}}}}Nosferatu the Vampyre () is a 1979 gothic horror film written and directed by Werner Herzog. It is set primarily in 19th-century Wismar, Germany and Transylvania, and was conceived as a stylistic remake of F. W. Murnau’s 1922 German Dracula adaptation Nosferatu. The picture stars Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula, Isabelle Adjani as Lucy Harker, Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Harker, and French artist-writer Roland Topor as Renfield. There are two different versions of the film, one in which the actors speak English, and one in which they speak German.WEB, Nosferatu, the Vampyre {{!, film by Herzog [1979] {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nosferatu-the-Vampyre |access-date=2022-12-20 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}}Herzog’s production of Nosferatu was very well received by critics and enjoyed a comfortable degree of commercial success.WEB,www.kinoeye.org/02/20/chaffinquiray20.php, An Adaptation With Fangs by Garrett Chaffin-Quiray, Kinoeye, 2007-01-30, The film also marks the second of five collaborations between director Herzog and actor Kinski,NEWS,www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/fr/2005/10/28/stories/2005102803190500.htm,hinduonnet.com/thehindu/fr/2005/10/28/stories/2005102803190500.htm," title="web.archive.org/web/20071016132338hinduonnet.com/thehindu/fr/2005/10/28/stories/2005102803190500.htm,">web.archive.org/web/20071016132338hinduonnet.com/thehindu/fr/2005/10/28/stories/2005102803190500.htm, usurped, 16 October 2007, Frames ‘n’ friends by Amulya Nagaraj, The Hindu, 2007-01-30, immediately followed by 1979’s Woyzeck. The film had 1,000,000 admissions in West Germany and grossed ITL 53,870,000 in Italy.WEB,www.imdb.com/title/tt0079641/business, Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) - Box office / business, www.imdb.com, It was also a modest success in Adjani’s home country, taking in 933,533 admissions in France.WEB,www.jpbox-office.com/fichfilm.php?id=7650, Nosferatu Phantom der Nacht (1979)- JPBox-Office, JP, www.jpbox-office.com, A novelization of the screenplay was written by Paul Monette and published by both Avon Publishing ({{ISBN|978-0380441075}}) and Picador ({{ISBN|978-0330259293}}) in 1979. The 1988 Italian horror film Nosferatu in Venice is a “sequel-in-name-only”,WEB,www.movie-locations.com/movies/v/vampirevenice.html, Vampire In Venice (Nosferatu A Venezia) â€” 1986, Tony, Reeves, 6 February 2018, 22 March 2017,www.movie-locations.com/movies/v/vampirevenice.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20170322134931www.movie-locations.com/movies/v/vampirevenice.html,">web.archive.org/web/20170322134931www.movie-locations.com/movies/v/vampirevenice.html, dead, again featuring Kinski in the title role.WEB,cinemasentries.com/review/nosferatu-in-venice-prince-of-the-night-dvd-review-when-art-becomes-trash/, Nosferatu in Venice (Prince of the Night) DVD Review: When Art Becomes Trash - Cinema Sentries, cinemasentries.com, 6 February 2018, 25 February 2017,cinemasentries.com/review/nosferatu-in-venice-prince-of-the-night-dvd-review-when-art-becomes-trash/," title="web.archive.org/web/20170225085549cinemasentries.com/review/nosferatu-in-venice-prince-of-the-night-dvd-review-when-art-becomes-trash/,">web.archive.org/web/20170225085549cinemasentries.com/review/nosferatu-in-venice-prince-of-the-night-dvd-review-when-art-becomes-trash/, dead,

