Jude Reed

BCA 525A

Nosferatu the Vampyre: An Analysis of the Only Film in Which an

Actor in Character as an Undead Ghoul is Less Frightening than the

Actor Himself is.

In 1979, West German director Werner Herzog brought Nosferatu the Vampyre,

known as Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht in its German form, to the screen. Adapting

Bram Stoker’s Dracula for the film was far from rare even at this point in time - the same

year, Frank Langella played Dracula in Dracula, George Hamilton played him in Love at

First Bite, and John Carradine played the Count in Nocturna. Indeed, by the release of

Herzog’s adaptation, no less than sixteen film versions of Stoker’s novel had been

adapted.1

Werner Herzog, however, is no mundane peddler of adaptations. As an art-

house darling, his prior works were famous (and sometimes infamous) for their intensity,

philosophy, and adversity of production; particularly his 1972 film starring his muse

Klaus Kinski, Aguirre the Wrath of God, won Herzog the note of film critics

internationally for his visionary direction as well as the nightmarish production it was

filmed under. Herzog making this adaptation meant it would stand out from other

Draculae as its own work of art.

1
"Nosferatu Connections." Internet Movie Database. Accessed November 1, 2016.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013442/trivia?tab=mc&ref_=tt_trv_cnn.
 The most immediately recognizable aspect of Herzog’s version is its direct

relation to F. W. Murnau’s 1922 expressionist classic Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des

Grauens. Herzog cited the importance to him of keeping in the tradition of German

cinema and its early champions such as Murnau, saying he was “finding solid ground

within the history of German cinema. Connecting with the generation of the

grandfathers, in this case with Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau. So for me it was like bridging

a void, a big gap in reconnecting to the great cinema of the 1920s.”2

Murnau’s Nosferatu famously attempted to skirt intellectual property problems

with Bram Stoker’s widow by creating an ersatz Dracula. Nosferatu featured Count

Orlok, Thomas and Ellen Hutter, and Knock where Dracula had Count Dracula,

Jonathan and Mina Harker, and Renfield; the setting changed from England to

Germany. The plot generally remained the same as Stoker’s original work - an estate

agent is sent to Transylvania to negotiate an purchase by a reclusive nobleman-cum-

vampire. Said noble sails to his new home and terrorizes the locals. Murnau however

simplified the plot greatly; Lucy Westernra and her suitors were dropped, as well as the

Count’s vampire concubines. The Van Helsing character is demoted to an academic

with little impact on the events of the plot.

The most stark changes Murnau made were to the nature of the Count himself.

Stoker’s charismatic Count Dracula had little in common physically with Murnau’s Count

Orlok, whose pallid, lanky, and rodent-like husk portrayed an overt expressionist

nightmare incarnate. By way of Murnau’s simplifying the plot, he truncated the ending of

the story to Orlok’s demise coming by way of the morning sun. Count Dracula, as

2
Olsen, Mark. "Re-release of Werner Herzog's 'Nosferatu': 'It's Not a Remake'" LA Times. May 16, 2014.
Accessed November 1, 2016. http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-
rerelease-of-werner-herzogs-nosferatu-its-not-a-remake-20140516-story.html.
written by Bram Stoker, could not use his supernatural abilities while in the sun, but was

not harmed or destroyed by it. Murnau’s improvised ending would become the most

enduring element of the film by creating the concept of sunlight destroying vampires, a

weakness adopted almost universally by later vampire fiction, including many

adaptations of Dracula.

Herzog retains the modified plot structure of Murnau’s version, and recreates

Max Schreck’s Orlok aesthetic on Klaus Kinski. Much like Murnau’s version, Herzog’s

Nosferatu takes place in Wismar, Germany rather than London. Curiously however,

Herzog changes the character names back to their origins from Dracula, restoring

Jonathan Harker, Count Dracula, Renfield, and Abraham Van Helsing as character

names, though oddly he chooses to name Harker’s wife Lucy while using the name

Mina for the Harker family friend called Annie in Murnau’s version. John Badham’s

Dracula with Frank Langella chose to swap Mina and Lucy as well that same year.

