HOARD MAGAZINE - OCTOBER 2001
VAMPIRE DREAMS
A FILM ANALYSIS BY CRAIG PHILLIPS
Australian director George Miller once said that "Films are like dreams: when we congregate with strangers in the darkness of the cinema, it's a kind of public dreaming where we process, mostly unconsciously, the more insistent concerns of our lives." And this power to tap into our subconscious is significant when examining the horror film genre, and on a particularly primal level, in vampire films.
Cinema's power to haunt the human psyche manifested itself right from the medium's infancy. In fact, even today, with the advances in sound technology and editing, very few modern horror films can compete with some of the classic silent horror films not only in terms of sheer artistry but also in the canny ability to spook us. There's something about the black and white images, the stroboscopic effect of the hand-cranked images, the ghostly, ghastly makeup, the pantomimed acting, and the shadows lurking all around that add a layer of fright the way age adds character to antique furniture. These old films -- such as Murnau's Nosferatu, and the uber Expressionist Cabinet of Dr. Caligari -- were like recordings of our own dreams and nightmares, our subconscious as etched onto celluloid. With ultrarealism, modern cinema lost some of its capacity to spook.
Nosferatu is arguably not even Murnau's best film -- Sunrise and The Last Laugh are generally considered the more important -- but it is surely his most famous. (Sadly, Murnau's own life met a tragically early end, when he was killed in an accident while driving in my hometown of all places -- Santa Barbara, California. He was only 43.) And Murnau was ahead of his time in many ways -- employing a host of cinematic trickery de rigeur in this day and age but innovative in the 1920's: Negative film, superimposition, ethereal dissolves and fast motion.
Nosferatu was to be the first film adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, but Murnau had to change the name as he had not received the Stoker estate's permission nor paid royalties. Most of the prints of this movie were destroyed when Stoker's widow, Florence, brought legal action due to the copyright violation, but fortunately a few pirated copies survived. Tod Browning, most famous for his film Freaks, but who would also make his own Dracula in 1931, was rumored to have used a contraband print of Murnau's film as a guide. The vampire's name was changed to Count Orlok, and the title "Nosferatu" was derived from the Old Slavonic word "nosufuratu," from the Greek word "nosophoros," meaning "plague-carrier." And in Murnau's film, the rat-looking count is most definitely a plague carrier.
E. Elias Merhige's recent film Shadow of the Vampire attempted to recreate the backdrop in the making of Nosferatu while mythologizing the relationship between director F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich, unfortunately being John Malkovich here) and the mysterious actor Max Schreck -- who, in the film, is actually a vampire himself. The movie's worth seeing mostly for Willem Dafoe's inspired performance as Schreck and for its recreation of the silent filmmaking process, but for the most part its listlessness and lack of inertia just make one want to go back and watch the original.
Seeing the real Schreck in Murnau's film, one can understand why Merhige and screenwriter Steven Katz were so taken with the concept -- Schreck is frighteningly real, which is not diminished at all by this being a silent film. He is surely the only vampire in film history to look more like a (plague-carrying) rat -- or a bat -- than a human being, with his pointy ears, v-shaped chin, clawed nails, eager tongue and bulging eyes. This is not the enchanting vampire, Count Dracula, found in other movie adaptations, the handsome aristocrat who charms women with his elegant manner and wit, fancy clothing and mesmerizing sex appeal. No, Schreck's Count Orlok is purely animalistic and more pathetic -- and in that sense, more pitiable.
Nosferatu itself was remade (or reworked) in 1979 by German filmmaker Werner Herzog, with the incomparable Klaus Kinski playing the Count as weary and bitter. It’s beautifully photographed and performed, fascinating, but so self-conscious and referential that it becomes less horror story than psychological exploration. In that end it almost works, but as it is obviously a Film with a capital "F" it lacks the ability to work as a "dream" that etches the original Nosferatu in our brains.
Murnau and his German compatriots Robert Wiene (Caligari) and Fritz Lang (Metropolis), were expressionist artists who worked as much on the look -- the sets, the make-up, the camera placement -- as they did on the story, and their design gave these films their dreamy appearance. But unlike his peers, Murnau used his camera at the actual locations depicted in the story, giving the film a creepy authenticity. The atmosphere reeks of decay and menace, and it was accomplished with little in the way of artificiality.
Vampire films differ depending on whether they are directly tackling the story of Dracula, interpreting Bram Stoker's novel -- or telling an "original" vampire tale, wherein the bloodsuckers are modern teenagers (Lost Boys, Near Dark), lovesick black men (Blacula), or overly tanned (George Hamilton in the spoof (Love at First Bite). The Vampire film can easily be classified as a subgenre (if not a genre itself) -- since the range of films within it is quite remarkable: From the classically gothic (Nosferatu) to the sublime (Dracula, with Frank Langella) to the ridiculous (Blade, From Dusk til Dawn), the outrageous (Captain Kronos: Vampire Hunter) to the meditative (The Addiction).
The more modern films often use the vampire story as a device in which to subvert another genre. For example, Tobe Hooper's Lifeforce was a subversion of Science Fiction, while Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark works as a sort of compendium of genres -- Western, noir and action -- and the gun-crazy From Dusk til Dawn is pure action. Lifeforce was interesting in the way it depicted female sensuality as something to be feared -- the female vampire's kiss sucks life energy from humans. They turn into sex-crazed vampires before eventually crumbling into ash. And Francis Ford Coppola's slightly soulless but highly stylized and seductive Dracula is rife with sexuality (and, unfortunately, with Keanu Reeves).
Vampire stories have always oozed a certain sensuality, with the central recurring image of a man sticking his teeth into a woman's neck, lapping at it, taking her fluids and draining the color from her neck. In Murnau's Nosferatu, shockingly sexual for a film dating from the early 20's, Count Orlok is not just a threat to bourgeois society, but also to the marriage of the Harkers -- the couple who happen upon the Count's castle.
"Where do you think you're going?" Von Helsing, the Count's assistant, shouts after Jonathan Harker. "You cannot escape your destiny by running away!". Unknown to Harker, Orlok has fallen for his fiancée Mina, and when he gives Orlok a portrait of Mina, he also gives the Count possession of her being -- creating an ill-fated love triangle for the ages. In a memorably erotic scene, the vampire observes through a darkened window, the Harker's house across the way, draws Nina from her bed and stirs in her a quenchless passion.
Compare the end of Nosferatu with the end of all the other vampire films you've seen -- many of them hold their own power, often you may find yourself empathetic for the dying vampire -- but for sheer cinematic magic, I'd argue that the silent film has never been topped. Murnau defied Bram Stoker by having a vampire who dies by the light of the sun instead of a stake through the heart, and whose shadow is very much in evidence throughout the film (what's an Expressionist film without shadows?) And at the climax of the film, the shadow of Orlok's hand grasps at Mina’s heart and she arches her back in pain, making the final scene appropriately sexy and tragic. Top that Coppola. [END]
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More film analysis and reviews by Craig Phillips found at HOARD's associate website: FILMSHI.COM
And, from the HOARD archive:
Rossana Jeran's haunting film "MADNESS"---