Nosferatu: The Vampyre/Phantom Der Nacht
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Features
• Anamorphic
• Closed-captioned
• Color
• DVD-Video
• Full Screen
• Widescreen
• NTSC
In Theaters : 1979
DVD Release : 09 July, 2002 |
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Nosferatu: The Vampyre/Phantom Der Nacht description
Werner Herzog's remake of F.W. Murnau's original vampire classic is at once a generous tribute to the great German director and a distinctly unique vision by one of cinema's most idiosyncratic filmmakers. Though Murnau's Nosferatu was actually an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, Herzog based his film largely on Murnau's conceptions--at times directly quoting Murnau's images--but manages to slip in a few references to Tod Browning's famous version (at one point the vampire comments on the howling wolves: "Listen, the children of the night make their music."). Longtime Herzog star Klaus Kinski is both hideous and melancholy as Nosferatu (renamed Count Dracula in the English language version). As in Murnau's film, he's a veritable gargoyle with his bald pate and sunken eyes, and his talon-like fingernails and two snaggly fangs give him a distinctly feral quality. But Kinski's haunting eyes also communicate a gloomy loneliness--the curse of his undead immortality--and his yearning for Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) becomes a melancholy desire for love. Bruno Ganz's sincere but foolish Jonathan is doomed to the vampire's will and his wife, Lucy, a holy innocent whose deathly pallor and nocturnal visions link her with the ghoulish Nosferatu, becomes the only hope against the monster's plague-like curse. Herzog's dreamy, delicate images and languid pacing create a stunningly beautiful film of otherworldly mood, a faithful reinterpretation that by the conclusion has been shaped into a quintessentially Herzog vision. --Sean Axmaker |
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Nosferatu: The Vampyre/Phantom Der Nacht Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥
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Dreams of Murnau -- The Amazing Reinvention of a Classic
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If life is but a dream, then Herzog's re-imagining of F.W. Murnau's classic horror film is a splendid nightmare. The film begins in the dreams of Lucy Harker, her mind's eye rolling over mummified corpses in a catacomb to the lull of strangely soothing demonic chants. Roused from her beautiful nightmare with a scream, Lucy is comforted back to sleep by her dull husband, Jonathan. Her head touches the pillow again, and Herzog's Nosferatu begins.
There are so many brilliant things about this film, but perhaps its greatest strength is the sense that Lucy never wakes up again. The harsh, contemptible reality of the next morning, scored with sickeningly syrupy music, and adorned with overwhelming sun blindingly reflected on harsh whites while the persistent chirp of young kittens in the background almost makes one nauseous, slowly and gradually gives way to the beautiful dream reality of the night, which gratuitously blankets everything by the film's end. As Harker undertakes his mission into the Carpathian Mountains, strongly desiring to get away from his boring hometown "where canals go nowhere," the sun begins its descent and camera-work, sound, music, and even acting grow richer with the sun's slow demise.
For most of the film, Klaus Kinsky proves to be the richest ingredient, as one would expect. He is awkward, decrepit, dangerous, and beautiful; a true testament to the Gothic. Kinsky is almost unrecognizable in his makeup, movements, and general characterization. There is no Aguirre, Wrath of God to be found within any crinkle of his ghastly face. He is thoroughly inhuman, thoroughly disturbing, and yet thoroughly deserving of our pathos at many points in this rich film.
What surprises me most about this film, though, beyond the brilliant lighting, eerie framing and movement (often with shots that come directly from Murnau), and even the masterful performance of Klaus Kinsky, is the presence of Lucy Harker (played by Isabelle Adjani) in the film's final act. When we first see Lucy in harsh daylight at the beginning of this film, she is pretty, yet boring and restrained. The true beauty and vivacity that she beheld in the twilight hours between nightmares has been wiped from her face, and it's hard to blame Harker for leaving her in search of Count Dracula, even though we know it's wrong. Yet, as the film descends into gothic darkness, Lucy is slowly and surely transformed, more sullen and more beautiful each time we revisit her. By the final act, Lucy is left as our reluctant protagonist, nearly as pale as Count Dracula and far more beautiful and deserving of our pathos as even she recognizes her slow journey toward inevitable death. It is nearly impossible to resist falling in love with Adjani as we watch her wrestle faith and love with demons, both physical and mental.
The climax is wrought with gothic dreams and cinematic visions blurring with contemptible reality. Acting is incomprehensibly potent, cinematography and scoring euphorically reek of death and, finally, as the light of day brings a brilliant final twist to the age old story of Count Dracula, Herzog sets us out into a quiet raging storm of day and night intermixing passionately. It is an unforgettable moment, beautiful in its strangeness and depression -- a perfect summary of Herzog's masterpiece.
Nosferatu, Phantom Der Nacht, is the perfect marriage of Herzog's vision with one of the silent era's greatest triumphs. It takes the dream-like qualities of the silent horror film and transports them into a more able vessel with a brilliant navigator roped to the helm. |
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