NOSFERATU

West Germany/France, 1979, 107 minutes, Colour.
Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz.
Directed by Werner Herzog.

Nosferatu is homage to F.W. Murnau's German silent classic by celebrated contemporary German director, Werner Herzog. His Dracula film is beautiful to watch and is genuinely horrifying as it sets itself firmly in a recognisable historical setting and atmosphere, takes us on a credible journey to Transylvania and introduces us to a living dead vampire who looks it, communicates the pain and hellish loneliness of his deathless existence and his power to evil. With a plague of rats, sequences with a bat clutching a curtain, Herzog makes us believe his story and superbly transcends the literary and cinema tradition, the gory shockers and the spoofs. A horror classic.

1. The impact of horror films? The tradition of cinema presentation of horror? How well did this film fit into the tradition, use it, transcend it? A horror film of the late '70s? The attention to style and impact? The quality of a classic? Similarities to the tradition, differences? The relationship to the Murnau classic? Similarities, differences? The homage to the original? The use of Bram Stoker's story? The Stoker tradition and perceptions?

2. Audience interest in and response to the Dracula traditions? The history of Dracula and Rumania and Transylvania? A tradition of cruelty? A tradition of the Devil incarnate living after death to haunt and torture? Dracula as being punished by being unable to die? his hell in walking the earth as the undead? The literary tradition of Dracula stories? The cinema tradition? serious, the attention to gore and shocks, the satires and spoofs? The effect of all these traditions on this film?

3. The technical qualities: the use and styles of colour and tones, the recreation of 19th. century in town and countryside? Dracula's castle and its impact? The importance of the credits sequence and its suggestions of death, bats, nightmare? Interiors and exteriors of city and countryside? The sea? Decor and costumes? The use of movement for dramatic impact, the reliance on static tableaux? The editing and pace? The classical style score, songs?

4. How did the film play for tones of realism and the plausibility of the plot? Credibly presented? The introduction to Jonathan Harker as an ordinary citizen, his life in the city and his work, his relationship with Lucy? The hints of what was to follow? His working for Renfeld and his madness? The need for such long travelling to go to Dracula's castle? The environment of the city and the overtones of menace and superstition? The credibility of the city man with his rational approach to life encountering superstition, horror, and being overwhelmed by it? The audience sharing Jonathan Harker's presuppositions? The entry into another world and being overcome by it? The use of real bats and the sequence of the bat on the curtain terrifying Lucy? the effect of this horror rather than artificial bats? Dracula's castle and its realism, his own appearance? The importance of the creating of atmosphere of menace, fear, scares? The importance of Lucy's dreams for suggestions of horror and plausibility?

5. The them of Dracula and his history? The waning of the living dead? Nosferatu? The tradition of Dracula's warrior background? The importance of the make-up for this film, Dracula's bloodless appearance, his love for blood, the hellish tones in his face, hands and fingernails? The highlighting of the isolated and lonely undead? His presence in the castle, his wanting to move, his transacting business in a businesslike way, the greeting of Harker and making him terrified and yet offering him food? The coffins and their transport, the rats? His devilish plans? The seeing of Lucy's portrait and his scheming to get her? Dracula's intensity and remoteness? The prospect of this kind of person entering the ordinary world?

6. The character of Jonathan Harker and the audience seeing him in his ordinary daily life, at work, love for Lucy and the walks along the beaches? Lucy's dreams as owns? His journey, his entrusting Lucy to her relations, seeing him ride over the various terrains with their beauty and isolation, his presence at the inn and the discussions about superstition, his long walk to the castle and the difficulties., the arrival at the castle, his weariness, the food, pricking his finger and Draculas reaction, his rest, the beginnings of terror, the importance of his confiding in his diary?

7. The audience sharing his increasing fear, the uneasy experiences at the castle, his discovery of the truth. his being drained of blood. returning to the inn. his exhaustion in returning home, his retreat into madness., his desperate warnings against Dracula, his being transformed into the undead and his taking the place of Dracula?

8. Lucy as a focus for the film? Presenting her in the visual style of the silent film heroine and her acting in this manner? Lucy's dream? during the credits: their content with skeletons, bats? The later dream about bats with the Dracula overtones? Lucy as heroine, sympathetic? Her appearance, paleness? Her later illness? The beach sequences with Jonathan. by herself? The encounter with Dracula. her fascination? Her love for her husband, knowledge of the diary, her discussion with Van Helsing, the importance of her plan, her preparedness to give her life for the town? The sexual overtones of her giving her life to Dracula? The pathos of her death?

9. Renfeld and his madness, his allotting the task to Harker, his hysterical laugh and the indications of Dracula's power and madness? The asylum sequence and his knowledge of Dracula's presence in the town? Dr. Van Helsing's attempt to discover the truth? Lucy and her reaction to him?

10. Was the character of Dracula well portrayed or suggested by the behaviour, make-up, manner? The welcome to the castle, the need for blood? The plans? The detail of the transfer of the coffins, the checking on the ship. the realism and symbolism of the sea voyage, the emerging of the rats and the plague, the Captain's log and the deaths of the sailors? The sinister voyage?

11. The symbolism of the rats, the soil of Dracula's land being transported to the city, the visualising of the plague, the impact of so many rats and their taking over the town?

12. The details of the town's coping with the deaths,, the coffins, the illness? The symbolism of the group having its final meal in the town square and then disappearing? The social implications of the town being taken over by evil, their inability to cope with it, the attempts to administer justice in the arrest of Van Helsing and nobody able to control or impose order?

13. Dracula and his presence in the town. his wandering the city? The importance of his not being seen by day? Mina and her fascination with Dracula, the arrangements of getting him into the house and into the cellar? Lucy and the scene being set for her confrontation, her luring him to her bedroom, her holding him until the sun came up? Why did Dracula so stay and endanger his existence? The impact of his death?

14. Van Helsing as the representative of the ordinary man. science, urban civilisation? His awareness of Lucy's plan. his response to Dracula's death, to Lucy's?

15. The irony of the vampirising of Harker and so the continuation of the legend?

16. Why do audiences find such horror stories entertaining? The conventions of vampire horror? How well did this film transcend these conventions into an exploration of the nature of evil in the world.. its influence on individuals, on society?