Plot

In 1850, Jonathan Harker is an estate agent in Wismar, Germany. His employer, Renfield, informs him that nobleman Count Dracula wishes to buy a property in Wismar. Harker is assigned to visit the Count and complete the deal. Leaving his wife Lucy behind, Harker travels to Dracula’s castle in Transylvania, in a journey that lasts four weeks, carrying with him the documents needed to sell the house. En route, Harker stops at an inn, where the locals beg for him to stay away from the accursed castle, providing him with details of Dracula’s vampirism. Ignoring the villagers’ pleas as superstition, Harker continues his journey, ascending the Borgo Pass on foot and arriving at the castle, where he meets Dracula, a man with large ears, pale skin, sharp teeth and long fingernails.The Count is enchanted by a small portrait of Lucy and agrees to purchase the Wismar property, especially with the knowledge that she would become his neighbor. As Jonathan’s visit progresses, he is haunted at night by several encounters with Dracula. In Wismar, Lucy is tormented by nightmares, plagued by images of impending doom. Meanwhile, Renfield is committed to an asylum after biting a cow, apparently having gone insane. To Harker’s horror, he finds the Count asleep in a coffin, confirming for him that Dracula is indeed a vampire. That night, Dracula leaves for Wismar, taking coffins filled with the cursed earth that he needs for his vampiric rest. Harker finds himself imprisoned in the castle and attempts to escape through a window via a makeshift rope fashioned from bedsheets. The rope is not long enough, and Jonathan falls, severely injuring himself.The next morning, he awakes on the ground, stirred by the sound of a young Romani boy playing the violin. Eventually sent to a hospital, Jonathan raves about ‘black coffins’ to doctors, who assume that the illness affects his mind.Dracula and his coffins travel to Wismar by ship via the Black Sea port of Varna, thence through the Bosphorus and the Strait of Gibraltar and around the west European Atlantic coast to the Baltic Sea. He kills the ship’s crew, making it appear as if they were afflicted with the plague.The ghost ship arrives at Wismar, where doctors â€“ including Abraham Van Helsing â€“ investigate the fate of the vessel. They discover a ship’s log that mentions their perceived affliction with the plague. Wismar is then flooded with rats from the ship. When Dracula arrives with his coffins, death spreads throughout the town. The ill Jonathan is transported home but does not appear to recognize Lucy when he finally arrives and says the sunlight is hurting him. She later encounters Dracula. Weary and unable to die, he demands some of the love that she gives to Jonathan, to no avail.Now aware that something other than plague is responsible for the death that has beset Wismar, Lucy tries to convince the townspeople, who are skeptical and uninterested, engaging in a danse macabre and having a last supper. From a book given to Jonathan by the Transylvanians, Lucy discovers she can defeat Dracula by distracting him until dawn, at which time the rays of the sun will destroy him, but only at the cost of her own life. Jonathan becomes more sick as his memory worsens and his skin turns pale. That night, Lucy puts a ring of salt around Jonathan and lures Dracula to her bedroom, where he drinks her blood.Lucy distracts Dracula from the call of the rooster, and at the first light of day, he dies. Van Helsing arrives to discover Lucy dead but victorious. He then drives a stake through the heart of Dracula to make sure that Lucy’s sacrifice was not in vain. Jonathan then awakens from his sickness, now a vampire, and has Van Helsing arrested for Dracula’s murder. Jonathan then states that he has much to do and rides away on horseback, garbed in the same fluttering black as Dracula.

Cast

{{cast listing|

Klaus Kinski as Count Dracula
Isabelle Adjani as Lucy Harker
Bruno Ganz as Jonathan Harker
Roland Topor as Renfield
Walter Ladengast as Dr. Abraham van Helsing
Dan van Husen as Warden
{{ill|Jan Groth (actor)|de|3=Jan Groth|lt=Jan Groth}} as Harbormaster
Carsten Bodinus as Schrader
Martje Grohmann as Mina
Rijk de Gooyer as Town official
Clemens Scheitz as Clerk
John Leddy as Coachman
Tim Beekman as Coffin bearer
Lo van Hensbergen
Margiet van Hartingsveld

}}

Production

Background

While the basic story is derived from Bram Stoker’s novel Dracula, director Herzog made the 1979 film primarily as an homage remake of F. W. Murnau’s silent film Nosferatu (1922), which differs somewhat from Stoker’s original work. The makers of the earlier film changed several minor details and character names. They also did not have permission to use the intellectual property of the novel, which was owned (at the time) by Stoker’s widow Florence. A lawsuit was filed, resulting in an order for the destruction of all prints of the film. Some prints survived and were restored after Florence Stoker had died and the copyright had expired.WEB,silentmoviemonsters.tripod.com/nosferatu.html, Nosferatu, Silent Movie Monsters, 2007-01-30,silentmoviemonsters.tripod.com/nosferatu.html," title="web.archive.org/web/20061216220526silentmoviemonsters.tripod.com/nosferatu.html,">web.archive.org/web/20061216220526silentmoviemonsters.tripod.com/nosferatu.html, 16 December 2006, By the 1960s and early 1970s the original silent returned to circulation, and was enjoyed by a new generation of moviegoers.{{citation needed|date=September 2018}}Herzog considered Murnau’s Nosferatu to be the greatest film ever to come out of Germany,WEB,www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/MultimediaStudentProjects/00-01/0009135b/fruits/html/Herzog/herzog-nosferatu.htm, Fruits of Anger â€“ Werner Herzog on Nosferatu, hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk, 2007-01-30, dead,www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/MultimediaStudentProjects/00-01/0009135b/fruits/html/Herzog/herzog-nosferatu.htm," title="web.archive.org/web/20070218063028www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/MultimediaStudentProjects/00-01/0009135b/fruits/html/Herzog/herzog-nosferatu.htm,">web.archive.org/web/20070218063028www.hatii.arts.gla.ac.uk/MultimediaStudentProjects/00-01/0009135b/fruits/html/Herzog/herzog-nosferatu.htm, 18 February 2007, dmy-all, and was eager to make his own version of the film, with Klaus Kinski in the leading role.{{citation needed|date=September 2018}} In 1979, by the very day 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.{{citation needed|date=September 2018}}Herzog saw his film as a parable about the fragility of order in a staid, bourgeois town. “It is more than a horror film,” he says. “Nosferatu is not a monster, but an ambivalent, masterful force of change. When the plague threatens, people throw their property into the streets; they discard their bourgeois trappings. A reâ€evaluation of life and its meaning takes place.“The New York Times, 30 July 1978 Adjani said about her heroine: “There’s a sexual element. She is gradually attracted towards Nosferatu. She feels a fascination â€” as we all would think. First, she hopes to save the people of the town by sacrificing herself. But then, there is a moment of transition. There is a scene when he is sucking her blood â€” sucking and sucking like an animalâ€”and suddenly, her face takes on a new expression, a sexual one, and she will not let him go away anymore. There is a desire that has been born. A moment like this has never been seen in a vampire picture”. According to Kinski: “We see Dracula sympathetically [in this film]. He is a man without free will. He cannot choose, and he cannot cease to be. He is a kind of incarnation of evil, but he is also a man who is suffering, suffering for love. This makes it so much more dramatic, more doubleâ€edged.”

