Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night

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Movie
Original title Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night
Nosferatu Phantom of the Night movie horizontal black logo.png
Country of production Germany , France
original language German , English , Romanian
Publishing year 1979
length 107 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Werner Herzog
script Werner Herzog
production Werner Herzog
music Popol Vuh ,
Florian Fricke ,
Charles Gounod ,
Richard Wagner
camera Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein
cut Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus
occupation

Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night is Werner Herzog's horror film made from Dracula and a homage to Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's Nosferatu - A Symphony of Horror .

action

Jonathan Harker, who lives with his wife Lucy in Wismar in the 19th century, is commissioned to travel to Transylvania to negotiate with Count Dracula about the sale of a house. Gypsies living near the castle warn him about the count and refuse to help Harker with his onward journey, so he goes to the castle alone and on foot. There he is received and entertained by Count Dracula . Without reading the contract, Dracula signs after seeing a portrait of Harker's wife Lucy. The next night, Harker is haunted and bitten by Dracula. The vampire is now traveling by ship, unrecognized and hidden in a black coffin, to Wismar. The seriously ill and turning pale Harker also returns to his hometown, but by land.

When the ship docks in Wismar, the entire crew is dead; only rats seem to live on the ship. The plague is now spreading in the city . When Harker reaches the city, he no longer recognizes his wife in his feverish state. Lucy reads his diary and his book about the undead Nosferatu; she then tries to convince Doctor van Helsing that Dracula, who creeps around at night, is the cause of the plague. When the latter rejects the supposed superstition, she decides to kill Dracula herself by keeping him with her until dawn (film quote from Lucy Harker: "If a woman with a pure heart lets him miss the cockcrow, the light of day kills him " ). In fact, the vampire misses the morning and collapses when hit by the first ray of sunshine. Doctor van Helsing, who discovers the bitten, dead Lucy, realizes his mistake and finally kills Dracula by driving a wooden stake through his heart. Jonathan Harker, whose transformation into a vampire has now been completed, has van Helsing arrested and rides away.

background

Coat and shoes of Nosferatu, Filmmuseum Düsseldorf
Ears, fingers and teeth of Nosferatu, Düsseldorf Film Museum

The film is Herzog's second collaboration with actor Klaus Kinski , who made a total of five films together. Director Werner Herzog was based on Murnau's original. Even when he uses the names of the Stoker novel, he quotes the characters of Murnau almost unchanged. The equipment and camera setting are identical to the Murnaus in many scenes. Regarding his horror film, director Werner Herzog explains in the audio commentary on the DVD Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night : “ The way the vampire holds his hands is almost identical, there are a few very direct echoes of Murnau [...] I wouldn't say that it's a remake . It is an homage to Murnau, who was much more important to me than Fritz Lang , for example . “In his film, Herzog draws the character Nosferatu as a suffering creature who cannot love, is not loved and to whom interpersonal feelings are alien. In addition, the count worries that he can neither age nor die (quote from Nosferatu: " I love the darkness and the shadows, where I can be alone with my thoughts. I come from an old generation. Time, that's an abyss 1000 nights deep. Centuries come and go. Not being able to age is terrible. Death is not everything, there are much worse things. Can you imagine that one survives centuries and experiences the same trifles every day? "). The motif of the spreading plague is highlighted. The borrowings from scientific films are also taken over: while Murnau shows microscopic images, Herzog presents slow-motion images of the bat flight. The budget for the film was 2.5 million Deutschmarks . When the film was released on DVD in the United States, it became a huge commercial success in the United States, selling over 300,000 copies in just a few weeks. A very young audience was also interested in the Herzog film Nosferatu on DVD .

As in the Murnau film or in the 1992 horror film Bram Stoker's Dracula by director Francis Ford Coppola with actor Gary Oldman as Count Dracula, the Werner Herzog film also plays with light and shadow, with actor Klaus Kinski as a little boy in a dark alley Person throws a huge ghostly shadow on a house facade, as you can see in the film minute 1:10:56. Only at the end of the film does Herzog break away from Murnau and Stoker by giving his film its own pessimistic ending. Lucy Harker defeats the vampire just as Murnau did, but the "virus" vampirism survives in the bitten Jonathan Harker, who becomes the new Nosferatu.

