Nosferatu the Vampyre (Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht)

Dir: Werner Herzog

1979

*****

The word ‘remake’ and Herzog don’t sound right together at all but, in 1979, the great Werner showed the world exactly how to remake a classic. While the basic story is derived from Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, Herzog made the film primarily as an homage remake of F. W. Murnau's seminal silent film Nosferatu made in 1922, which differs somewhat from Stoker's original work. The makers of the earlier film could not obtain the rights for a film adaptation of Dracula, so they changed a number of minor details and character names in an unsuccessful attempt to avoid copyright infringement on the intellectual property owned (at the time) by Stoker's widow. A lawsuit was filed, resulting in an order for the destruction of all prints of the film. Luckily, some prints survived, and were restored after Florence Stoker had died and the copyright had expired. By the 1960s and early 1970s, the original silent film returned to cinemas and was enjoyed by a new generation of moviegoers. Herzog considered Murnau's Nosferatu to be the greatest film ever to come out of Germany and was eager to make his own version of the film, with collaborator Klaus Kinski in the leading role. In 1979, by which time the copyright for Dracula had entered the public domain, Herzog proceeded with his updated version of the classic German film, which could now include the original character names. It was filmed on a minimal budget with a crew of just sixteen people. Herzog could not film in Wismar, where the original Murnau film was shot, so he relocated production to Delft, Netherlands. Originally Herzog intended to film the Transylvanian scenes in Transylvania and even scouted and decided upon locations, but the Romanian government under the communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu would not allow a the production of a film that associated Vlad II. Dracul - the namesake of the Bram Stoker's vampire - with anything but a heroic national hero. Parts of the film were shot in nearby Schiedam, after Delft authorities refused to allow Herzog to release 11,000 rats for a scene in the film – indeed the rats turned out to be a problem. Dutch behavioral biologist Maarten 't Hart, hired by Herzog for his expertise of laboratory rats, revealed that, after witnessing the inhumane way in which the rats were treated, he no longer wished to cooperate. Apart from travelling conditions that were so poor that the rats, imported from Hungary, had started to eat each other upon arrival in the Netherlands, Herzog insisted the plain white rats be dyed gray. In order to do so, according to Hart, the cages containing the rats needed to be submerged in boiling water for several seconds, causing another half of them to die. At the request of distributor 20th Century Fox, Herzog produced two versions of the film simultaneously, to appeal to English-speaking audiences. Scenes with dialogue were filmed twice, in German and in English, meaning that the actors' own voices (as opposed to dubbed dialogue by voice actors) could be included in the English version of the film. Herzog himself said that the German version was more "authentic”. The story begins in Wismar, Germany with estate agent Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz). His boss, Renfield (Roland Topor), informs him that a nobleman named Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski) wishes to buy a property in Wismar, and assigns Harker to visit the Count and complete the lucrative deal. Leaving his young wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) behind in Wismar, Harker travels for four weeks to Transylvania, to the castle of Count Dracula. He carries with him the deeds and documents needed to sell the house to the Count. On his journey, Jonathan stops at a village, where locals plead for him to stay clear of the accursed castle, providing him with details of Dracula's vampirism. Harker ignores the villagers' pleas as superstition and continues his journey unassisted ascending the Borgo Pass. Harker arrives at Dracula's castle, where he meets the Count, a strange, almost rodent-like man, with large ears, pale skin, sharp teeth, and long fingernails. The lonely Count is enchanted by a small portrait of Lucy and immediately agrees to purchase the Wismar property, especially with the knowledge that he and Lucy would become neighbors. As Jonathan's visit progresses, he is haunted at night by a number of dream-like encounters with the vampiric Count. Simultaneously, in Wismar, Lucy is tormented by night terrors, plagued by images of impending doom. Additionally, Renfield is committed to an asylum after biting a cow, apparently having gone completely insane. To