Having just finished Bram Stoker's novel, just rewatched Murnau and Herzog's, and just caught Eggers' film in theaters, I could not be in a more perfect place to enjoy this. Happy New Year to me specifically.
@@WillJBaileyit's probably left out because it's supposed to be the Murnau version. It's technically different, but for our purposes it's just another look at the original. Not a remake.
The newer Nosferatu focuses on personal tragedy, where is the original was on societal tragedy... I kind of think it actually fits given the fact that with social media we're kind of in our own worlds. We're and the systems that we live in more focused on the impact to sell then to society.
I find it interesting how Dracula in Last Voyage of the Demeter looks more like Orlok, while Orlok in Eggers’ Nosferatu looks more like Dracula as he’s described in the novel.
Demeter is the Greek Goddess of Harvest and agriculture and because of that she is linked to things like fertility and the life cycle. Her daughter Persephone was stolen by Hades and tricked into eating 6 pomegranate seeds in exchange for her freedom she would spend 1 month for every seed she ate in the under world, again a connection to the life cycle and seasonal change. Dracula and the vampire creature are connected to things like decay, death, sterility and disease mostly fear of syphilis. The monster comes to England from a barren decaying land, which is the usually how the monsters home land is portrayed. He comes in a ship with the name of a goddess promising health and fertility and regeneration, but it secretly hides a monster that is only capable of death, destruction, disease. It’s a direct inversion of the Christian moral order where Christ gives his blood so that other may live while the creature takes the blood of other so that he may live, same in Harry Potter. Dracula and the monster are both creatures of the modernist project which is what spawned the horror genre. Dracula and the monster are the revolution
Idk i think the connection between orlok and nature in eggers' version is pretty central and explicit. He literally says that he isnt evil, he isnt a monster, hes simply unending hunger. And his depiction as a walking corpse is much closer to nature--all the rot and bloat and blood and jaundice are all so bodily and are a central part to nature and the natural cycle of life and death. The extension of his powers and the sort of vague ever-presence he has, to me, depicts him as more a force of nature than a monster
I disagree that the new version removes thematic elements in general. Yes, it's no longer a plague movie about the societal trauma of mass death, as you put it, but it adds much more depth to Ellen's character to the point where it essentially replaces the plague reaction commentary to the sexual repression, abuse and isolation, superstition around women's health and purity obsession and the societal reactions to those things. I think it does a disservice to the film to just call it a horror movie about nothing more than scares.
Totally agree with this! The 2024 version kept reminding me of Rosemary’s Baby in how Ellen, because of the time period, is completely at the mercy of the men in her life (neglectful, incompetent, selfish) when it comes to her own health, and sexuality. She finally claims control when she willingly gives herself to Orlock to kill him at the end.
Can't agree with the finishing remarks of this video essay - that Eggers' adaptation 'misses the opportunity' (or however it was said in this video) to discuss social issues and how society is affected by mass death, etc. I think that's just expectations borne from the previous iterations. Which, btw, address a particular country's experiences. This version is more universal, in a way. It speaks about very raw, human emotions and is not just some standard horror, it's dark folklore.
Agreed. The fact that I'm in a comment section about a movie right now speaks to how effective this movie was at triggering reflection. Like in The Witch, he has nailed something deep, disturbing and true about our collective history to follow men into ridiculously misguided pursuits against the rational advice and ultimately at the sacrifice of women.
I dragged one of my sorority sisters to see the Herzog version. It wasn't her thing and cemented the rule in my group of friends not to ever let the film geek pick the movie! I am looking forward to seeing Eggers version.
I adore Herzog's version, it's so wrapped up in the late 70s Eastern European surrealism that it's often breathtaking. The Danse Macabre is one of my favorite scenes in film, period. A
Oh it was wonderful. I’m glad I watched eggers’ first so I wouldn’t compare the three. Herzog made brilliant choices, one of my favorites being when Ellen and Dracula first officially meet, and she rebukes him. Although I really do appreciate all three!
@@sjc4 I didn't refer to the national socialism of later years. It's just astonishing that 100 years ago the German court took one foreign woman so seriously who took action against a whole German film company. As you wrote - Germany was a center for groundbreaking cinema, which was surely connected to a certain pride and power.
