Nosferatu the Vampyre
Filmfest 2007
PT: Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht
OT: NOSFERATU: PHANTOM DER NACHT
Federal Republic of Germany 1977
(Original: German)
Director: Werner Herzog
Section: Retrospective - Werner Herzog
One of the most terrifying and also believable of all the versions of the Dracula story. Klaus Kinski’s Count Dracula is far removed from the suave, urbane social vampires of Hollywood lore. Instead, Herzog returns to the original source and renders this Dracula as a bone-white, rodent-like creature whose talons and darkened eye-pits predicate the plague of death his entrance heralds. Kinski is outstanding as the existentially weary vampire. “An homage to the 1922 Murnau classic of the same name, from which it is freely adapted, and is thereby a tribute to the purity of vision of the silent cinema and also a lament of the loss of innocence represented by Bram Stoker‘s original 1897 novel, ‘Dracula’.” Kevin Thomas, Los Angeles Times, 29 October 1979
Cast: Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz, Jaques Dufilho, Roland Topor
Credits
Director: Werner Herzog