Harker's horror, he finds the Count asleep in a coffin, confirming for him that Dracula is indeed a vampire. At night, Dracula leaves for Wismar, taking with him a number of coffins, filled with the cursed earth that he needs for his vampiric rest. Harker finds that he is locked in the castle, and attempts to escape through a window with a makeshift rope. The rope, fashioned from bedsheets, is not long enough, and Jonathan falls, severely injuring himself. He awakes on the ground the next morning, stirred by the sound of a young Gypsy boy playing a violin. He is eventually sent to a hospital and raves about 'black coffins' to doctors, who then assume that the sickness is affecting his mind. Meanwhile, Dracula and his coffins travel to Wismar by boat, via the Black Sea port of Varna, thence through the Bosphorus and Gibraltar straits and around the entire west European Atlantic coast to the Baltic Sea. He systematically kills the entire crew, making it appear as if they were afflicted with plague. The ghost ship arrives, with its cargo, at Wismar, where doctors – including Abraham Van Helsing (Walter Ladengast) – investigate the strange fate of the ship. They discover a log that mentions their perceived affliction with plague. In turn, Wismar is flooded with rats from the ship. Dracula arrives in Wismar with his coffins, and death spreads rapidly throughout the town. When Jonathan is finally transported home, he is desperately ill, and does not appear to recognize his wife. Lucy later has an encounter with Count Dracula; weary and unable to die, he demands some of the love that she gave so freely to Jonathan, but she refuses, much to Dracula's dismay. Now aware that something other than plague is responsible for the death that has beset her once-peaceful town, Lucy desperately tries to convince the townspeople, but they are skeptical and uninterested. She finds that she can vanquish Dracula's evil by distracting him at dawn, but at the expense of her own life. She lures the Count to her bedroom, where he proceeds to drink her blood. Lucy's beauty and purity distract Dracula from the call of the rooster, and at the first light of day, he collapses to the floor, dead. Van Helsing arrives to discover Lucy, dead but victorious. He then drives a stake through the heart of the Count to make sure that Lucy's sacrifice was not in vain. In a final twist, Jonathan Harker awakens from his sickness, now a vampire, and arranges for Van Helsing's arrest for the murder of Count Dracula. He is last seen traveling away on horseback, garbed in the same fluttering black as Dracula, stating enigmatically that he has much to do. Kinski's Dracula make-up, with black costume, bald head, rat-like teeth and long fingernails, is an imitation of Max Schreck's makeup in the 1922 original but Kinski’s performance is very much his own and not Schreck impression. In order to get the restrained performance out of Kinski that Herzog desired, he reused a trick from the making of Aguirre - the wrath of God. While Kinski wanted the play Dracula as more energetic, Herzog would provoke Kinski into a massive tantrum so he would be exhausted when the time came to shoot a scene. The makeup artist who worked on Kinski was Japanese artist Reiko Kruk. Although he fought with Herzog and others during the making of other films, Kinski got along with Kruk and the four-hour makeup sessions went on with no outbursts from Kinski himself. A number of shots in the film are faithful recreations of iconic shots from Murnau's original film, some almost perfectly identical to their counterparts, intended as an homage to Murnau and his original film. The opening sequence was filmed by Herzog himself at the Mummies of Guanajuato museum in Mexico, where a large number of naturally mummified bodies of the victims of an 1833 cholera epidemic are on public display. Herzog had first seen the Guanajuato mummies while visiting in the 1960s. Rather shockingly, on his return in the '70s he took the corpses out of the glass cases in which they are normally stored. To film them, he propped them against a wall, arranging them in a sequence running roughly from childhood to old age. It was the the second of five collaborations between director Herzog and actor Kinski and, by all accounts, it was the happiest film they made without any infamous outbursts. It is the best kind of remake in that it is it’s own film as well as being a faithful and courteous tribute. F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu is a grainy classic saved from the ashes and Herzog’s is that vision brought to life in bold colour. It is beautiful film and a fitting tribute. It should be noted that the 1988 Italian horror film Nosferatu in Venice, featuring Kinski in the title role once again, is an "in-name-only" sequel.