That's one of the very FEW remakes that I actually like (along with Invasion of Body Snatchers 78, The Thing 82, and Scar Face 83). In fact, kinda pathetic that THAT movie is over forty years old and remains generally overlooked, while this new one gets hyped through the freaking roof before it's even released.
Gotta say: when you mentioned how sped up film is usually associated with comedy, I instinctively thought of "Benny Hill". Imagine my delight not 15 seconds later when that song started playing! Great video as always! Happy New Year!
I’ve been attempting for days to explain to people in my life all the connections and differences between all of the movies but confusing everyone more in the process, so I’m just gonna send this to people from now on. Amazing job, per usual! ✨
I would say that Eggers film has more to say about sexual repression and mental illness. It was Ellen’s continuous dismissal and isolation that brought the blight of Nosferatu on the community. Sexist pseudoscience is mentioned throughout. For example, Ellen is made to wear a corset at night to keep her womb in place, and the word “hysteria” is used liberally. Ellen’s repression & depression being so dangerous is interesting to me as we live in a time where male loneliness is more often framed as an overt threat. The “lone wolf” trope of the man whose isolation causes him to lash out with violence against innocents is subverted in the character of Ellen. While Ellen ultimately dies to end the plague and save her husband, she is also assigned a large amount of power, power tied up in what has almost always been dismissed. We live in a “post” pandemic world. But we are also observing a backslide in female autonomy, and in a time of unprecedented loneliness and ubiquitous depression.
“A back slide in female autonomy”? I mean really depends on where you live so in places like Minnesota and New York they have expanded female autonomy in the realm of “the choice” they have more power and more say in their “healthcare” choices. And to be fair in some places they have curtailed “access” It’s so great that you find such significance in a word like “hysteria” in this context which is obviously covering up sexual repression, but when I say words like “the choice” and tropes like “female autonomy” they are said in an attempt to actually cover up what is really going on. IE the ending of a life or… redrum. That is just fuckkking fantastic. Isolation certainly is a running theme in all horror, isolation, but more than isolation “total alienation”. People are usually taken aback when they read Frankenstein and find the most able to talk and read the Greeks and bemoan his station 😂he essentially wants a partner but being a creature a monster he is doomed to that soul crushing alienation that is the cause of his own demise. The alienation theme is powerful and always at the core of the genre whether it’s in “lifeboat” where the victims are adrift in the expansive ocean. 2001 a space Odyssey with them trapped in space. The walking dead or any zombie movie with a kind of “last hold” out element such as “dawn of the dead” holding out in a Shopping mall and “the walking dead’s” holdouts at the ranch, the prison, and Alexandria. The creature is Id. Its passion free from any moral apprehension. The creature is an inversion of the Christian “myth” of the Christ figure. The lord sheds his own blood so others may live the creature sheds the blood of others so he may live. It’s actually incredible too that you use the words “power” when describing the ordeal. From an occult perspective to obtain “power” one usually has to purposefully defile the laws of nature to have it reveal its every to you which is why Shelly was largely invested in incestuous relationships. The creature is the inversion of the Christian ethic and if you understand the Frankenstein myth and its connection to Newtonian physics and what that meant for the modernist project then you get the myth. Dracula was the Modern Prometheus after the advent of Darwin’s “on the origins”. Technically speaking the kinds of relations you are thinking of are by all standards a “perversion” of nature.
This 100%. I think this video misses that entirely, to focus just on the plague element. Sure, this isn't a Covid movie (and honestly I think it'd be weaker if it was), but instead it's about what Ellen's sacrifice actually means, the societal reaction to abuse and women's health and trauma, and the sexual repression / purity obsession that was key to the period and threatens to pop up time and again today. Changing the dismissal of Ellen's concerns from the plague's cause to Orlok himself as a personal threat makes it scarier *because* it's personal and because of the focus on those above themes
@@k--musicwhich is very similar to the theme of The Witch. In both movies Eggers does an excellent job illustrating all the unnecessary grief which was conjured by misguided men dragging innocent people into their doomed adventures against the better judgement of anyone with common sense.
Eggers' version delved a lot into the idea of Amor Fati with Ellen, as well as themes of agency and taking responsibility for one's actions. The idea of Amor Fati, the backbone of stoic philosophy, really ought to have been discussed here in terms of new things brought to the table by Eggers' interpretation. Herzog's version is so beautifully done. I rewatched it tonight, and it is so eerie and haunting. I really love all three versions. I think Eggers' version is my favorite film of 2024.
