Stars: Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz, Walter Ladengast, Jacques Dufilho, Clemens Scheitz, Tim Beekman, Carsten Bodinus, Rijk De Gooyer, Martje Grohmann, Jan Groth, John Leddy, Roland Topor, Margiet Van Hartingsveld, Lo Van Hensbergen, Dan Van Husen, Beverly Walker

Director: Werner Herzog

Summary: One of the most terrifying of all Dracula stories, set in Germany, which finds Johnathan Harker arriving at a large gloomy castle, despite his wife's protests at his going, to be confronted, out of the mist, by Count Dracula...

Approaching the legendary German classic 1922 film NOSFERATU: EIN SYMPHONIE DES GRAUENS by F.W. Murnau with his own unique sensibilities, Werner Herzog establishes a link between himself and the classic days of German cinema and in the process crafts a lush adaptation as well as a classic in its own right. Stark, symbolic cinematography and intensely stylized performances create what Herzog refers to as a different plane of reality, injecting the age-old tale of Count Dracula with a modern sense of mysticism, desire, and wonder.
Frequent Herzog collaborator Klaus Kinski portrays the Dracula character with a silent intensity, tingeing the vampire's inhuman monstrosity with a deep sense of pathos and longing. Completing a stellar international cast are Bruno Ganz (a regular in the films of Wim Wenders) and French film star Isabelle Adjani, both giving subtle yet compelling performances as the formerly happy couple who fall prey to Dracula's lust for life and love. From the opening image of rows of openmouthed mummies and the repeated motif of a bat in slow-motion flight to beautiful scenic shots of European mountains and beaches, NOSFERATU is a visually stunning film, presenting visual tableaus taken directly from the original as well as those of Herzog's invention. The extreme stylization of the film recalls Herzog's similarly hypnotic and haunting film HEART OF GLASS--creating a wholly original film, that despite its differences maintains a strict and loving faithfulness to the original.

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"Nosferatu ... the name alone can chill the blood!". F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu, released in 1922, was the first (albeit unofficial) screen adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Nearly 80 years on, it remains among the most potent and disturbing horror films ever made. The sight of Max Schreck's hollow-eyed, cadaverous vampire rising creakily from his coffin still has the ability to chill the blood. Nor has the film dated. Murnau's elision of sex and disease lends it a surprisingly contemporary resonance. The director and his screenwriter Henrik Gaalen are true to the source material, but where most subsequent screen Draculas (whether Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee, Frank Langella or Gary Oldman) were portrayed as cultured and aristocratic, Nosferatu is verminous and evil. (Whenever he appears, rats follow in his wake.)

The film's full title--Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens(Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror)--reveals something of Murnau's intentions. Supremely stylised, it differs from Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr Caligari(1919) or Ernst Lubitsch's films of the period in that it was not shot entirely in the studio. Murnau went out on location in his native Westphalia. As a counterpoint to the nightmarish world inhabited by Nosferatu, he used imagery of hills, clouds, trees and mountains (it is, after all, sunlight that destroys the vampire). It's not hard to spot the similarity between the gangsters in film noirhugging doorways or creeping up staircases with the image of Schreck's diabolic Nosferatu, bathed in shadow, sidling his way toward a new victim. Heavy chiaroscuro, oblique camera angles and jarring close-ups--the devices that crank up the tension in Val Lewton horror movies and edgy, urban thrillers such as Double Indemnityand The Postman Always Rings Twice--were all to be found first in Murnau's chilling masterpiece. --Geoffrey Macnab

On the DVD: This two-disc set gives you the choice of watching Nosferatuin either a sepia-tinted version or the original black &white. Both, however, feature the same modern electronic music score by Art Zoyd (at the movie's lavish 1922 premiere a live orchestra performed a newly composed, quasi-Wagnerian score by Hans Erdmann). The anonymous commentary track is a scholarly critical appraisal of the movie that exhaustively documents every aspect of it, from Murnau's aesthetic use of framing devices to the homoerotic subtext of the Hutter-Orlock relationship. In the "Nosferatour" featurette the movie's locations (principally, the Baltic cities of Wismer and Lubeck) are shown as they are today, and there is also a look at the original artwork that served as Murnau's inspiration. Two text features provide a brief history of the vampire myth from Vlad the Impaler onwards, as well as a discussion of the controversy caused by the movie's release. Appropriately, a trailer for the John Malkovich-Willem Dafoe movie Shadow of the Vampire, which imagines that "Max Schreck" actually wasa vampire employed by Murnau in his obsessive pursuit of verisimilitude, is also included. --Mark Walker

Main Language:	German
Region:	Region 0
Special Features:	Scene selection
Year:	1979
Release Date:	October 23, 2006
Runtime:	107 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	P W D 4004
Keywords:	English, Language, Two, General, Wide, Screen, Nuit, Nosferatu, Vampyre, Phantom, German, Horror, Der, Occult, Discs, Sci, Fi, Fantome, Nacht
Genre:	Horror/Occult