| Nosferatu
(1922 Murnau)
viewed March 17, 2000 on video
For full
information about this film, click
here
Nosferatu
(1979 Herzog)
viewed March 29, 2000 on video
For full
information about this film, click
here
You know how silent films sometimes
feel like they’re filmed just a little slower than
normal speed, so scenes seem to take longer than you are
used to watching? Guilty
confession: I watched the original Nosferatu
while holding down the search button on my remote. Yes, I probably compromised my viewing by rushing through
scenes (though in doing so the people walked and acted
at a normal speed) but what it really comes down to is I
compromised my viewing by watching the film on video.
In a theater the pacing probably acquires its
full somnambulent effect in the dark the power of
the vampire emerges.
In my cozy living room the effect becomes less of
a spectacle and more of an event like watching news
footage of some calamity.
Nonetheless I released the remote
whenever Nosferatu stalked onto the screen.
There is no denying the horrifying power of his
presence presaging every less-than human predator
that has roamed the landscape seeking to fulfill its
single-minded purpose.
Every human machine from Frankenstein to the
Terminator is indebted to Nosferatu, his hungry glazed
over eyes seeing every man and woman as ripe vessels of
blood to be emptied by his rat-like front teeth.
Murnau takes the idea of this
superhuman stalker as inspiration for many magical
effects and innovations. He splices and rearranges frames to make doors open and close
by themselves, to make people shrivel and disappear. Sunrise, the other film I have seen of his, also has its fair
share of wonderful visual tricks.
In the mind, these silent effects create their
own music whereas Sunrise
is rhapsodic in its wild sweep through life in the big
city, Nosferatu,
as its second title suggests, is “a Symphony of
Horror”, single-minded in its purpose and consistent
in its dark, mesmerizing tone.
Unfortunately no amount of
fast-forwarding could speed up Werner Herzog’s update
on Murnau. It
is often gorgeous to look at with its gloomy vistas of
the Transylvanian countryside, but panoramic views are
not nearly as interesting as the original’s
otherworldly settings in flickering black and white.
In spite of a promising title sequence where
hundreds of shriveled heads are displayed in an unknown
chamber, the film takes its subject on the high road,
substituting décor and realism for passion.
I can’t believe that I would ever describe a
Herzog movie as passionless, but this film is, well,
bloodless. Even
the exquisite Isabelle Adjani left me cold her
exotic virginal qualities could have been exploited to
heighten the sexual suspense of the film.
At last at the very end is the chilling scene
where Nosferatu sucks her dry, and it’s a great
payoff, so obviously a metaphor for copulation that
I’m amazed the film didn’t get slapped with an R
rating. But
Nosferatu’s death is a big letdown he dies just
like a man. Maybe
that’s Herzog’s emphasis, portraying the vampire
less as a supernatural force as an afflicted human, but
the result is still less than compelling.
Read Roger Ebert's appraisal of the
classic version here.
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