Herzog’s NOSFERATU

(1979) “Time is an abyss... Death is not the worst...” Just another 19th century real estate deal for Bruno Ganz’s Jonathan Harker, buying a house in town for this way-way-way out in the country count — but why are the peasants so silent at the mention of his name? Herzog’s homage to Murnau’s silent Nosferatu at times matches it shot for shot — with Klaus Kinski’s buck-toothed count a dead-ringer for original star Max Schreck — but adding sound, color, a passionate and sensual Isabelle Adjani, 11,000 rats, and in Kinski a vampire wracked by guilt, longing for death, and crushed under the weight of the centuries. Herzog shot two versions simulanteously: an English-language version that was released in the U.S. theatrically and on video and this  German-language version (with English subtitles) that’s been virtually unseen here. Approx. 107 min. 35mm.

A BLEEDING LIGHT FILM GROUP RELEASE

MURNAU’S LEGENDARY ORIGINAL SILENT VERSION
(WITH LIVE PIANO ACCOMPANIMENT BY STEVE STERNER)
ON NOVEMBER 4.

REVIEWS

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“UNCOMMONLY BEAUTIFUL!”
– Vincent Canby, The New York Times

“A FILM OF ASTONISHING BEAUTY AND DARING! Not a horror picture but one of eerie wonderment and bizarre spectacle. Its poetic dialogue and awesome imagery are complemented in grandeur by a score that incorporates selections from Wagner’s ‘Rheingold’ and Gounod’s ‘Sanctus.’ If Bruno Ganz is the foremost actor of the New German Cinema, a definitive portrayer of a desperate sane man caught up in a nightmare, then Klaus Kinski, who was Herzog’s raving Aguirre, is the master of the grotesque. His Dracula is no handsome, sensual Bela Lugosi, but a hideous creature, who’s all the more pathetic for being so.”
– Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times

“Between the hordes of stowaway rats that accompany Dracula’s arrival, and a town-plaza dance of folly by doomed survivors (a Herzog addition), it’s like being present at the birth of a medieval legend.”
– Nicolas Rapold

“The most evocative series of images centered around the idea of the vampire that I have seen since Murnau’s Nosferatu. Forget the details of the basic Dracula story... Nosferatu doesn’t pay them heed. It is about the mood and style of vampirism, about the terrible seductive pity of it all.”
– Roger Ebert