Nosferatu: The Vampyre/Phantom Der Nacht

Starring:Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz, Roland Topor, Walter Ladengast, Dan van Husen, Jan Groth, Carsten Bodinus, Martje Grohmann, Rijk de Gooyer, Clemens Scheitz, Lo van Hensbergen, John Leddy, Margiet van Hartingsveld, Tim Beekman, Jacques Dufilho, Stefan Husar, Johan te Slaa, Beverly Walker, Roger Berry Losch
Director: Werner Herzog
Studio: Anchor Bay
Product Type: DVD

Amazon.com

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

Customer Reviews:

Resurrection of the legend:.......2007-05-22

Fifty seven years after F.W. Murnau, Herzog resurrected the Dracula's legend with this film in which his favorite actor/best friend/worst enemy Klaus Kinski played the title role as a very tired, very quiet, very lonely Count Dracula who looked like he literally had not slept for centuries. The film is undeniably Herzog's and has many of his signature signs - the stunning views, the slow deliberate pace, the eerie music, the dreamlike atmosphere, the admiration by the nature and its indifferent to the humans' worries power and remote beauty; even the story of the ship with all crew members dead as the result of the horrible mystery. Breathtakingly beautiful Isabelle Adjani plays an object of Dracula's obsession and the contrast between his ugliness and her divine beauty is simply mesmerizing. In this film, the pure-hearted and brave woman takes it upon herself to face off the undead evil. By the time, Dr. Van Helsing arrives with the stake and hammer, his services are not required.

Count Kinski.......2007-05-15

Best Count Dracula I've ever seen.

Kinski is a marvel, in fact, the entire cast is spot-on perfect. Direction and writing, cinematography...just about flawless--and this is praise from someone who was never a huge fan of Dracula to begin with. A friend suggested I see it, and am glad I did.

Better than Bela, than Lee, than Peter Cushing, et al... Kinski is the man. Some talent.
R.I.P.

a good reinterpretation.......2007-05-12

This film is a wonderful reinterpretation of the 1922 original. It includes dialogue by the characters, while still maintaining a sense of being more visual than audio-based.

I recommend this to anyone who loves the Dracula mythology, especially if you like the 1922 original.

Nosferatu, aka Dracula, has found a natural heir.......2007-02-22

A remake of Murnau's Nosferatu. It speaks and it is full of colour. Very standard remake but a few changes are difficult to explain. For instance Mina and Lucy are inverted and Jonathan is married to Lucy. It may be Bremen but it looks like Amsterdam but with the sea next door. We have the same idea of a plague. But the director takes liberty with this plague and seems to organize at the end of it some kind of open air festivity and Last Supper for the survivors soon to be dead anyway. Morbid in other words. Herzog keeps the ending in which Lucy sacrifices herself by giving herself to Dracula to make him trespass the cock's crowing line. And she succeeds. A vampire in love is thus very silly and selfless enough to forget his survival instinct. But Herzog doubles up the ending with a good stake planted in Dracula's heart, but in the wings, and the arrest of Van Helsing for the murder of Dracula. He will be tried sooner or later. But the best change is that Lucy is dead and Jonathan has completed his transformation and has become a full-fledged vampire and we recapture the ending of the original where the danger of a next generation was left open. Here it is clearly stated and we see Jonathan crossing Europe again on horseback probably to go to his castle in Transylvania. The main interest of the film is not there. The main interest is in the phenomenal actors used for the main three characters and of course the absolutely astounding make-up of these actors. In other words, make-up added, this film recaptures the phenomenal body language and body expressivity of the old Murnau's film. It explains the fact that it does not seem to have very rich dialogues. It is all happening in the movement and syntax of the bodies on the screen.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne

GREAT REMAKE OF AN OLD CLASSIC.......2007-01-14

I LOVE THE MUSIC AND FEELING OF THIS DVD. A GOOD CHOICE

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