Herzog does not seek to “remake” Nosferatu as much as make an

“interpretation.”3 Upon the scaffold of the plot that Murnau built, Herzog expands and

fills the gaps with his idealized vision for the story while maintaining several core

thematic points that Murnau set up. His expansion and interpretation of these themes

are what give his Nosferatu the philosophical depth that was likely impossible to convey

by the standards of film in 1922.

Themes

3
Olsen, LA Times
 As in Murnau’s original, the sexuality of the Harkers is overtly portrayed as

strained. Murnau’s Thomas is an energetic and naive man-child, whose chaste kisses

and plucked flowers Ellen dismisses. Jonathan and Lucy Harker are shown sleeping in

separate beds, and Jonathan struggles to comfort his wife in her nightmares in her own

bed. Harker as well laments to Renfield that he feels he is not sufficiently providing a

home for Lucy that she deserves, another hint of his impotence. The depth of their

romantic love for each other is never in question in either version, but their chastity and

sexual frustrations are implied fully. This implication becomes relevant to the plot,

however; Ellen and Lucy discover the key to destroying the vampire is for a woman

“pure of heart” to distract him until the first light of day - the implication clear that this

“purity of heart” must require a woman “pure of soul” and thus virginal.

The dynamic of Harker’s sexual failure extends to his dealings with Count

Dracula. In another direct analogue to Murnau, harker cuts his finger while dining with

Dracula. The Count makes an overture to suck the wound of its blood, which Harker

meekly rebuffs. Dracula forces himself upon Harker, taking his wound in mouth, while

the unassertive and impotent Harker stands and does not fight back, despite his clear

disgust. Crazed by the blood and emboldened by Jonathan’s weakness, Dracula

intimately forces himself into Harker’s space, intimidating him backwards through the

main hall of the castle until he is cornered, the Count barely restraining himself from

completely using Harker’s body as he pleases. By morning, Harker has a bite on his

neck, displaying that Harker was used and abandoned in the night by the Count.

Herzog portrays Count Dracula as sexually failing, as well. His lack of restraint

and rashness around Harker, both at the dinner as well as his clear impulsiveness when
seeing Lucy in Harker’s locket, reek of his desperation and frustration. He speaks to

Lucy of the misery to live without love as he does, begging her to relieve his aimless

frustration in undeath. Where Murnau implied her final sacrifice to be her chastity

through the metaphor of her blood, Herzog makes the situation all the more clear by

Dracula’s groping and fumbling at her dress. His awkward and uncomfortable

consummation of Lucy’s sacrifice portrays fully his ineffectiveness - without Lucy’s

willing sacrifice of her purity, he clearly would be completely incapable of this type of

intimacy.

Agency and capability are a strong thematic element present in both Murnau and

Herzog’s films. Harker and Hutter desperately try to protect and defend their wives from

the vampire, only to completely fail at affecting anything. Dracula and Orlok desperately

try to dominate and exploit Lucy and Ellen. Renfield and Knock desperately try to seek

the approval and power of their master. The townsfolk try desperately to save

themselves from the plague; the ship’s crew try desperately to survive their trip and

combat their phantom assailant; the Hungarian villagers try desperately to keep the

terrors of the vampire from escaping to the outside world. None are able to effectively

act - only Lucy and Ellen are able to proactively project their will onto the situation they

find themselves. They seek out and discover the knowledge of how to defeat the

vampire, and by their own will and agency decide to make their sacrifice to save their

love. Of all characters in both films, only the wife is capable of determining her own fate

and acting to achieve her goals.

