Count Dracula moves from Transylvania to Wismar, spreading the Black Plague across the land. Only a woman pure of heart can bring an end to his reign of horror.Count Dracula moves from Transylvania to Wismar, spreading the Black Plague across the land. Only a woman pure of heart can bring an end to his reign of horror.Count Dracula moves from Transylvania to Wismar, spreading the Black Plague across the land. Only a woman pure of heart can bring an end to his reign of horror.
- Awards
- 5 wins & 8 nominations
Rijk de Gooyer
- Town official
- (as Ryk de Gooyer)
Michael Edols
- Lord of the Manor
- (uncredited)
Werner Herzog
- Hand and Feet in Box with Rats
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaKlaus Kinski had to spend approximately four hours per day in make-up. Fresh latex ear pieces had to be poured for each day of shooting because they were destroyed at removal. Kinski, notorious for his violent daily temper-tantrums, had a very good relationship with Japanese make-up artist Reiko Kruk and was exceedingly patient and well-behaved during make-up. Kinski himself said of the make-up that he hated being excessively made up for a role, but for the role of Dracula it was important so he took it in stride. Kinski was so disturbed by his appearance in the make-up that he avoided looking in any mirrors during filming.
- Goofs(at around 58 mins) When the captain of the ship is writing in his log he says they left the Caspian Sea, which is landlocked and nearly 1000 miles away from the port in Bulgaria where the voyage started. Bulgaria is on the Black Sea.
- Quotes
Count Dracula: [subtitled version] Time is an abyss... profound as a thousand nights... Centuries come and go... To be unable to grow old is terrible... Death is not the worst... Can you imagine enduring centuries, experiencing each day the same futilities...
- Alternate versionsThe English-language version was only available in a shorter cut until 2000, which was about 10 minutes shorter.
- ConnectionsEdited into Catalogue of Ships (2008)
- SoundtracksRheingold
Written by Richard Wagner
Performed by Wiener Philharmoniker
Conducted by Georg Solti (as Sir Georg Solti)
Decca LC 0171
Featured review
With Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, Werner Herzog replies firmly "by making it your own". Undertaking not only his first genre film in a career rich enough already by 1979 to earn Herzog a place among the most prolific German directors, but also a film with so much baggage, historical, stylistic or otherwise. Not only a retelling essentially of Bram Stocker's Dracula story but also a reimagining an expressionist universe defined by Herzog's cinematic forefathers (FW Murnau a key figure among them). In that aspect, Noferatu is one of the loftier, most ambitious and trickiest films Herzog tackled in a career already filled with them.
Anyone who comes to this with a previous experience of Herzog's style will realize that the German infant terrible has made the material unmistakeably his. Like most of his films, Noferatu is like a film about a dream about a documentary depicting weird people doing weird things - yet, beneath the minimalism of the plot and the docu-style naturalism of his photography, the movie resonates with the kind of hypnotic power Coppola missed in the alchemical migraine of his '92 version. Filming a medieval German town swept by plague like a grotesque carnival complete with people dancing with goats on tables and having a feast in the middle of a swarm of mice, Herzog goes on to choreograph a heavily made-up Klaus Kinski (looking like a rodent and playing a theatric version of his real half-mad self) through the steps Max Schreck's character took on the deck of the ship in the original movie as though he wants to prove that he can make it look every bit as creepy as Murnau did.
Perhaps reflecting the original in this department, Herzog's Nosferatu is still a pretty uneven film. Parts of it work better than others. When Kinski makes a grand appearance seething malice and despair, the screen is on fire. Grand antics work really well for this kind of character and this kind of movie. Bruno Ganz and Isabelle Adjani have enough charisma to carry the rest of the movie but the story structure occasionally betrays them. When Herzog cuts to Renfield's parts, you can feel the movie loosing steam with every gleeful cackle. When he cuts back to some kind of devilment going on, or even better the surreal stylizations of a bat flying in slow-motion set to Popol Vuh's repetitive drones, the movie comes closer to hitting the right emotional notes. When it achieves that kind of hypnotic, nightmarish vibe, the movie is great; when it doesn't, it's not bad.
And lastly, even though I understand Herzog's dislike for formalism, is there any particular reason why 90% of the movie is shot from eye-level? Makes one wish for the extreme skewed angles of Japanese New Wave directors.
Anyone who comes to this with a previous experience of Herzog's style will realize that the German infant terrible has made the material unmistakeably his. Like most of his films, Noferatu is like a film about a dream about a documentary depicting weird people doing weird things - yet, beneath the minimalism of the plot and the docu-style naturalism of his photography, the movie resonates with the kind of hypnotic power Coppola missed in the alchemical migraine of his '92 version. Filming a medieval German town swept by plague like a grotesque carnival complete with people dancing with goats on tables and having a feast in the middle of a swarm of mice, Herzog goes on to choreograph a heavily made-up Klaus Kinski (looking like a rodent and playing a theatric version of his real half-mad self) through the steps Max Schreck's character took on the deck of the ship in the original movie as though he wants to prove that he can make it look every bit as creepy as Murnau did.
Perhaps reflecting the original in this department, Herzog's Nosferatu is still a pretty uneven film. Parts of it work better than others. When Kinski makes a grand appearance seething malice and despair, the screen is on fire. Grand antics work really well for this kind of character and this kind of movie. Bruno Ganz and Isabelle Adjani have enough charisma to carry the rest of the movie but the story structure occasionally betrays them. When Herzog cuts to Renfield's parts, you can feel the movie loosing steam with every gleeful cackle. When he cuts back to some kind of devilment going on, or even better the surreal stylizations of a bat flying in slow-motion set to Popol Vuh's repetitive drones, the movie comes closer to hitting the right emotional notes. When it achieves that kind of hypnotic, nightmarish vibe, the movie is great; when it doesn't, it's not bad.
And lastly, even though I understand Herzog's dislike for formalism, is there any particular reason why 90% of the movie is shot from eye-level? Makes one wish for the extreme skewed angles of Japanese New Wave directors.
- chaos-rampant
- Apr 11, 2009
- Permalink
Details
- Release date
- Countries of origin
- Languages
- Also known as
- Nosferatu, vampiro de la noche
- Filming locations
- Delft, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands(many exteriors)
- Production companies
- See more company credits at IMDbPro
Box office
- Gross worldwide
- $3,451
- Runtime1 hour 47 minutes
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.85 : 1
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