FANTASIA OBSCURA: Herzog’s Eerie Remake of a Classic That Almost Didn’t Exist…
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, when you revisit someplace you hadn’t been for a while, you can’t help but notice the changes…
Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979)
Distributed by: Twentieth Century Fox (in US)
Directed by: Werner Herzog
Some things should just not be. Vampire in real life come to mind, say, when looking for an example.
This vampire film also comes to mind:
Before anyone gets indignant at that statement, let’s clear some things up: F W Murnau’s classic 1922 silent film is one of the greatest pieces of horror cinema ever released. The film is very influential in how we imagine vampires, and without it a large part of the body of genre films would just not be.
The point to keep track of is, that legally this film should not exist.
Soon after the film was released, Florence Balcombe Stoker sought an injunction against the movie. As the widow of Bram Stoker and executor of his estate, she was within her rights to do so, as the production company Prana Film made no effort to hide the influence of Stoker’s novel on the screenplay (even referring to the book in initial publicity for and prints of the film) for which they never got the rights from her to adapt.
By 1925, she won her case against the studio, which declared bankruptcy in order to avoid paying monetary damages. As part of the decision, the studio was ordered to burn all copies of the film, insuring that the movie would like its subject never see daylight again.
However, one print did find its way to the United States and somehow didn’t get sent to the fires, and copies of the print soon got screened in New York and Detroit in 1929. Because the underlying work was in the public domain in the US, the copies of this film were out of reach of British legal hands, and survived being burned by law.
Because the movie was able to stay out of the fire, this allowed it to live on, like the undead, putting its long sharp teeth into audiences and film makers for years to come.
Film makers such as Werner Herzog, for example:
Please note that we are going to get into spoilers for both this film and its inspiration.
We watch as the opening credits get superimposed over images of the Mummies of Guanajjuato, which we find are part of the nightmare Lucy Harker (Isabel Adjani) awakes from. Her husband Jonathan (Bruno Ganz) comforts her back to sleep, and the credits continue.
These then play over images of kittens playing with a locket with Lucy’s portrait and a lock of her hair, which lovers commonly possess in 19th Century Wismar. We watch the Harkers enjoy breakfast, though, admittedly, the speed with which Jonathan rolls through his meal keeps us from imagining that he’s enjoying it much.
Jonathan’s busy, as his boss Herr Renfield (Roland Topor) is about to send him to Transylvania to help close a sale on a purchase of a house near where the Harkers live. The buyer, Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski), is anxious to leave his castle, almost as anxious as the Romani who live nearby are about going there.
Papers are signed, and soon cartons of earth are put on the manifest of a schooner headed for Germany, which contain rats and one undead denizen who keeps dining on the crew. The corpse of the captain is tied to the wheel as the ship sails into port, and at night when no one is paying attention, Dracula hides his native soil around Wismar, while taking time to drop in on Lucy:
Meanwhile, the rats do what they were brought to Germany to do, bring a plague upon the town. We watch as the town falls apart, as corrupted as the rats’ master as the infected embrace their fate:
It’s really what happens to the berg as death comes in the wake of the vampire’s presence, without the blood sucker having to drink everyone, that make up the most impactful parts of both films. Murnau understood that this aspect of the character (whom he called ‘Orlof’ to try and avoid a copyright infringement, to no avail) as the bringer of disease best embodies the threat he possesses. The fact that his vampire, Max Schreck, was made to suggest a rat with long claws and pointed ears as part of his look, makes the association even more pointed, which Kinsky in similar makeup emulates well.
Herzog actually goes a long way in his effort to emulate the 1922 original. There are many shots that are scene-for-scene comparable to the original, what Murnau might have done himself had he color film or sound sync with his images. At the same time, much of Herzog’s techniques and themes, such as hand-held shots following characters around as they go mad in a world they can’t relate to, are also present in this film.
Because it is Herzog, the main difference between his and the original comes at the end. Murnau has Orlok’s visit to Lucy, where she keeps him ‘engaged’ until sunup with the daylight turning him into smoke, followed up with Lucy and Jonathan happily reunited at the end. In Herzog’s hands, sunlight leaves Dracula’s body in the bedroom, next to Lucy’s corpse, while Jonathan turns undead and is ready to infect the rest of Europe. This finale encapsulates Herzog’s themes distinctly, giving the film a much darker tone than the original had.
It was an ending that took quite a bit of work to get to. Herzog had only 16 crew on set (which was luxurious for him, as he only had eight when he shot Aguirre, the Wrath of God) and had to shoot dialog sections of the film twice, once in German and again in English in order to enable the film a US release. At least for this one, the usual tension between him and Kinski which had shut down the other four films they did together (yeah, we wonder why they kept working together too…) was diminished, probably due to the time Kinski had to reflect during his four hours in makeup every day.
At the end of the day, Herzog got his movie (two versions, with the German language one feeling more authentic as you watch the actors do their lines for that copy) with a cast that brought a lot more to their roles than just slavishly following the original. There were some viewers back in 1979 that thought Kinski’s vampire was the winner as far as which Dracula that year was the best to watch. (1979 also gave us Frank Langella in Dracula, George Hamilton in Love at First Bite, and John Carradine in Nocturna.)
Which is all the more surprising if one considers Herzog’s perspective, having claimed that before he started production he was only familiar with vampires through the original Nosferatu, Stoker’s original novel, and the comedy The Fearless Vampire Killers.
It feels like something that should not be. It’s almost criminal, in fact…
NEXT TIME: They did what with Dracula? Oh NO they didn’t! Not on MY watch!
