The blood drinkers
(WARNING: story and plot twists discussed in explicit and gory detail)
FW Murnau did a low-budget unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula titled Nosferatu (1922) which Stoker's widow pursued with a vengeance, demanding all prints and negatives be destroyed (despite which copies eluded her grasp, and the film went on to achieve unholy immortality); Werner Herzog did a remake in 1979 employing ten thousand rats and his own inimitable filmmaking style; now Robert Eggers-- who professes admiration for the Murnau-- has crafted his own version, shifting emphasis from vampire to victim in his 2024 remake.
And how does Eggers' compare? Well let me tell you.
1922
Murnau took his constraints-- an unauthorized production, a small budget-- and fashioned a style out of it: writer Henrik Galeen switched out all the names (Count Orlok (Max Schreck) for Count Dracula, Thomas Hutter for Jonathon Harker, Ellen (Greta Schroder) for Harker's wife Mina), streamlined the narrative (no chase across Europe; most of the side characters either combined or reduced or eliminated), and has the creature perish at dawn-- the first but certainly not the last time this method of killing was used onscreen. Wouldn't be surprised if Murnau thought of it; death by sunlight is something I imagine a filmmaker might dream up, if not actually fantasize about.
Instead of the stylized Expressionist sets of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari Murnau chose to shoot on location, and it's his use of location that is the source of much of the film's power. The High Tatras (understudying for the Carpathians) look like a vast hardmuscled back forcing its way up out of the surrounding soil, a violent upheaval freeze-framed for our appreciation; the castle is an Escher fantasy of shadow and stone, with sudden plunges to isolate the unwary guest, and deep passageways to allow late-night snacking. The sea is a shimmering sheet over which the tallmasted Empusa glides, carrying doomed cargo; the Count's residence opposite the Hutters' (actually the Salzspeicher in Lubeck) resembles a cave wall pockmarked with rat holes; you expect to see eyes glittering out of each dark cavity.
Murnau's miserable creature-- designed by film's producer and lifelong occultist Albin Grau-- is gaunt and cadaverous, with a head like a shaven rodent's skull, tiny LED lights for eyes, a pair of huge front fangs. With the simplest effects Murnau depicts Orlok's abilities and strength-- fast-forward motion denoting inhuman speed; great earthfilled coffins lifted like so much luggage; Orlok himself pivoting straight out of his casket, the ultimate popup surprise for the ultimate children's nightmare of a book.
Murnau's stripped-down retooling of Stoker's tale is revealed to be a menage a trois between a man a woman and a parasite, in a world drained of its population by plague (the film came out only two years after the Spanish Flu killed anywhere from fifty to a hundred million people, one of the deadliest pandemics in history)-- said parasite not just cause and carrier but its walking incarnation. Murnau could not be more direct: the world is a frightening place, he warns us, and wants our blood.
1979
And then there's Werner Herzog, who considers the Murnau the most important of German films and still feels the need to put out his own version. Herzog's picture is more intimate, his filmmaking more handheld casual; even the shots of mountain ranges suggests more a passerby stealing glances during a hike than a serious observer determined to contemplate their majesty and scale. Notably the ship's passage is truncated (where in the original it was a dramatic high point), the Count's new-bought residence a rattier more dilapidated version of the first.
But Herzog's camerawork-- accompanied by West German group Popol Vuh's dreamy soundtrack-- holds a power all its own, the mobile camera capturing on the fly the twisted faces of Mexican mummies, the plunge of water down a narrow gorge, the leisurely flutter of a bat in flight.
Klaus Kinski's Count Dracula (with rights entering public domain, Herzog decided to use the original's names) owes his basic features to Schreck's Orlok but his eyes are lonelier, his lips more sensuous, his voice wheezy and gratingly high-- he's like the stereotype of an unhappy child, shunned by others for his asthma attacks, who grows up to prey on children. Bruno Ganz as Jonathon Harker is able to run energetically up and down stairs and slam his shoulder against the odd barred castle door, yet when Kinski's Dracula approaches you immediately fear for the former. Ganz's Harker may look like a formidable physical specimen but Kinski's vampire is ancient and insatiable.