What an amazing day to be a BKR fan! I agree that there was room for perhaps a larger commentary and the use of Orlok as a symbol like in the previous adaptations but (like you said) I can't fault Eggers for not going that route. However, I think he does use this character and the symbolism on a smaller scale. Not representing the fallout of a global pandemic but rather it can be argued the Orlok character representing the trauma/ptsd/shame that women deal with/dealt with at that time. To steal a comment I read, "I love how it seemed like Orlok was portrayed almost as a manifestation of the trauma and mental anguish she experienced in a society that demonizes feminine sexuality." Given the themes of The Witch, I would not be surprised if that was Egger's intention. Love your work!
This was my interpretation too. Mental health is scary enough, I can’t imagine how it felt back then. Just fully not listened to, with zero agency, and seen as diseased, delusional. And the fact that Ellen is not a virgin (at least spiritually) makes the sacrifice feel more empowering to me. She makes her own choice, and by being unashamed of her desires, subdues her traumas hold over her and, by extension, evil itself. Her conversation with the van Helsing character was one of the best additions- making clear that in another time period she wouldn’t have had to die.
Absolutely! Honestly, the verismilitude approach worked really well in that sense too, a ton of the horror for me came from all of the ineffective things that the doctors were doing to Ellen during her possession episodes, because all of that was not far off from how a real epileptic woman would be treated during that time. Hell, it's only very recently that first aid instructors will tell you *not* to restrain someone having a seizure (because it's not like you're going to actually stop it, you're just going to risk hurting yourself or the patient), mental ailments are just still something we don't know enough about. Combining that with women's health concerns being ignored all throughout history, as well as the fact that it's the 1830s and people just generally don't know much, and the root of the problem might as well be something as cryptic as the actual devil!
Whenever one of your amazing videos drop, I pick a house chore I’ve been avoiding, and get lost in your incredible research and perspective as I exercise double self-care :) love these lengthy essays! I always learn something and watch something result of your reporting.
Finally, the one topic I've always wished BKR would cover! I still need to watch Egger's movie, so I won't watch this video just yet, but thank you so much for making this
49:39 this is a very well done comparison of the three works. Though, I disagree with the assertion that the dialogue is just an exposed framework for the story and is an afterthought because of Eggers’ need to maintain the story structure, the tableaux. I think the actors did a phenomenal job with the dialogue and really expressed the psychological and emotional horror that they all were enduring; primarily, Thomas and Ellen.
What a comprehensive, well-researched and thoughtful examination of the Dracula/Nosferatu phenomenon. I love all three films, and they all have their comparative strengths and weaknesses. And I agree: Herzog's eerie bacchanal is one of my favorite cinematic moments of all time. Well done, and well-worth a subscription!
When I discovered your channel, I went back and watched every video. The subject matter, research, quality and your incredible voice just hooked me. Thank you for what you do, it's very much appreciated.
Mostly agree with your analysis, though I do have a slight issue with your analysis of Eggers version. I think there was social commentary, just not of the same kind as the others and as someone who saw it first, then watched the others, it only made me more confident it’s not shallow as you seem to imply
The 2024 Nosferatu mustache is supposed to look like Vlad from the painting if you think about it’s classic mustache villain you’d be scared of which fits perfectly.
I'm a fan of all three for different reasons, as well as most Dracula (and Drac adjacent) films. Thank you for this insightful break down. So nice to learn a lot about the behind the camera stuff going on.
I’m so glad you acknowledged SpongeBob. So I’m weird and despite being a kid in the early oughts, I actually saw the original Nosferatu YEARS before I watched Graveyard Shift. But even though the ending had been spoiled for me, Graveyard Shift instantly became my favorite SpongeBob episode when I saw it in my twenties.
Eggers had a VHS copy that was completely silent without orchestra. The first VHS I bought as a kid was 1925's The Phantom of the Opera - no orchestra, completely silent. It's amazing what we interpret when our senses are shut out. Especially with horror films. Another genius approach to film and filmmaking by our beloved BKR.
