Nosferatu: The Vampyre/Phantom Der Nacht

Nosferatu: The Vampyre/Phantom Der Nacht
by Werner Herzog

Nosferatu: The Vampyre/Phantom Der Nacht
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DVD Cover Information

Actor: Bruno Ganz, Isabelle Adjani, Klaus Kinski, Roland Topor, Werner Herzog
Director: Werner Herzog
Producer: Werner Herzog
Writer: Werner Herzog
Cinematographer: J?rg Schmidt-Reitwein
Producer: Daniel Toscan du Plantier
Producer: Michael Gruskoff
Producer: Walter Saxer
Writer: Bram Stoker
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: German (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD-Video, Full Screen, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 107 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-07-09
Audience Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay

Movie Reviews of Nosferatu: The Vampyre/Phantom Der Nacht

Movie Review: magnificently dark and believable
Summary: 5 Stars

As one would expect from Herzog, this is a version of the Dracula story that is turned upside down: the hero is Lucy (the sister who is turned into a vampire in other versions), who understands what the count really is and seeks to destroy him all alone. Van Helsing in this version must be dragged along to see the truth, as he is a doddering old man at the end of his career and capacities to think. Indeed, he is a useless scientist. The time is also earlier, pre-industrial and with echos of the Middle Ages, even though it must be the 17C.

Kinsky is absolutely brilliant as Dracula, in one of his best performances. Rather than the sexual magnetism that Lugosi or Oldham exuded with such charisma, he is pathetically aware that he can only prey on love and humanity, from a distance. But he is compelled by blood lust. Kinski really doesn't look at all human, but a true creature of the night. Adjani was never more beautiful and depressed.

Dracula's arrival in Germany brings a far greater evil than just himself, again portrayed as the breakdown of all order and decency. Adjani walks through the town center, deserted except for those accepting death as a celebration, in a stunning reflection of medieval images of plague. They grab her, want her to dance with them, but she pursues her higher purpose.

The most shocking part is the end, totally unexpected and ominous, yet without overt horror. Again, perfectly done: not hollywood slick, but projecting the horror and its power into the unknown future. Only Herzog can do this so effectively.

Recommended warmly. It is poetry of horror.

Summary of Nosferatu: The Vampyre/Phantom Der Nacht

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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