Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night

Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (translated as Nosferatu, Vampire of the Night or Nosferatu, Ghost of the Night) is a 1979 film produced in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is mainly set in the city of Wismar, Germany, and in the Romanian region of Transylvania in the mid-19th century. It was written and directed by director Werner Herzog. In the list of actors, we find Klaus Kinski in the role of Nosferatu, Isabelle Adjani as Lucy Harker and Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Harker. It is also worth mentioning the French writer and artist Roland Topor in the role of Renfield.

Although the film is based on the novel Dracula by Bram Stoker (1897), it was originally conceived as a readaptation of the German expressionist classic titled Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922), by F.W. Murnau. This production was positively received by both critics and the public and achieved some commercial success. It is the second of five legendary collaborations between Herzog and Kinski.

In 1988, an Italian-produced sequel was made, titled Nosferatu in Venice. This sequel bears very little relation to its predecessor, with Kinski being the only actor in the new cast to remain in his role.

Synopsis

Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) is a real estate agent in Wismar, Germany. His boss, Renfield (Roland Topor), informs him that a nobleman named Dracula wants to buy a property in Wismar. Harker is chosen to visit the earl and close the lucrative deal. Leaving his young wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) behind in Wismar, Harker embarks on a 4-week journey to Dracula's castle in Transylvania.

During his journey, Harker stops at a village near the castle. The locals inform him of the "evil" that inhabits the castle and plead with him to stay away from it. These notices are joined by stories and descriptions of vampirism. Harker dismisses this advice as baseless superstition. Finally, he arrives at Dracula's castle, where he meets the count (Klaus Kinski). The mysterious nobleman is a strange character, with pale skin and pointed ears, sharp teeth and long nails. Despite this terrifying appearance, Dracula proves to be a solicitous and hospitable host.

The reclusive count is fascinated by a small portrait of Lucy and immediately agrees to buy the property offered by Harker in Wismar. During his visit to the castle, Harker has a series of dream encounters with the earl. Simultaneously, Lucy is tormented in Wismar by catastrophic and evil images. Elsewhere, Renfield is admitted to a mental institution after biting a cow and developing a mysterious type of psychosis.

Harker, horrified, discovers the count sleeping in a coffin, confirming his suspicions that Dracula is actually a vampire. That same night, the count leaves for Wismar taking with him several coffins filled with the cursed earth that he needs to perform the vampiric rest on him. Harker finds himself trapped in the castle and tries to escape through a window on a rope. The rope is made of sheets and it turns out not to be strong enough. Harker falls and suffers various injuries. He wakes up in a hospital in a feverish state talking about "black coffins", so the doctors assume that his condition is affecting his mental health.

Meanwhile, Dracula and his coffins travel to Wismar by ship. The ship's crew are systematically dying or disappearing at the hands of the vampire. However, the crew believes that the deaths are due to the appearance of the plague: nosferatu means disease-carrying agent, the one who brings the plague. The ghost ship arrives in Wismar with its mysterious cargo. A number of doctors, including Van Helsing (Walter Ladengast), investigate the mysterious events on the ship. Meanwhile, Wismar is ravaged by a rat infestation and death spreads rapidly through the city.

When Harker finally returns to Wismar, he shows symptoms of a hopeless illness and seems to not recognize his wife Lucy. She has a meeting with the reclusive count. This one, desperate and condemned to immortality, asks Lucy to give him a little of the love that she feels for Harker for free. To the earl's despair, Lucy refuses.

Once Lucy discovers the real reason why death plagues Wismar, she tries to warn her fellow citizens. However, they pay little attention to it. Thus, Lucy decides to destroy Dracula by herself. For this, she Lucy lures the vampire to her bedroom so that he drinks her blood, this will cost him her life.

Lucy's beauty and purity distract the earl, who does not hear the rooster's crow and dies with the first rays of the sun. Van Helsing discovers Lucy's victorious corpse and finishes off the earl by driving a stake through his heart. In an unsettling twist ending, Harker resurfaces from the mysterious illness of his becoming a vampire and arranges for Van Helsing's arrest. Harker is last seen riding his horse cryptically stating that he still has a lot to do.

Variations on the original novel by Bram Stoker

This is not an exhaustive list and is only intended to give an idea of the differences between the novel and the film.

• The stage of the novel is changed by the German city of Wismar around 1838.
• Mina Harker becomes Lucy Harker.
• The characters of Arthur Holmwood and Quincey Morris are omitted.
• Renfield is Harker's boss.
• Dracula brings with it the plague and destroys the city.
• Dracula turns Harker into a vampire.
• Dracula doesn't change.
• There is a special attention to the psychic connection between Lucy and Harker.
• Dracula must sleep by day and the sunlight is lethal to him.