With no other is the vampire so overpowering as with Herzog. Its bite alone is enough to infect and thus spread the epidemic, the plague, which Herzog depicts with a myriad of rats even more impressively than Murnau was able to do. During the plot, a bustling horde of rats arrives at the city of Wismar via the ship from Nosferatu. In a scene in which the Transylvanian ship is being loaded for the journey to Wismar, director Werner Herzog can be seen as a white-clad worker who digs the earth in the coffin with the rats with his hands and feet, because none of the extras dared the rats to get physically close. Herzog was often bitten when handling the rats, which left the filmmaker with several wounds. In his role as a vampire, actor Klaus Kinski, comparable to the Nosferatu figure from 1922 designed by director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau , has two pointed tusks as incisors and not, as in conventional vampire films, two pointed canines as in the film Dracula with actor Christopher Lee from 1958. In Werner Herzog's Nosferatu, a little fake blood is used in only three scenes , at the point when Jonathan Harker, played by actor Bruno Ganz , is having dinner with Klaus Kinski as Nosferatu and accidentally hits the bread knife left thumb cuts. In the last third of the film you see Martje Grohmann, with whom director Werner Herzog was married from 1967 to 1985, as a dead woman who bit Nosferatu in the neck, lying on the floor in a room with bleeding bite wounds on her neck. At the end of the film, when Doctor Dr. van Helsing, played by actor Walter Ladengast, who kills the vampire Nosferatu with a wooden stake, afterwards the stake is smeared with blood.

Regarding the design of the set, director Werner Herzog studied the paintings of the painter Georges de la Tour in order to gain inspiration for the staging of dark rooms that are only dimly lit by burning candles. His cameraman Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein helped him with his experience in high-contrast filming of light and darkness. The mask, consisting of the pointed teeth, the long ears made of latex and the pale skin, was applied by the Japanese make-up artist and make-up artist Reiko Kruk to the face of actor Klaus Kinski, who patiently endured this procedure in a four-hour session. Gisela Storch worked on the film as a costume designer.

The film was shot bilingually (English and German) in places. However, the primary language was English, so that particularly complex scenes, dialogues with actors who could neither speak English nor German, and scenes in which the original language is not immediately apparent (e.g. long camera distance) were synchronized. Due to their accent, some actors had to be dubbed in the English version. Isabelle Adjani was also able to speak her text in German because of her German mother, but had to be dubbed in the final German version because of her accent. Details such as Jonathan's diary were also taken into account in the two versions. The English version was originally shortened, but is completely included again on DVD. The performance of some actors is said to be worse in the English version than in their mother tongue. The German version was also shown in the US with subtitles and is included on the British double DVD from Anchor Bay.

In addition to Kinski, another legendary Dracula actor is involved in Herzogs Nosferatu, at least in the Italian dubbed version: In it, Arturo Dominici lends his voice to the actor of Professor van Helsing, Walter Ladengast. Dominici played Dracula Javutich in Mario Bava's classic horror film La maschera del demonio ( The Hour When Dracula Comes ) from 1960.

In addition to the oriental whirling world music by the composer Florian Fricke from the Krautrock band Popol Vuh, classical works are played as film music : Passages from the Sanctus of the Cecilia Mass by Charles Gounod and passages from Richard Wagner's opera Das Rheingold can be heard. Also found "Zinskaro" the Gordela vocal ensembles use in the soundtrack.

The wordless scenes at the beginning of the film consist of morbid images of dried up and crumbling mummies from the Museo de las Momias in the central Mexican city of Guanajuato , in this city director Werner Herzog stayed for some time in the 1960s as a young student. The film Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night was a co-production between Werner Herzog Filmproduktion, the French production company Gaumont and the German TV station ZDF . The film was distributed by 20th Century Fox .

In one scene, actor Bruno Ganz in his role as Jonathan Harker in the castle of Nosferatu ropes down from an open window with white sheets knotted together and then drops several meters into the depths. This act was not performed by a professional stuntman, but by an actor entirely at his own request. Five days after the end of filming, director Werner Herzog began filming Woyzeck , his next film project back then, with actors Klaus Kinski and Eva Mattes in the lead roles.

In 1988 a sequel was released as an Italian horror film with the title Vampire in Venice , again with Klaus Kinski as the main actor, but made by director Augusto Caminito .

Locations

Herzog chose the Dutch Vermeer city ​​of Delft , the Partnachklamm near Garmisch-Partenkirchen , scenic backdrops in Slovakia , such as the High Tatras , as well as the Pernštejn Castle in Moravia and the salt storage in Lübeck as filming locations . The opening sequence was filmed in the Museo de las Momias de Guanajuato , the museum of the mummies of Guanajuato , in Mexico.

Awards

Reviews

In addition to the achievements of the main actors, especially Kinski, the film's surreal and spooky atmosphere was particularly praised. In addition to the scenes in the castle, this includes the shots of the plague - the omnipresent rats and coffins in the abandoned city - and the two scenes in which Lucy and Dracula directly meet. These two scenes are exact quotations from Murnau ; It is puzzled as to whether a mistake (the vampire can be seen briefly in the mirror) was intentional because it also appears in the original.

