Werner Herzog: Nosferatu The Vampyre

Jonathan Harker (Ganz) leaves his young wife Lucy (Adjani) at home in Wismar and travels to Transylvania to meet the mysterious Count Dracula (Kinski), who is buying a house in Wismar opposite his own. After a terrifying ordeal in Dracula’s castle, Jonathan returns home a broken man, leaving Lucy to contend with their death-dealing new neighbour in the only way she can. In many ways a remake of F. W. Murnau’s horror masterpiece, Herzog’s film nonetheless owes more to the tradition of German Romanticism than to Murnau’s Expressionism, with long, lush sequences in the Carpathian Mountains, darkly luminous images of the Count, and ghastly scenes of the plague-stricken town. Kinski gives an exquisite performance as the weary Count; his languid glide through the darkness underscores this beautiful film’s sinister, dreamlike atmosphere.