Call me crazy but I appreciate a bold aestheticist like Eggars. Cinema is a visual medium and sometimes the images are all I need and they were certainly all I needed with this. I loved the intimate closeups between the vampire and Ellen and how terrifying and romantic and tender they were at once and the idea that this poor girl who had some extra sensitivity drew evil onto herself and everyone around her, touched on some themes of queerness and mental health and the burden the person with a different POV has to carry ... I've seen all of Eggars's films and they all left me cold (Norseman was VISCERAL but I admired it more than loved it) but this one really got me. I also felt the bringer of plague thing was nailed home for me ... maybe again because I usually read horror via a queer lens, that the scary outsider that lands in the port brings plague to this otherwise upstanding town where you too can have your precious golden twin girls adorably praying every night and a gorgeous Christmas tree to boot ... living through AIDS and all the ways we were accused of bringing disease (via bodily fluids natch)! My date turned to me after the movie and asked "are the straights ok?" I'm really a little surprised at the cold shoulder Eggars' film has gotten critically, but c'est la vie. If Coppola's Dracula managed to amass a following so will this.
Dracula and the vampire creature along with Frankenstein’s monsters are many things. The insistence of viewing horror through a “queer lens” is telling the vampire certainly it stands for homosexuality among other things. In movies like “interview” and “the hunger” the metaphor is front a center but it’s there also even in stoker’s. The connection between the vampire creature and sterility and sexual perversion and disease has always been a core symbol at the heart of the story. The vampire creature does promise disease and decay and death you are right but you’re reading it backwards. The creature’s homeland is usually always portrayed as barren and desolate, the metaphor for tainted, contaminated or corrupted blood should be apparent, that explains so much of F W Murnau’s film and you can imagine the context of what that means in a 1920’s Germany during the Wiermar years with a nationalist pan German revolution brewing in the mix. The most well known trope from stoker’s version is the ship trope. The name of which is Demeter which is the name of the Greek Goddess of the harvest and agriculture and because of that fertility and life cycles and regeneration. Her daughter who was taken prisoner by Hades ended up making a deal for having eaten 6 pomegranate seeds where by she would stay in the underworld with hades for 6 months and get to go be with her mother 6 months out of the year so she has a direct connection to the life cycle. The ship is coming with the home of the harvest and bounty and regeneration but the specimen it carries brings only decay and disease and death. This isn’t “a queer lens” on the myth, it is the myth. You actually seem to want to sympathize with the monster, the very thing that spells our doom. The creature while certainly homosexual is really sexual perversion which what homosexuality precisely is, a perversion. The creature also represents syphilis. Mary Shelly and Percy Bishe Shelly and all the romantics were deeply effected by the revolution in France as where most all the English radicals of that day. Dracula was the myth after the advent of Darwinian biologism had won out over Newtonian physics as the “vital elan” of the modernist project. The connections between Dracula and Frankenstein are salient enough to where it’s hard not to talk about one without the other and they were deeply influenced by the enlightenment and the modernist project as a whole.
The vampire creature certainly does stand for “queerness” movies like “interview” and “the hunger” the metaphor is front and center, but it was always there even in Stoker’s original version. The vampire stands for among other things disease, death. Decay, sterility and more directly syphilis. The creature usually comes from a land that’s desolate, barren and after the advent of Darwinian biologism and the eugenics movements at the turn of the century ideas of “contaminated” or “corrupted” blood are apt metaphors in Murnau’s version for a Germany in the mist of a failing republic and a nationalist revolution promising a new Germany free from the contaminate. The ship the creature comes on is called “Demeter” she is the goddess of the Harvest and nature and because of that has connections to the life cycle and regeneration and fertility. Her daughter who was kidnapped by Hades was forced to spend six months in the underworld and six months free from hades as a compromise for having eaten 6 pomegranate seeds. So she has in Greek mythology a direct link to life cycles. So the ship is named for a Goddess promising Harvest, agriculture, fertility and regeneration, but it houses a specimen that carries death, disease, sterility and decay linked to it. The creature is a direct inversion of the Christian ethic where Christ gives his blood so that others may live the creature takes blood from other so he may live, the same thing happens in Harry Potter. The horror genre is largely linked to the modernist project in fact they invented it. Dracula is a more popular story but I think as far as myths go Frankenstein started it all and while vampires are far more popular in all kinds of media, videos games, movies, books, tv shows, Frankenstein