This contrast of power hints of an Oedipal theme. The chastity of the Harker

marriage, his incapability, and his feelings of inadequate providing for his wife firmly
plant his role as submissive compared to the dominant will of Lucy. When recovering

from his escape from Castle Dracula, he calls out to a Mother Superior, at first to a nun

attending to him, but later to nobody, hinting at his need for a maternal figure. Lucy’s

intense bond of love and protection that she displays toward Jonathan in spite of his

impotence only reinforces her role as a maternal figure more than a wife. This

reconciles better her willingness to sacrifice her chastity to the ends of protecting

Jonathan.

Herzog’s most prominent thematic contribution to his interpretation is the

deconstructive exploration of immortality. Where Murnau’s Orlok was a plainly

despicable ghoul, Herzog paints Count Dracula as more of an anti-villain. His

desperation, ineffectuality, and repugnancy make him come across less vile and more

pathetic. Dracula first voices his angst over his immortality to Harker at Castle Dracula.

DRACULA: I am the descendent of an old family. Time is an abyss, profound as a

thousand nights. Centuries come and go. To be unable to grow old is terrible. That is not

the worst. There are things more horrible than that. Can you imagine enduring centuries

experiencing each day the same futile things?

Later, when intruding upon Lucy and demanding her submission in return

for Jonathan’s life, he again voices almost flippantly his existential angst.

DRACULA: He will not die

LUCY: Yes he will. Death is overwhelming. Eventually we are all his. Stars spin and reel

in confusion; time passes in blindness; rivers flow without knowing their course; only

death is cruelly sure.

DRACULA: Dying is cruelty against the unsuspecting. Bt death is not everything. It's

more cruel not to be able to die. I wish I could partake of the love which is between you

and Jonathan.
 LUCY: Nothing in this world, not even God can touch that. And it will not change even if

jonathan never recognizes me again.

DRACULA: I could change everything. Will you come to me and be my ally? There'll be

salvation for your husband - and for me. The absense of love is the most abject pain.

LUCY: Salvation comes from ourselves alone. And you may rest assured that even the

unthinkable will not deter me.

Dracula here reinforces the pathetic nature of his driving motives.

Immortality has left him alienated completely from the human condition, and he

yearns to reach out and return to a semblance of humanity. His contempt for his

own powerlessness and repulsive nature hold him back from acting in a human

means to achieve his human ends, and only the threat explicit to Jonathan and

Lucy’s lives and love occur to him as a path to exert his will. His attempt to

coerce a natural process fail, as he is himself outside of nature’s processes - his

immortality makes him as incapable of love as his self-loathing perceives himself

to be. Lucy, meanwhile, demonstrates further the power of her will, actively

defying Dracula’s attempts at domination and driving him from her room without

giving him even an inch. Unlike the living object in need of protection that Mina

often appears as, Herzog’s Lucy is strong-willed and agent enough to defy

Dracula. Dracula, therefore, can be seen as vulnerable even in his immortality,

his incapability a sharp contrast with the dominant and powerful supernatural

nature of other adaptations of the Count.

Film Design
 Werner Herzog’s style as a filmmaker contrasts almost diametrically the

German Expressionism that Murnau and other “grandfathers” of German Cinema

that Herzog hopes to connect with. Where Expressionism used chiaroscuro

lighting, stark fixed camera angles and sinister composition and framing, Herzog

presents his film in a saturated and human level. His camera is often hand-held

and shaking with its movement in close quarters with the subjects of the shot,

giving the viewer the impression of being intimately present in the room.

