Nosferatu the vampyre

1979 Directed by Werner Herzog

Halloween Marathon Day 3- Film 5

We all know the story of Dracula don't we? Or is it simply informed by the ideas that are conjured in our minds through other media. For me the idea of Dracula comes more from Coppola's 1992 version- complete with romantic dread and love everlasting. The Gothic Romance of Anne Rice's world. So to watch this film a very different kind of Dracula is inhabited. A true grotesque rodent- a humanoid rat that festers on wounds and gluttonously licks and gorges on the neck. Where Coppola looks at Dracula through a lens of the history of cinema, Herzog positions this Nosferatu as an ode to the German Expressionism of the film from 1922.

The atmosphere is tremendous because of this- the extended sequences of clouds and the earth jutting up to the sky in lost mountain ranges exude a sense of purpose greater than the small human villages. An early beach scene scans the entire space- A sense of wanderlust and isolation- of great extended journeys into the void. The story focuses more on the precognition of Lucy Harker- wife of Jonathan Harker. Isabelle Adjani plays Lucy with an ethereal quality. She's able to stand up to Dracula- and repel him through her sense of intuition and realizing how Dracula's sexual desire is his downfall.

Dracula comes upon the city as a representation of the black death- of plague rats that infest and consume every living being. It is not death for the sake of his own life, but death for death. For rot. Klaus Kinski plays this as a repellant, putrid thing that seems inhuman- as Count Orlok from the 1922 version. Dracula's need for life then isn't something that creates life within, but something that can never really be touched by a plague bearing creature. The townsfolk believe in the magic of science that will prevail over this terror- but Lucy knows that only through faith that something so evil can be annhilated.

This is the spiritualism of light vs dark- of the mystique in these images of slow moving bats and vast landscapes- and wonderment of the film's music. While the costumes fit the dull image of normal life- it is the music that prevails as something transcendent.

I could see this as a silent film too, but I especially enjoyed the long cast shadows and the creepy creek of Dracula coming into a room or the dread of his shadow along the wall. Another truly horrific scene thematically is the townsfolk's last supper as they drink and consume while rats take over- a reminder of the cycle of plague. Death is inevitable. Such evil may be vanquished for a moment, but it is also everlasting. Would we welcome it with yearning romance?