Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens

Some time last year, I saw Werner Herzog’s remake of this film, starring Klaus Kinski. I was in the middle of catching up with the other Herzog/Kinski collaborations, and I really enjoyed it. I thought Kinski was very intense, and I liked the surreal quality of it. I had assumed that a lot of the weirdness was something Herzog thought up himself, but now I see I was wrong. It turns out Herzog’s film is almost a shot-for-shot remake of this silent classic.

And perhaps it’s because I saw the remake first, but I thought this film was inferior (if only slightly so). Perhaps unfairly, I’m docking some points because the DVD transfer I saw was atrocious. It looked like someone had used a handheld camera to videotape this off a TV playing an old VHS copy of it. Terrible quality.

Still, the movie had me captivated for most of it. Max Schreck is really freaky, and there are a couple of spine-tingling scenes (especially the one on the ship, where he rises out of the coffin). The music was a little overbearing at times, but it set the mood pretty well.

I felt like there were too many title cards, and they stayed on the screen for too long. It got a little distracting to keep getting pulled out of the action by having to read a lot of text, but I guess maybe Murnau felt he needed the exposition. Certainly, had I not seen Herzog’s film already, I might have felt a little lost.

I am impressed by Murnau, knowing that he made Sunrise just a few years after he made this. It’s a huge improvement on this film, which nonetheless is a classic that deserves to be seen. Just try to get a better DVD copy than I did.