Nature, particularly, is a focus Herzog loves to explore. Herzog grew up in

a remote area with few modern amenities, and from his youth he found a great

appreciation for the beauty and awe of nature - as well as its harsh and

unforgiving aspects that helped give rise to his running themes of existential

nihilism present in his films.4 Herzog describes nature via the jungle in his later

film Burden of Dreams as “full of obscenity. It's just - Nature here is vile and

base. I wouldn't see anything erotical here. I would see fornication and

asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and... growing and... just

rotting away. Of course, there's a lot of misery. But it is the same misery that is all

around us. The trees here are in misery, and the birds are in misery. I don't think

they - they sing. They just screech in pain.5 Most bluntly he would later state

4
Alexander, Chris. "An Appreciation of Werner Herzog’s 1979 Masterpiece NOSFERATU: PHANTOM
DER NACHT December 14, 2015. Accessed November 1, 2016.
http://www.comingsoon.net/horror/news/748000-appreciation-werner-herzogs-1979-masterpiece-
nosferatu-phantom-der-nacht.
5
Burden of Dreams. Directed by Werner Herzog. USA: Flower Films, 1982.
regarding his use of nature in his films: “The universe is monstrously indifferent to

the presence of man.”6

Herzog films Harker’s journey to Castle Dracula as an intimate travel in

nature. Rather than aggrandizing wide shots to show beautiful landscapes,

Herzog’s hand-held camera keeps close to Harker, surrounded by an almost

over-saturated and well-lit Carpathian surrounding. Harker walks through a

footpath inside a ravine, a coursing river and waterfalls spraying him as we look

from close over his shoulder. Harker’s journey through nature never leaves his

perspective as a tiny creature among a great and implacable universe. The deep

naturalism and reality of this sequence sets up the stark contrast that is Dracula.

Only minutes after the hills and mountains of the Carpathians grounded

the viewer firmly in a natural and familiar reality, Kinski’s visage as Dracula

appears surreal at best, repugnant at worst. Within the stylistic confines of

Expressionist film, a creature such as Count Orlok seems to fit in; the viewer

recognizes him as ghoulish, but can suspend disbelief when Hutter attempts to

remain pleasant and cordial in his discomfort at his surroundings. Herzog does

not allow for this suspension, and shows it plainly with Harker’s actions. As the

Count uncannily presents dinner to Harker, his awkward and uncomfortable

acting puts Harker on edge. The camera, just to Harker’s side at the table,

continues to force the viewer to perceive themselves as present and intimate with

the characters, and we feel the same extreme discomfort at Dracula’s staring and

oddity. Against the contrast of the natural human realism up to this point, the

6
Johnston, Trevor. "Werner Herzog: Interview." Timeout.com. Accessed November 1, 2016.
http://www.timeout.com/london/film/werner-herzog-interview.
pallid and rodent-like creature is as truly unsettling as if one were to encounter a

person looking like that on a dark street on a walk at night. Harker is unable to

even feign cordiality, and is unable to conjure words in response to Dracula’s

failing attempts at mimicking human pleasantries.

Herzog introduces Expressionist elements only in relation to the

supernatural evils he portrays. While Harker dines, Dracula is composed as

almost a phantom of chiaroscuro at the end of the table, the darkness of his

clothing and background giving him the appearance of a sinister and pale floating

head. The shadows obscure the edge of his face, allowing him to peek from the

darkness physically as much as he does so metaphysically. Herzog through the

film reserves his Expressionist composition only for supernatural menace,

maintaining his well-lit and naturalistic composition for normal human interaction.

Even within his recreations of Murnau’s scenes, he maintains this dynamic; when

Harker creeps into Dracula’s tomb to reveal his corpse-like slumber, Herzog’s

hand-camera shakes as it follows Harker. When Harker slides the tomb’s slab

open, however, the shot changes to an odd angle of Dracula lying in state, his

pallor bright and sharply contrasting the black shadow around him. When

Dracula loads his wagon of Transylvanian dirt, the camera captures the image

cock-eyed and sideways, a disorienting perspective that almost appears to defy

gravity.

Herzog’s use of stylistic contrast gives a sense of dire absurdity and

surreality to the film. Against the naturalist realism of most of the film, the

Expressionist elements make the viewer want to laugh at times - perhaps more
from discomfort than intentional humor. Dracula appears absurdly cartoonish;

Renfield is nearly Vaudevillian in absurdity, giggling obnoxiously and nuzzling at

Dracula’s arm like a housecat when finally presenting himself to his master.

