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Nosferatu: Phantom of the Night (1979)
Werner Herzog remade F. W. Murnau's 1922 film as a way to connect the pioneering birth of German silent film, to it's later (and then current) "New German Cinema" rebirth. Herzog eschews romantic lighting and Gothic artificiality, in favour of stark location filming, minimal music, no visFX, pale natural light and nary a smoke machine in sight. When it works, it works beautifully but the pace of the editing is often interminably slow. A youthful looking Bruno Ganz plays a rather grave Jonathan Harker, while Klaus Kinski's Count Dracula isn't a powerful, alluring Byronic figure like in some adaptations, he's an awkward lonely man. Another difference from other versions is Lucy being the one who sets out to defeat Dracula, not her incapacitated husband Jonathan, or a skeptical Dr Van Helsing. I thought the ironic surprise ending had a Python-esque quality to it.
Werner Herzog remade F. W. Murnau's 1922 film as a way to connect the pioneering birth of German silent film, to it's later (and then current) "New German Cinema" rebirth. Herzog eschews romantic lighting and Gothic artificiality, in favour of stark location filming, minimal music, no visFX, pale natural light and nary a smoke machine in sight. When it works, it works beautifully but the pace of the editing is often interminably slow. A youthful looking Bruno Ganz plays a rather grave Jonathan Harker, while Klaus Kinski's Count Dracula isn't a powerful, alluring Byronic figure like in some adaptations, he's an awkward lonely man. Another difference from other versions is Lucy being the one who sets out to defeat Dracula, not her incapacitated husband Jonathan, or a skeptical Dr Van Helsing. I thought the ironic surprise ending had a Python-esque quality to it.