“'[…] Translated into beautiful, feverish images; sometimes too drunk with poetry, mostly metaphorically ingenious. Kinski fascinating in the title role. ' (Rating: very good) "

- Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz : Lexicon "Films on TV"

“Despite the qualities that Lotte Eisner attests to him - but above all to his director - 'Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night' must be seen as a failure. Instead of shooting his own 'Nosferatu', Herzog provided Murnau's film with color, a soundtrack and new actors - an almost barbaric, but certainly an overbearing method. [...] Klaus Kinski as Dracula has some involuntarily comical points in dialogue and is - in contrast to the rather enigmatic Max Schreck in 1922 - simply too popular for this figure, who without the anonymous, incomprehensible and supernatural that emanates from her in Murnau's film , lost most of its [sic!] potential impact. "

- William K. Everson : classic horror film

“Impressive, albeit controversial, remake by Werner Herzog, who, in addition to paying homage to his role model Murnau, consistently pursues the outsider issue and his romantic perception of nature on a high formal level. Outstanding: Klaus Kinski in the title role. "

- Lexicon of international film

Trivia

The author and biologist Maarten 't Hart told the Dutch TV show “Zomergasten” in 2010 about his involvement as a rat expert in the film. According to 't Hart, contrary to his recommendation, 12,000 rats were shipped from Hungary to the Netherlands, where a plague scene was to be filmed. 'T Hart was horrified to discover that the animals had been given neither food nor drink on the three-day journey and therefore ate each other. Since the rats were white and not black as Herzog wanted them to be, the director had them colored. For this process, the animals were immersed in boiling water, and about half were killed. 't Hart then withdrew from the project. In the broadcast, he described the Duke's actions as "immoral". For the shooting team around director Herzog, the transport of the ordered rats from Hungary to Delft through the various borders that still existed in Europe at the time, combined with the customs controls, caused an immense organizational effort. Since the city of Delft had only just got over the plague of rats, the film crew was extremely difficult to get permission to bring rats they had brought into the city for filming. Therefore, all manhole covers and house entrances had to be sealed against the movie rats for the shoot .

literature

  • William K. Everson: Classics of Horror Movies. (OT: Classics of the Horror Film ). Goldmann, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-442-10205-7 .
  • Dieter Krusche, Jürgen Labenski : Reclam's film guide. 7th edition, Reclam, Stuttgart 1987, ISBN 3-15-010205-7 , pp. 397f.
  • Bram Stoker: Dracula. (OT: Dracula ). Insel, Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig 2004, ISBN 3-458-34803-4 .

Web links

Commons : Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Audio commentary by director Werner Herzog , included in the bonus material (extras) of the DVD Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night , explanation by Herzog about Nosferatu as a homage from the movie minute 43:50, 2016, Arthaus - Sonder Films , Leipzig, + Studiocanal GmbH , Berlin
  2. ↑ Audio commentary by director Werner Herzog , included in the bonus material (extras) of the DVD Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night , Statement by Herzog on the DVD release in the USA from minute 28:55, 2016, Arthaus - Special Films , Leipzig, + Studiocanal GmbH , Berlin
  3. ↑ Audio commentary by director Werner Herzog , included in the bonus material (extras) of the DVD Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night , description by Herzog about the loading of the ship and the rats from minute 50:40, 2016, Arthaus - Special Films , Leipzig, + Studiocanal GmbH , Berlin
  4. ↑ Audio commentary by director Werner Herzog , included in the bonus material (extras) on the DVD Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night , 2016, Arthaus - Special Films , Leipzig, + Studiocanal GmbH , Berlin
  5. ↑ Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night. schnittberichte.com, accessed July 7, 2007 .
  6. ↑ Audio commentary by director Werner Herzog , included in the bonus material (extras) on the DVD Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night , 2016, Arthaus - Special Films , Leipzig, + Studiocanal GmbH , Berlin
  7. ↑ Audio commentary by director Werner Herzog , included in the bonus material (extras) of the DVD Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night , commentary by Herzog on the sheet stunt from minute 48:55, 2016, Arthaus - Special Films , Leipzig, + Studiocanal GmbH , Berlin
  8. ↑ Audio commentary by director Werner Herzog , included in the bonus material (extras) on the DVD Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night , commentary on the Woyzeck filming from minute 58:00, 2016, Arthaus - Special Films , Leipzig, + Studiocanal GmbH , Berlin
  9. ↑ Audio commentary by director Werner Herzog , included in the bonus material (extras) on the DVD Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night , 2016, Arthaus - Special Films , Leipzig, + Studiocanal GmbH , Berlin
  10. ↑ Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in: Lexicon "Films on TV" (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , p. 614.
  11. ↑ William K. Everson: Classics of Horror Films. (OT: Classics of the Horror Film ). Goldmann, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-442-10205-7 , pp. 202-207.
  12. ↑ Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed October 12, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  13. ↑ Maarten 't Hart in the TV program “Zomergasten” (VPRO, NL), August 1, 2010
  14. ↑ Audio commentary by director Werner Herzog , included in the bonus material (extras) of the DVD Nosferatu - Phantom of the Night , commentary by Herzog about the film shoot with Hungarian rats in Delft from 1:04:40, Arthaus - Special Films , Leipzig, + Studiocanal GmbH , Berlin, 2016