Background and production

Review

While Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, was produced as an adaptation of Bram Stoker's acclaimed book, Herzog's film was made as an homage to the 1922 silent version. The producers of the 1922 version couldn't get the copyright of Stoker's novel and therefore changed some small details to avoid getting in trouble with copyright holders. A lawsuit was filed against the producers of Nosferatu which resulted in a destruction order for all copies of the film. Fortunately for all, some copies survived and were restored after the death of Stoker's widow and the consequent expiration of copyright.

Herzog considers Murnau's Nosferatu the best film ever made in Germany. It was his dream to revisit this classic using the versatile Kinski in the role of Count. In 1979, the novel's copyright had expired, so it was possible to include the original names of the characters. Strangely, Herzog called Harker's wife "Lucy Harker" despite the fact that this character is named Mina in the novel.

Production

Brought by Klaus Kinski in the Nosferatu Herzog. It is exposed at the Filmmuseum Düsseldorf in Germany.

Nosferatu, vampire of the night, was a co-production between Werner Herzog Filmproduktion, Gaumont and ZDF (Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen). As was common in Germany in the 1970s, Nosferatu was shot with a minimal budget and a crew of just 16 people. Herzog was unable to film in Bremen, the location of the original's staging, so he relocated the film to the Dutch town of Delft. Part of the scenes were shot in Schiedam after the refusal of the Delft city council to allow 11,000 rats to be released to film certain scenes. Dracula's abode was filmed in various locations in the Czech Republic.

Distributor 20th Century Fox requested that an English version be shot in order to make the film more appealing to an English-speaking audience. Thus, the dialogue scenes were shot twice, once in German and once in English. In this way, the original voices of the actors are included in both versions, avoiding dubbing. However some consider the German version to be superior because Kinski and Ganz were better able to interpret their roles in their native language.

The film's solemn soundtrack, Brüder des Schattens, Söhne des Lichts (Brothers of the Shadow, Children of the Light), was performed by the German group Popol Vuh, who had already collaborated with Herzog on previous projects.

Production data

• The mummies that can be seen at the beginning of the film are authentic. You can visit them at the mummies museum in Guanajuato, Mexico.
• Only five days after finishing the shooting of Nosferatu, Herzog and Kinski started rolling Woyzeck with the same production team.
• A different recording from Zinzkaro, popular Georgian song present at the B.S.O. de Nosferatu and performed by the artist Ensemble Gordela, was used by Kate Bush in the song Hello Earth from his album Hounds of love (1985).
• A number of domestic rats were painted grey for the movie.
• During the transport of the rats to Delft, they grew explosively from the 11,000 initial specimens to 30,000. When the scene of the rats was finished in the film, the mayor of Delft announced that any rat captured and delivered to the town hall would be rewarded with five guilders (two euros). For three weeks, many Delft children jumped classes to catch the valuable rats.
• In the extras of the DVD release launched in 2005, you can see a disturbing film trailer of the Spanish version that occurred for the release of the film in 1979.
• A game for popular Amstrad CPC systems, Commodore 64, and ZX Spectrum based on this film was published in 1986. Nosferatu the vampire.
• The interior scenes of the castle of Nosferatu were shot at the Pernštejn Castle (Czech Republic).

Cast

• Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula.
• Isabelle Adjani like Lucy Harker.
• Bruno Ganz like Jonathan Harker.
• Roland Topor like Renfield.
• Walter Ladengast as Dr. Van Helsing.
• Dan van Husen as Mayor.
• Jan Groth as Port Chief.
• Carsten Bodinus as Schrader.
• Martje Grohmann as Mina.
• Rijk de Gooyer as a municipal official.
• Clemens Scheitz as Secretary.
• Hensbergen van.
• John Leddy as a Lighter.
• Margiet van Hartingsveld
• Tim Beekman
• Jacques Dufilho as captain of the ship.

Reception

The film was released under the original German title Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht and in English as Nosferatu the Vampyre. It was a hit with critics, who scored it 94 percent out of 100 on Rotten Tomatoes. It was also considered by many to be a fitting homage to Murnau's version, managing to update the original version without lacking acting creativity.

Herzog's production knew how to maintain an element of terror with several deaths and a dreamlike and spectral atmosphere. Herzog also managed to develop the plot in a significant way compared to many of the existing Dracula productions. In particular, greater attention was paid to the emotions and tragic loneliness suffered by the Count. The figure of Count Orlok (now called Count Dracula) is presented as a ghostly figure, but also, there is an emphasis on his pathos: Exhausted, rejected and doomed to immortality.

Kinski's costumes and makeup achieve an appropriate imitation of that presented by the legendary Max Schreck in the 1922 original. A number of shots are true copies of the original version, although these shots were taken as an homage and not like an imitation.