Filming

File:Lubeck Spichrze Solne 2.jpg|thumb|LÃ¼beck Salzspeicher SalzspeicherNosferatu the Vampyre was co-produced by Werner Herzog Filmproduktion, French film company Gaumont, and West German public-service television station ZDF. As was common for West German films during the 1970s, Nosferatu the Vampyre was filmed on a minimal budget and with a crew of just 16 people. Herzog could not film in Wismar, where the original Murnau film was shot, so he relocated production to Delft, Netherlands. Parts of the film were shot in nearby Schiedam, after the Delft authorities refused to allow Herzog to release 11,000 rats for a scene in the film. Dracula’s home is represented by locations in Czechoslovakia. Herzog originally intended to film in Transylvania, but Nicolae CeauÈ™escu’s regime would not allow it due to the relation between the character of count Dracula and Vlad the Impaler. PernÅ¡tejn Castle stands in for castle Dracula in the film, both interiors and exteriors.{{citation needed|date=September 2018}}At the request of distributor 20th Century Fox, Herzog produced two versions of the film simultaneously to appeal to English-speaking audiences. Most of the scenes with dialogue were filmed twice, once in German and again in English, although a few scenes were shot once with dubbing used as needed. In 2014, Herzog called the German version the “more authentic” version of the two.WEB,www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-rerelease-of-werner-herzogs-nosferatu-its-not-a-remake-20140516-story.html, Re-release of Werner Herzog’s ‘Nosferatu’: ‘It’s not a remake’, Mark, Olsen, 16 May 2014, Los Angeles Times, Herzog himself filmed the opening sequence at the Mummies of Guanajuato museum in Guanajuato, 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. On his return in the 1970s, he took the corpses out of the glass cases they normally store. He propped them against a wall to film them, arranging them in a sequence running roughly from childhood to old age.BOOK, Prawer, Siegbert Salomon, Nosferatuâ€“Phantom der Nacht, 41, British Film Institute, 2004, 978-1-84457-031-7, 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. The makeup artist who worked on Kinski was the 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. Several shots in the movie are faithful recreations of iconic images from Murnau’s original film, some almost perfectly identical to their counterparts, intended as homages to Murnau.WEB,www.filmfreakcentral.net/ffc/2014/05/nosferatu-the-vampyre.html, Nosferatu: Phantom Der Nacht by Walter Chaw, filmfreakcentral.com, 2007-01-30,

Burg Pernstein.JPG|PernÅ¡tejn Castle as Drakula’s home
Pernstein Hof.JPG|Inner ward of PernÅ¡tejn Castle with the entrance to Dracula’s crypt in the movie on the right
Partnach.jpg|Partnach river near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, at which Harker’s journey to Transylvania was filmed
Overzicht voorzijde - Delft - 20048913 - RCE.jpg|Delft city hall and market served as center of Wisborg (Photo 1975)
View of a canal from a bridge in Voldersgracht, Delft, Netherlands - Pcs34560 IMG6722.jpg|Voldersgracht in Delft as Wisborg (Photo 2013)
Overzicht van de Nieuwe Haven bij de Westvest - Schiedam - 20415922 - RCE.jpg|Nieuwe Haven of Schiedam as Wisborg harbour (Photo 1942)