has had a more profound impact on the genre. Everything from Horror to sci-fi owes its roots in Frankenstein, but not just the genre but the various tropes. The “zombie” trope and the “clone” sci-fi trope start in Frankenstein and get played out in Hitchcock’s “lifeboat” and Carpenter’s “the thing” and even “the walking dead” and do I have to spell this out for movies like “them” and “specimen”? You are correct in assuming that that Ellen’s interaction with the vampire is a stand in for some form of sexual perversion that usually doesn’t end well. In Bram Stoker’s novel Johnathon Harker actually contracts a “mysterious” sickness after having come into contact with Dracula’s wives. He writes in his diary about it he talks about the “voluptuousness” of his mistresses and how red and sticky hot their lips are but their breathe smells like death, like that kind of iron bloody smell. He can’t write about what happens only that something happened and while he is recovering in a Budapest convent a nurse over hears in his mad ramblings something of what happened but when questioned by Mina the nurse swears to her oath that she will not reveal the “mad ramblings” of the sick. Harker gives Mina the dairy and tells her to read it or not read it to do what she will and never speak of it again. She decides not to read it and never to speak of it again. Harker did something less than holy with those ladies and caught something, then he passed it on to his wife. The creature is Id, its passion free from moral apprehension. “How dare you sport thus with life” the creature is a stand in for the moral apprehension that got repressed and because of that someone did something and now they have to pay for it, but as Victor Frankenstein found out it’s those around us who usually pay for our sins, the monster kills both his brother and wife then him. In Dracula Harker infects his wife with his same mysterious illness and in alien the greedy capitalist allows gets his comeuppance and the horny teenagers are always the first victim of any slasher that knows his role. 😂 There’s far too much to discuss and RUclips keeps deleting my post it takes me like 40 mins to re write the whole thing every time. Would love to discuss Mary Shelly and Percy and Godwins and Wordsworth and the occult revival that lead to the great horror genre’s in Gothic England and Expressionist Germany but there really is too much. It’s really moral apprehension in the face of the modernist project. All the horror greats were bone fide modernists Stoker, Shelly, Murnau, all the Romantics heavily involved in alchemy and the occult and just like Victor Frankenstein working to “learn the secrets nature has to hide”
@@Person0fColor "Queerness" means strange or weird and was only used in that context during the time Dracula was written. The modern use of that term should not be used in interpretations of it. It also cannot be used in the modern context when applied to "Interview" because it was written in the 70s about events that happened in the 1700 and 1800s to the characters.
"Are the straights ok?" LMAO that's a funny thing to ask when almost everyone was affected by events from the past few years and when extremists on both sides are throwing temper tantrums when they don't get their way. Gay people are also affected by the crappy economy same as straight people and if you can't see how similar we are in that regard, I don't know how to help you. You're also reading way too much into the movie.
"He MUST devour her. he IS an appetite." I got chills! Fantastic video (That Charli XCX moment where Nosferatu is "yassified" made me wheeze-cackle out loud lol)
That line got me. It was so indicative of psychopathic behavior in general. People always want to know a “why” and that we the best why possibly delivered.
While I understand that Eggers not focusing on the plague can seem dismissive four years after COVID, at this point, I think a chunk of audiences would have seen it as pandering, if he did. The plague is there it’s in the background, that’s where I want it, I want a film about the person not the plague. Overall, it goes to show that society right now left the pandemic quickly (mentally speaking) and want it in the past, they don’t want to be reminded of it 4+ years after.
I really loved the 2024 Nosferatu. And I'm not afraid to say it's one of THE BEST horror movies I've ever seen in my life. What a treat to end a horrible year.
This is an excellent analysis of the three main versions of this story. I was surprised how straight forward and traditional the structure of Eggers version was and I understand your disapointment the film didn't lean harder into allegory and surealness. Your writing and research were both on point and made me eager to rewatch all three films. Keep up the great work!
i lovedd eggers’ version! this was definitely one of my favorite releases this year for sure. and you can tell for a lot of people that this was either their first eggers film or gothic horror from the discourse brewing around. stories like this are always going to be “problematic” if we apply modern standards to it. which we shouldn’t, especially within the realms of gothic fiction where monsters are exactly that: monsters. orlok is a predator but he’s also the object of her desires. it’s an allegory for abuse but it’s also a romantic fantasy. it’s meant to be grim and dark. i’m not sure why people are so adamant to twist the story by infantilizing ellen when both the actors and the director himself say otherwise.