Herzog shows us Dracula prancing around a town square at dusk, and without

the Expressionist style to justify it, the silliness of it sews discomfort in the viewer.

This bold decision of style only succeeds by the skill Herzog possesses in

direction, and the innate terror that Klaus Kinski radiates. Kinski was something

of a muse to Herzog, who once told Roger Ebert of first seeing Kinski: "At that

moment I knew it was my destiny to make films, and his to act in them."7 Herzog

no doubt could not have filled the role successfully with anybody else. “There

won't be another vampire of the caliber of Kinski... you'll never see anyone like

him again,” Herzog later said of him in the role.8 Kinski and Herzog’s relationship

is an infamous tale of strife and artistic combat. During the filming of Aguirre,

Kinski famously shot a crew member, and when threatening to walk off into the

jungle was only convinced to stay by Herzog’s serious threat to kill Kinski and

then himself if Kinski didn’t stay to finish filming.

Herzog seemed to see the powerful potential of this real-life lunatic, and

had discovered the method of taming his madness. Kinski would never have a

likable reputation; his daughters spoke of him as an overbearing tyrant and

sexual abuser, and his violent tantrums made misery of all around him when

filming. It is impossible to condone Kinski as a man or his methods, but his

artistic capabilities would be impossible to replicate by a mere actor. Kinski

7
Ebert, Roger. The Great Movies. New York: Broadway Books, 2002.
8
Olsen, LA Times
embodied terror incarnate, and it comes across primally in his portrayal of

Dracula. The Count is a muted terror, but the menace in his eyes behind his veil

speaks volumes.

Existential Nihilism

Herzog’s largest contribution to his “interpretation” of Murnau’s film is is

injection of existential and nihilistic philosophy - themes he recurrently features in

his films. Aguirre showcased the futility of human will, by which the eponymous

Aguirre dominated and overpowered all around him in his quest, yet still was

futile in his efforts to reach his goals. Mired in the great and awful natural world,

the will of man crumbled before the uncaring universe. So too does Herzog

modify the Nosferatu tale to one of ultimate futility in the face of existence. As

noted before, nobody in the film save for Lucy can affect the world around them

by their will. Taking a step beyond Murnau’s plot, even Lucy’s exertion of her will

over Dracula is ultimately pointless. Dracula dies beside Lucy’s corpse, yet

Jonathan still is taken by the vampire’s curse. Lucy’s death was in vain. Van

Helsing stakes Dracula’s heart to ensure the plague is over, and is arrested for

murder. The apocalyptic fate of the city is apparent - the plague had already

killed the mayor and the council. Van Helsing’s arrest is almost impossible with

no authorities left alive or competent to keep order. Jonathan’s assumption of the

vampiric mantle ensures the supernatural evil will continue to spread and
destroy. Nobody has accomplished anything, and nothing anybody did ultimately

matters. The tragedy came and went, and those that survived shrugged past

indifferently. A final irony comes, however, in Jonathan’s sudden agency. Free

from his oedipal submission to Lucy and empowered by his new immortality,

Harker begins issuing orders and taking charge. “Seal the bedroom for the official

investigation, and bring me my horse. I have much to do now,” he barks with a

grin before riding off. It would seem that now, free of humanity and thus beyond

nature, true agency and will may be possible - it was only the pathetic and

impotent nature of Dracula as a being rather than his capabilities that kept him

from realizing his will.

F. W. Murnau’s Nosferatu was a tale of horror. Herzog’s Nosferatu was

one of futility and the absurdity of the human condition. Its heroes are failures

and its villains pathetic. The machinations of man are shown as ephemeral dust

that blows away unnoticed as the world continues to turn. By this, Herzog

succeeds in differentiating his film as an interpretation rather than a remake.

Nosferatu as a story served only as a vehicle to display the philosophical angst

Herzog ingrains into his work, and to that end it succeeds thoroughly.