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DVD Nosferatu the Vampyre
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
A Vampire By Any Other Name...Would Still Make an Interesting Neighbor!
Werner Herzog's re-make of Nosferatu the Vampyre is a "very" stylish take on the Count Dracula legend that has all the earmarks of its director. Not having seen F.W. Murnau's original, I have to believe Herzog was making an homage to those pre-war German artists and filmmakers who brought forth the style that more or less defines what we've come to know as early 20th Century German Expressionism -- Klimt, Beckmann, Nolde, Kokoschka, Murnau, et al. -- and what the Nazis ultimately deemed to be "degenerate art". Linear storytelling is often eschewed in favor of pure expressionist filmmaking. Shots and sequences are not framed and lit for visual agreeableness but for pure emotional impact. Script and speech acting are minimized and understated for the sake of visual emotiveness, much as the great films of the silent era. In these regards, Herzog has made a successful film which those who admire his unique aesthetic will certainly enjoy. Herzog's use of symbolic motifs, especially those of teeming critters in the midst of Dutch seaside society, will delight his fans and gloriously confound Herzog newbies!
The film itself is more eerie as opposed to scary. From its opening handheld sequence of corpses frozen in their terror and torment, to the severe forebodings of the gypsies, the ominous depiction of Black Death, and the hideous visage of the Vampyre himself (Klaus Kinski at his tastefully tortured best!); a marvelous spinetingling gloom pervades the proceedings that stops just short of outright camp...then takes a few memorable left turns!
The castle, the Transylvanian landscape, and the town of Wismar are wonderfully depicted. Isabelle Adjani is most adequate as Lucy; the wan, terror-stricken, shrinking violet of a wife who's also the Count's "special interest". Bruno Ganz as her devoted husband Jonathon, a real estate agent driven by the promise of a fat commission to travel four weeks across Europe to meet with his ghoulish prospective client, is obviously having fun in a somewhat stilted performance that sometimes crosses that wispy thread-like line into camp. Others play their roles to the hilt under Herzog's singular direction.
One wonders, when all is said and done, what will ultimately become of property values in Wismar!
Absolutely Haunting.
This version of the Nosferatu story directed by Werner Herzog is just absolutely haunting. I have not seen the classic 'Nosferatu' made in the 1920s, but this is a prime modern example of how the real Dracula story is supposed to be. It is made by a man with real vision, craft, and maturity. Sadly, though, through countless remakes and spoofs, the Dracula story has become like a joke in our culture. Most people do not see the story as a tragedy. Dracula is seen as a kind of lady's man, rather than a lonely individual seeking love and affection.
Klaus Kinski and Isabella Adjani as Dracula and Lucy both gave outstanding performances in this beautiful interpretation of the Count Dracula story. I find Bruno Ganz's Jonathon to be less compelling, but not so much that it bothers me. Roland Topos's portrayal of Renfield adds some symbolic power and some humor, but it is also a little silly. Other elements of the film are also a little silly including the cuts to full frame shots of the bat. These few silly moments are brief, and overall the tragedy, suffering, and artistic melancholy in the film are gorgeous and touching. In my opinion, the Count Dracula story can never compete with a story that deals with real human struggle. Nonetheless, I find the cursed, tortured Dracula as portrayed by Kinski to be the right way to do Dracula. This film is highly recommended.
As noted critic Pauline Kael observed, "... this first important film of the vampire genre has more spectral atmosphere, more ingenuity, and more imaginative ghoulish ghastliness than any of its successors." Some really good vampire movies have been made since Kael wrote those words, but German director F.W. Murnau's 1922 version remains a definitive adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Created when German silent films were at the forefront of visual technique and experimentation, Murnau's classic is remarkable for its creation of mood and setting, and for the unforgettably creepy performance of Max Schreck as Count Orlok, a.k.a. the blood-sucking predator Nosferatu. With his rodent-like features and long, bony-fingered hands, Schreck's vampire is an icon of screen horror, bringing... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Max Schreck - Greta Schröder - Ruth Landshoff Director(s): F.W. Murnau DVD Release Date: Released the 02 January 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Clever, engaging, and boosted by the sublime casting of Willem Dafoe as Nosferatu actor Max Schreck, Shadow of the Vampire is a film full of good ideas that are only partially developed. Its premise is ripe with possibilities, but the movie's too slight to register much impact, so you're left to relish its delightful performances and director E. Elias Merhige's affectionately tongue-in-cheek homage to a landmark of German silent cinema. John Malkovich is aptly loony as the eccentric director F.W. Murnau, whose passion in filming the 1922 classic Nosferatu leads to the extreme casting of Schreck as the vampire, a vision of evil who, in this movie's delightfully twisted imagination, actually is a vampire, sucking the blood of cast and crewmembers who've dismissed... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): John Malkovich - Willem Dafoe Director(s): E. Elias Merhige DVD Release Date: Released the 17 June 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Quite simply a great movie, one whose implacable portrait of ruthless greed and insane ambition becomes more pertinent every year. The astonishing Klaus Kinski plays Don Lope de Aguirre, a brutal conquistador who leads his soldiers into the Amazon jungle in an obsessive quest for gold. The story is of the expedition's relentless degeneration into brutality and despair, but the movie is much more than its plot. Director Werner Herzog strove, whenever possible, to replicate the historical circumstances of the conquistadors, and the sheer human effort of traveling through the dense mountains and valleys of Brazil in armor creates a palpable sense of struggle and derangement. This sense of reality, combined with Kinski's intensely furious performance, makes Aguirre, the Wrath of God a... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Klaus Kinski - Ruy Guerra Director(s): Werner Herzog DVD Release Date: Released the 24 October 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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A milestone of the silent film era and one of the first "art films" to gain international acclaim, this eerie German classic from 1919 remains the most prominent example of German expressionism in the emerging art of the cinema. Stylistically, the look of the film's painted sets--distorted perspectives, sharp angles, twisted architecture--was designed to reflect (or express) the splintered psychology of its title character, a sinister figure who uses a lanky somnambulist (Conrad Veidt) as a circus attraction. But when Caligari and his sleepwalker are suspected of murder, their novelty act is surrounded by more supernatural implications. With its mad-doctor scenario, striking visuals, and a haunting, zombie-like character at its center, Caligari was one of the first horror films to... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Werner Krauss - Conrad Veidt - Friedrich Feher - Lil Dagover Director(s): Robert Wiene DVD Release Date: Released the 15 October 1997 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Klaus Kinski), known as Fitzcarraldo to the native Peruvians, is an avid opera lover and rubber baron who dreams of building an opera house in the Peruvian jungle. To accomplish this, he plans to reach an isolated patch of rubber trees and make his fortune. But these trees are not directly accessible by river because of dangerous rapids, so Fitzcarraldo runs his ship as close as possible via an alternate river and then enlists the aid of the native Peruvians to drag his ship over a mountain to the desired area. However, the natives seem to have their own agenda in so mysteriously acceding to Fitzcarraldo's wishes. The results manage to both mock and affirm the dreams of determined figures like Fitzcarraldo, making absurdity out of the stuff of human endeavor... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Klaus Kinski - Claudia Cardinale Director(s): Werner Herzog DVD Release Date: Released the 16 November 1999 Usually ships in 24 hours
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