weak and ineffectual, as if Jonathan Harker should have been able to break him in two with a carefully placed karate chop. When he speaks he comes across as whiney instead of menacing. All of the actors seem to underplay their roles as if they were bored to death; there is a decided lack of human emotion. The supernatural elements of the original film seem oddly missing. The only thing the director really managed to do is create some breath-taking cinematography of rural europe. If you are a fan of the original film, my advice is to skip this remake and instead buy a copy of Shadow of the Vampire--which I feel is fresh and compelling. It is a fictional account of the making of the original German classic. |
| Rating | | | Date | December 09, 2004 | | Summary | Stylistically Faithful Remake of Murnau's Masterpiece. | Content
| "Nosferatu the Vampyre" is director Werner Herzog's tribute to F. W. Murnau, whom he considers to be Germany's greatest filmmaker, as well as a haunting gothic horror tale in its own right. It is a remake of Murnau's 1922 film "Nosferatu", which is the earliest surviving cinematic adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel "Dracula". Herzog has combined ideas from Murnau's film, Bram Stoker's novel, and his own imagination in creating a film that is, if anything, even more expressionistic and romanticist than the 1922 masterpiece. It is also more languid and pathetic than other "Dracula" adaptations.
This version of the Dracula tale, like 1922's "Nosferatu", takes place in Germany and Transylvania. Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) is a real estate agent employed by a madman named Renfield (Roland Topor) to deliver a contract to Count Dracula in Transylvania, who wishes to purchase property in Wismar, Germany. When he reaches his destination, Jonathan finds a hideous, predatory Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski) eager to sign the deed to his new home. Several days later, ill and traumatized by horrors that he experienced at Dracula's castle, Jonathan understands that his young wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) will be in grave danger if Dracula reaches Wismar and sets out to save her. Count Dracula's arrival in Wismar coincides with the Plague. The city is overrun with rats and its population decimated by disease. Only Lucy comprehends the nature of the evil that has befallen the city and understands what she must do to stop it.
"Nosferatu the Vampyre" adheres pretty closely to Murnau's storyline, rather than Stoker's, except for the ending. The characters and actions have been embellished, however, sometimes with inspiration from the "Dracula" novel. Herzog's film moves slowly but steadily and spends more time with the characters than any previous "Dracula" adaptation. Count Dracula closely resembles Murnau's vampire but is even more grotesque and the least aristocratic of any cinematic Dracula. He is rodent-like and closely associated with rats and the Plague. But he departs from other Dracula interpretations in lamenting his permanent un-dead existence without light or love for centuries, which makes him a slightly tragic character. Although Count Dracula is the force that drives the narrative, the first half of the film is about Jonathan, and the second half concentrates on Lucy. Lucy Harker takes much inspiration from the character of Mina Harker in the novel "Dracula". The film's Lucy is more mystical and less methodical than the book's Mina. But, like Mina, she is stronger and smarter than the characters who surround her, and she tries her best to save everyone in spite of their blindness. Isabelle Adjani's Lucy Harker is the strongest heroine of any "Dracula" film.
Like Murnau's 1922 film, "Nosferatu the Vampyre" is visually expressionistic and romanticist. More of the film takes place outdoors than in other adaptations. There are lots of wide open spaces which are brightly lit, lending the outdoor scenes an airy feel, while scenes indoors tend to be dark and oppressive. This is clearly taken from the Murnau film, with its seaside scenes and bright sunshine. But the color cinematography and superior technology creates a sense of space that Murnau's film doesn't have. Colored lighting is lifted directly from Murnau's film, however. 1922's "Nosferatu" was filmed in black-and-white and tinted several colors to communicate time and mood. "Nosferatu the Vampyre"'s night scenes are bathed in blue light, and the inside of Dracula's castle is close to sepia, producing much the same effects as Murnau's toning.
English and German versions of "Nosferatu the Vampyre" were filmed concurrently. Werner Herzog shot the scenes with dialogue twice -once in German, once in English. The two versions differ by only seconds in length, but they are edited slightly differently. Whichever one you see, "Nosferatu the Vampyre" is one of the most interesting adaptations of Bram Stoker's "Dracula", even if it is an indirect adaptation. It is also the slowest paced and highly expressionistic, which somewhat narrow its appeal. |
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