Orlok is also meant to be a figment of mental illness, such when he was a figment of Death in Herzog or Facism in Murnau. It's using Orlok as a base monster to underline contemporary pressure of the times or a universal fear we all share.
This was Eggers favorite story growing up as a kid. He focused on what he liked from the original goth story as a kid. It makes sense that he didn't focus on the historical context in which the original movie was made but in the context of the time when the story is taking place. If you know Eggers you know that criticism doesn't make any sense to him
@@macsgrave Krakauer's essay that German Expressionist films of the 1920s serve as warning of the leaning tide of Fascism slowly creeping in from the shadows to take dominion and that it's of the willingness of the public to be under their control.
I appreciate all the context!! Something that struck me with the Eggers film was the line, you could have been a priestess of Isis in another time. I don’t know how many other films have entirely explored that concept and having the main heroine in that archetype. But I thought it was unique and meaningful :)
I watched Murnau's Nosferatu for the first time in high school (early to mid-2000s) and it genuinely terrified me; maybe that's just because as a kid/teen I was exceptionally wussy when it came to horror (iirc the only other character that scared me as much as Orlock was the Queen from Snow White in her old-hag disguise), but silent films can definitely still hit modern audiences the way they were meant to!
I remember seeing Murnau's Nosferatu as when I was about 9 or 10 on PBS in the late 70s (part of as Silent Film retrospective) and it gave me more nightmares than any horror film I had since then, including The Omen or The Exorcist!!
Saw the original in college, and unless you're a real film nerd yeah it needed updating. I don't think Eggers's goal was to recreate German expressionism, and I enjoyed the expanded role and LRD's performance. I saw the 2024 version as more of an examination of how mental health issues manifest and how little we knew about them at the time. Ellen as a symbol is one thing, Eggers tried to make HER human. In my opinion. And I find Herzogs movie so freaking slow lol.
I look forward to being able to look back at the new one with the same scholarship and study that the others have enjoyed. I am sure that there is plenty of symbolism in Egger's version that hasn't had the luxury of time to be fully appreciated and I personally can't wait for that to happen!
Kind of amazing how Nosferatu is so much its own thing that its characters have their own Wikipedia pages, separate from the Dracula versions. Something else I find interesting is that both this new film and the original came about not long after major pandemics and they both feature them as a major part of the plot where Dracula didn’t include one.
31:20: I always had a private feeling Herzog's Nosferatu was the most overtly bisexual Dracula adaptation (add to what you said the fact that, to become a vampire himself, according to some vampire lore -which, as we know, can change from version to version- Jonathan would have had to suck Dracula's blood himself)
It's very interesting to me that the newest version discarded that focus on "bringer of the plague" after the horrors of COVID. It's something modern audiences would absolutely connect with in their very real, recent trauma.
name one single good piece of media that centers COVID in its text. I'm not sure why but there's an inescapable and inherit cultural cringe to COVID; the lockdown fatigue is still so palpable that any work which attempts to explore or unpack it cannot be met with anything but an exhausted eyeroll.
My college roommate was OBSESSED with vampires- this was a good 10yrs before Twilight, oddly enough- and I've sat through every atrocious vampire movie known to man. There are more of them out there than you might think. The one I found the most intriguing was- of all things- Eddie Murphy's "A Vampire in Brooklyn" (1995). It's a very unique, African-American twist on the old Dracula story and I really liked it. It's one of those films that looks like a joke on the surface, but actually went way harder than it needed to. I would, in fact, rec it to anyone interested in Horror/Vampires as a fun little aside to the genre that deserves more love and recognition than it gets.
I'm going to check out that Eddie Murphy vampire movie. I love when supposedly lightweight comedies have more depth - sometimes more than supposedly "deep" dramas!
There are plenty of Nosferatu film analysis RUclips videos coming off of Eggers' movie, and this is the best, and only one anyone actually has to watch.
I really loved all the detail and intrigue in this video, but I’m a bit disappointed in what seems like a lack of investigation into the thematic components of Eggers’ changes. I agree that Eggers tightens the focus of the narrative away from larger societal issues, but disagree with the idea that that tightening doesn’t bring up anything new in the process.
