Movie to See: Nosferatu - The Gothic Industrial Mix
There is a reason that Nosferatu is as famous and well loved as it is; it is about as creepy a version of
the Dracula story as there is! Nosferatu and all of his minions are just... well, creepy. Of course, in my personal
opinion, I find Renfield the scariest looking guy in the film. Sure, Nosferatu (even "disguised" as an eccentric lord),
is bat-like and monstrous with his pointy ears, fingers and ever present fangs. But Renfield just has this maniacal air about
him that you just can't shake -- probably the actual inspiration for Charlie Manson's look... Nosferatu
is a great
story, a great movie for its time, and is something that all horror and
vampire movie enthusiasts will probably enjoy. If you've
never seen it, you MUST take the time to do so. This particular version, however, leaves a little to be desired...
First off, I didn't buy into the "Gothic industrial mix" element of this movie. The music wasn't well timed
to the movie, which was disappointing. It also didn't feel very Gothic... or industrial for that matter. In fact,
I thought it actually sounded more like an Enigma rip off! Frankly, the title to this movie is a lie.
But the worse sin was the poor quality of the film. There are several versions
of this film that have been cleaned up and are enjoyable to watch. This wasn't one of them. Scratchy, dingy, and lots of
visual fragments; this was not a very high quality version of Nosferatu. Seems to me that if you're going to skimp
on the audio, you might as well shell out for a decent visual. Apparently the film makers on this one disagree.
The truth of this film is that an Enigma-want-to-be group put together a mediocre album and were unable to
sell it. They thought the crap quality of the music might be forgiven if they could tie it to a classic movie... and then
bought a bargain basement version of the film to pair with it... poorly. I can't give this film the two stars (or less) that
it deserves because the movie itself is actually very good... despite the quality. But you may be better off putting in
a different soundtrack and watching this one with the volume turned down. If you can do that, then this movie is
worth a watch -- especially if you've never seen it.
Watching really old movies can be an interesting experience. This one is an odd blend of several different
elements that demonstrate the timing of its filming and release in conjunction with cinematic technology. For instance, coming
right off the tail of the silent movie era, Vampyr utilizes such
minimal dialogue that you forget that you're not watching
a silent movie. Further, the reliance on music to tell the tale and set
the mood (both of which were very well done), means that
the score was just as loud (if not louder) than anything spoken in the
film. Further, because of the need for it in silent films,
this one still makes use of textual exposition slides inserted in the
movie. Instead of having an actor tell us that he is
confused as to why some odd guy just walked into his hotel room and left
an envelope on the side table, you see the actor get
up, go to the table with a confused look, and then up pops:
"What was going on? Which horrifying secret was revealing itself? One thing became clear to Allan Gray. a human soul in fear of Death cried for help - and an inner voice ordered him to follow its call."I mean come on. How crazy is that? Right? And we'll just not go into the letterbox subtitles. Clearly someone thought they were being clever by using a large "Old English" style of font in order to match the text of the exposition slides. Unfortunately, the subtitles are blocky and are SO BIG that they block out half the action of the film going on behind them. Very poor. (And speaking of poor, I'm not sure that a lower quality version of this film exists -- the fragments and scratches were really really heavy and the dvd could have used some serious remastering.)
But oddities like those aside (which sometimes added a
bit of charm to the film), there were some very interesting
elements to this film that were genuinely creepy. In particular, the
way shadows have a will of their own (quite literally!) is
fascinating. The music and 'darkness' of the film set a great
atmosphere, which goes well with the oddities that our hero is
constantly stumbling over. All characters seem to glide out of the
shadows when coming onto screen, and you are left with a
sense that no one is to be trusted and that something truly sinister is going on...even though we're just begging for the
director to tell us what it is. This may have been a product 1932, but Dreyer sure knew how to set up a scene!
Yeah, I can see why this film did poorly when it was released -- it's more of a psychological thriller rather than a
"true" horror movie (whatever that means for something from the 30's). And yeah, I can see why people find this particular
release of the film to be a bit of a stinker too (see the first paragraph), but I do get the sense that somewhere
there is
a version of this film that everyone should see. Just maybe not the
version available for download at Netflix... There is a lot of
good that can be taken from this work, but this particular version will
probably leave you dissatisfied. With a little more time
in the editing bay, perhaps this one could have earned another full
star. But without more work, I can't quite recommend this one.