Matching Kinski stare for stare is Isabelle Adjani's Lucy Harker (for unknown reasons she and Mina have switched names and roles). Greta Schroder's Ellen didn't do much for me save offer herself as bait, her one desperate bid to end Orlok; Adjani with her bloodless pallor flashing her dark eyes admits to little calculation and even less sanity. She has a clearer narrative arc than Ellen-- friends don't believe her when she talks of the menace; Jonathon when finally reunited with her can't even recognize his wife; and people in the streets stare uncomprehendingly when she yells warnings at them. One by one she's cut off from every member of society society till left with herself-- and the vampire-- and instead of cringing in one corner she steels herself to act. Kinski's Dracula is evil, Lucy intensely even terrifyingly passionate-- angel or devil, her eyes warn you, if you ever get in her way she will fuck you up.
2024
Arguably Eggers' bravest most breathtaking achievement is to position himself in direct comparison with the two filmmakers. I've liked some of Eggers' work-- arguably my favorite to date is his two-hander masterpiece of increasingly sodden misery The Lighthouse-- but against Murnau's elemental sense of beauty and Herzog's perverse mysticism the filmmaker sadly comes up short. The digitally enhanced landscapes and digitally enhanced weather have little of the weight or presence of Murnau's Carpathians or North Atlantic; Eggers' citizenry line up their coffins and speak of feelings of loss and despair but can't approximate the awful resignation of Murnau's, who wordlessly accept Orlok's gift of death (Herzog took his townfolk's response a step further, having them celebrate with music and dance, even an elaborate dinner swarming with rats).
Actually acceptance was only the final stage of a process Murnau inflicted on the people of Wisborg; along the way they panic and pin blame on poor demented Knock, Orlok's underling, who flees and hides (in a demonstration of chilling mob fury a scarecrow is pulled down and torn apart in his stead).
It isn't just digital effects that bar Eggers from realizing a vision to stand alongside his predecessors'; what made Herzog's work I suspect was that he shared with Murnau a maverick's monomaniacal willingness to strike out and realize their dream projects despite financial restrictions-- I submit the big budget Eggers waited decades and possibly sold his soul to the Devil for kneecapped his project, reduced it into yet another glossy Hollywood horror movie. Need footage of flying bats? Borrow from a documentary-- with a deep blue background and the right hypnotic drone (matching the movement of slowed wings), said footage becomes the film's emblematic visual motif. Vampire's death but no money for effects? Cut Kinski loose; he'll perform a death scene (knowing the actor probably self-improvised) that will make you forget all others, especially digitally enhanced.
Doesn't help that Murnau sprinkles his film with effortlessly achieved shots like that of the shadow of Orlok's hand reaching across the screen to seize Ellen's heart, an image so indelible Eggers can't help but imitate it at least twice, once with a vast digital shadow stretching across the town *-- appreciate that Eggers is under Murnau's spell and can't help it, but the zombie repetition starts to become wearying, even risible.
*(I actually counted six times, but could be wrong)
Bill Skarsgard's Orlok is this version's profoundest mystery (or the production's most cunning publicity gimmick) but when finally unveiled is basically a carefully researched half-rotten Transylvanian nobleman corpse complete with handlebar 'stache. I'm aware of the controversies and in fact Stoker does describe Dracula as sporting a pair, but the facial hair on Skarsgard (as opposed to Schreck's and Kinski's nakedly verminous design) has the possibly unintended effect of softening his ghoulish features, making him more endearing than threatening, resembling not so much a strigoi as Frank Zappa.
And O the bit about Skarsgard 'deepening his voice!' Such a predictable way to intimidate; if the vampire must have a voice then I much prefer Kinski's gambit-- his high wheezy tone, like fingernails dragged across a chalkboard, is more unconventional and in the end more frightening, especially when you realize (as with Peter Lorre in Fritz Lang's M) that it's less the voice of a bloodsucking predator than of a lifeling sexual predator, one fully aware ("The absence of love is the most abject pain") and despairing of his situation ("Death is not the worse; there are things more horrible...").
As for Lily-Rose Depp-- respect her dedication and salute her and Eggers' determination to focus less on the victimizer and more on the victim, but for all the blood and sweat and tears shed, all the acrobatics and eye-rolling and shrieking she undergoes (at one point I felt my shoulder blades pop in sympathy), the breathless declarations of dread and despair and oncoming doom, she doesn't quite achieve the impact of Isabelle Adjani with both eyes wide open. Depp has all the intensity of a hungry young up-and-comer with something to prove; Adjani has the serenity of someone who has always been this side of unhinged. In this, in The Story of Adele H., and in Possession-- perhaps her most out-there role-- she's the perfect match for the equally strong equally freakshow Kinski; between the two of them everyone and everything within range and recent memory just fade a bit, like shadows into the surrounding mist.
First published in Businessworld 4.17.25
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