Seriously, and imo it keeps just as much societal issue exploration as the original, it just changed the issues from those surrounding the plague to those surrounding Ellen. It's a bit of a shallow read to just see that the plague isn't the focus and determine that as removing theme entirely. Instead, it changed which themes were most prominent. That's fine for a remake to do imo.
I find Eggers focus on personal trauma rather than wider societal ills to be very poignant commentary (intentional or not) about where we find ourselves in the mid 2020s.
Excellent discussion, BKR. The original 1922 Nosferatu and 1979 Herzog film are unnerving and unsettling and the visuals tend to last a while in my head. Nosferatu got me thinking of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Although Bergman's Death was famously "unknowing" vs Nosferatu, who is painfully aware of all he is missing.
"Dracula Dead and Loving it" was my first Dracula and Vampire movie EVER and when I first saw it as a kid I thought it's actually scary (and brutal). That it's a comedy helped me not being TOO scared of the concept. But some things are so over the top, in my childs mind they were horrific. (Like the autopsy scene for example, i had nightmares of that) Watching it today it doesn't have the effect anymore, but I appreciate it as my entry point to Nosferatu/Dracula Stories.
There's something interesting that Robert did in tying the film much more to believing women. There's a very striking chapter in Dracula where Dracula comes into Minas bedroom and sucks her blood and Bram very clearly makes it an allegory to SA especially how Mina describes it after the fact. I don't have enough to say to link this to the most recent film but I do think there is some sort of thread Robert is pulling at
There is indeed a thruline in the new version of no one in Ellen's life believing her and her trauma, and the way the blood sucking was depicted was very, nay, extremely explicit in what it represents
Coppola's version is #1, not even debatable. Werner Herzog's one comes in at #2, closely followed by Polanski's comedy version at #3 (the cinematography is great in that one as well, regardless of it being a comedy).
to me the 2024 film is more about the main female character being silenced or numbed about having maybe mental illness , or sexual desires, or trauma and how that leaded her to wish for a demond/monster to come to her.........
I remember the first time I saw Nosferatu as a child, and it scared the ever living shit out of me. I'm in my 40s now and it still gives me nightmares. Another movie that gives me the creeps is Valerie's Week of Wonders, which is in the Czech new wave genre. One of characters in that movie reminded me of Nosferatu and the movie gave me nightmares as well.
I just watched Nosferatu 2024, and I took from it that ‘the grotesque’ is something we must accept as part of us and face to try to move past it. I feel the grotesque is somewhat representative of the current time, given some of the recent occurrences of the last few years. But that was only my interpretation.
Last night the '79 Nosferatu popped up in my suggestions. Now I'm thinking it's been so long since I watched the original version, it'll be like watching it for the first time all over again.
You analysis of Eggers movie confirms pretty much every concern I had. Eggers is the horror genre's Christopher Nolan. A technically gifted film maker with vision and an uncanny ability to bring ideas to life with high aesthetics and fidelity to the time period/scientific concepts they wish to depict. And depict them, they do. In jaw dropping detail. BUT The emotional aspects, the storytelling and the deeper meaning with all this spectacle and attention to detail, is mostly puddle deep and tells you little to nothing about the human condition. I have watched The VVitch, The Lighthouse, The Northman and I plan on watching Nosferatu as well, but every time I watch a Robert Eggres movie, I prepare myself for an emotionally hollow experience. I go through the same with all of Nolan's movies. All of them are fantastically made and none of them have stayed with me or touched my soul in a way that made me contemplate my own life and how I live it. Their movies are like talking to a really cool guy on a date and you feel his passion for his job and his hobbies and he is really good at what he does, but at no point does he let you in. At no point do you feel like he is showing you who he is on a deeper level and when you leave the date you just feel like you learned a lot about this man's interests, but you have no fucking clue who he is deep down. There is a lack of vulnerability and it makes it difficult for me to connect with Eggers and Nolan movies.
I very much disagree with the conclusion that the new film is not ripe with interpretations. I agree that it's more focused on the personal, but there are still many ways to interpret Ellen's experience with Orlok and how she is treated by those around her.
if I had a nickel for every Robert Eggers movie featuring a young woman whose sexuality is viewed as a threat by the society she lives in and is also intimately tied to the demonic force menacing her immediate family, driving a wedge between her and her support system . . . well, I'd have two nickels but it's weird that it happened twice.