Music

The film score to Nosferatu the Vampyre was composed by the West German group Popol Vuh, who have collaborated with Herzog on numerous projects. Music for the film comprises material from the group’s album BrÃ¼der des Schattens â€“ SÃ¶hne des Lichts.WEB, Neate, Wilson, Nosferatu: The Vampyre (Original Soundtrack),www.allmusic.com/album/nosferatu-the-vampyre-original-soundtrack-mw0000139771, AllMusic, All Media Guide, 3 November 2013, Additionally, the film features Richard Wagner’s prelude to Das Rheingold, Charles Gounod’s “Sanctus” from Messe solennelle Ã Sainte CÃ©cile and traditional Georgian folk song “Tsintskaro”, sung by Vocal Ensemble Gordela.BOOK, Thompson, Graeme, Kate Bush: Under The Ivy, 2012, Omnibus Press, 9780857127754, The choral section of ‘Hello Earth’ is taken from a Georgian folk song called ‘Zinzkaro’, which Bush heard performed by the Vocal Ensemble Gordela on the soundtrack of Werner Herzog’s 1979 German vampire film Nosferatu The Vampire, one of her more esoteric borrowings.,

Animal cruelty

Dutch behavioral biologist Maarten ‘t Hart, hired by Herzog for his expertise with laboratory rats, revealed that, after witnessing the inhumane way in which the rats were treated, he no longer wished to cooperate. Apart from traveling 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. To do so, according to ‘t Hart, the cages containing the rats needed to be submerged in boiling water for several seconds, causing another half of them to die. The surviving rats proceeded to lick themselves clean of the dye immediately, as ‘t Hart had predicted they would. ‘t Hart also implied sheep and horses that appear in the movie were treated very poorly but did not specify this any further.Maarten ‘t Hart in Zomergasten, VPRO, 2010-08-01.

Release

Released as Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht in German and Nosferatu the Vampyre in English, the film was entered into the 29th Berlin International Film Festival, where production designer Henning von Gierke won the Silver Bear for an outstanding single achievement.WEB,www.berlinale.de/en/archiv/jahresarchive/1979/03_preistr_ger_1979/03_Preistraeger_1979.html, Berlinale 1978: Prize Winners, 2010-08-15, berlinale.de,

Critical response

{{expand section|date=July 2018}}Film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reports a 95% approval critic response based on 54 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website’s critical consensus states: “Stunning visuals from Werner Herzog and an intense portrayal of the famed bloodsucker from Klaus Kinski make this remake of Nosferatu a horror classic in its own right.“WEB, Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (Nosferatu the Vampyre) (1979),www.rottentomatoes.com/m/nosferatu_the_vampyre/, Rotten Tomatoes, Fandango Media, 10 April 2018, In contemporary reviews, the film is noted for maintaining an element of horror, with numerous deaths and a grim atmosphere. Still, it features a more expanded plot than many Dracula productions, with a greater emphasis on the vampire’s tragic loneliness.WEB,cinemaphile.org/reviews/1999/nosferatu1979.html, Nosferatu The Vampyre by David Keyes, cinemaphile.org, 2007-01-30, Dracula is still a ghastly figure, but with a greater sense of pathos; weary, unloved, and doomed to immortality. Reviewer John J. Puccio of MovieMet considers it a faithful homage to Murnau’s original film, significantly updating the original material and avoiding the danger of being overly derivative.WEB,moviemet.com/review/nosferatu-vampyre-dvd-review, Nosferatu the Vampyre by John J. Puccio, 30 April 2012, moviemet.com, 2012-09-05, Roger Ebert of The Chicago Sun-Times reviewed the film upon its 1979 release, giving it four stars out of a possible four, writing: “There is nothing pleasant about Herzog’s vampire”, which was “played totally without ego by Klaus Kinski”. Ebert added, “This movie isn’t even scary. It’s so slow it’s meditative at times, but it is the most evocative series of images centered around the idea of the vampire that I have ever seen since F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu, which was made in 1922.“WEB,www.rogerebert.com/reviews/nosferatu-the-vampyre-1979, Nosferatu the Vampyre movie review (1979) | Roger Ebert, In 2011 Ebert added the film to his “Great Movies Collection.” Concluding his review, Ebert said:One striking quality of the film is its beauty. Herzog’s pictorial eye is not often enough credited. His films always upstage it with their themes. We are focused on what happens, and there are few ‘beauty shots.’ Look here at his control of the color palette, his off-center compositions, of the dramatic counterpoint of light and dark. Here is a film that does honor to the seriousness of vampires. No, I don’t believe in them. But if they were real, here is how they must look.WEB, Ebert, Roger, Nosferatu the Vampyre Movie Review (1979),rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-nosferatu-the-vampyre-1979, RogerEbert.com, Ebert Digital LLC, 3 November 2013, 24 October 2011,

References

External links

{{IMDb title|0079641}}
{{Rotten Tomatoes|nosferatu_the_vampyre}}

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Nosferatu the Vampyre

Plot

Cast

Production

Background

Filming

Music

Animal cruelty

Release

Critical response

See also

References

External links