Its like you are living my dream amd make them reality when you make these videos. Like you broke into my subconscious and ploop out amazing content that I feel is made specially for my brain. Thank you for making the end of the year happy.
Kudos to Eggers for making his own art and not falling into the stale trap of using an existing story to slip in COVID commentary. Why would you want that? We can’t escape artists who try and fail to “say something” about modern times via classic stories. Eggers’ devotion to returning to the sheet music is the more unique radical approach in this hyper-politicized, everything must beat you over the head with subtext age we’re in.
There's a fourth version of Nosferatu that you've overlooked (though that's possibly for the best): director David Lee Fisher funded a remake on kickstarter back in 2014, to be named Nosferatu: RMX with Doug Jones as Count Orlok. Due to numerous unspecified production delays, it was pushed back and pushed back with nobody involved in production saying why, only to be finally released on streaming in October of 2023 as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. I haven't seen it yet, but from the trailer it looks very cheap, like an Epic Rap Battles of History video or something.
0:53 so my husband is a musician, and this past fall he played for a number of showings of the original movie using a reconstructed version of the original orchestral score. The original school was a small chamber of Orchestra arrangement.
First video of yours I have seen (it was recommended to me by RUclips). I am very impressed. The editing is terrific. The research is very, very good and the narration is superp. It is not too fast, as some are wont to do (usually out of nervouseness). It is not AI nor does the narrator sound pretentious and, in fact, has a wonderful speaking voice. A Thumb UP from me (a former Renfield (on stage) and I just subscribed.
I am watching this too early. Will be back once i’ve seen the latest in theaters! But also, wow this makes me want to watch the og expressionist film before the latest one. Complete the trio even if i’ve watched out of order. Thank you for letting us know it’s in YT✨💐💃
I first watched it at home, and then later in a theatre with a live quartet doing the score. It was an interesting experience live, but honestly, watching it at home in a small screen by myself with teeny, tinkly, old-timey music made it all the scarier for me.
Silent films back then were accompanied with live in house classical orchestras or an in house pipe organ musician (like in church). Silent films were rarely ever watched in silence. Unfortunately a lot of sheet music that accompanied these films have been lost.
Having just finished Bram Stoker's novel, just rewatched Murnau and Herzog's, and just caught Eggers' film in theaters, I could not be in a more perfect place to enjoy this. Happy New Year to me specifically.
Crazy to see you here. I'm a big fan of your vids.
I haven't read the novel, only know about it from various reference and movies. Which movie adaptation struck the most so far?
i was laying around with my family and sat straight up to explain to all of them the importance and elation of this video being released
I do that for all bkr videos tbh, each one is a an event❤❤
Did you sit straight up, Nosferatu style?
What no Shadow of the Vampire?
@@WillJBaileyit's probably left out because it's supposed to be the Murnau version. It's technically different, but for our purposes it's just another look at the original. Not a remake.
regarding family: I'm trying to get my sisters to watch the 2 versions and then go to the cinema to check it out. They are resisting at every turn.
The newer Nosferatu focuses on personal tragedy, where is the original was on societal tragedy... I kind of think it actually fits given the fact that with social media we're kind of in our own worlds. We're and the systems that we live in more focused on the impact to sell then to society.
Isabelle Adjani deserve her own Be Kind Rewind essay. Her career worth a video.
She is a truly magnificent beauty of Algerian-German origin yet also so alluringly French. She has a unique beauty and talent.
YES!!!
Yes! All the way yes!!
And all the to how she ended up in The Perfect Couple from Adele H.
Agreed!
I find it interesting how Dracula in Last Voyage of the Demeter looks more like Orlok, while Orlok in Eggers’ Nosferatu looks more like Dracula as he’s described in the novel.
I actually thought the films were connected at first, just sort of assumed ya know, was actually a little disappointed when I realized they weren't
Demeter is the Greek Goddess of Harvest and agriculture and because of that she is linked to things like fertility and the life cycle. Her daughter Persephone was stolen by Hades and tricked into eating 6 pomegranate seeds in exchange for her freedom she would spend 1 month for every seed she ate in the under world, again a connection to the life cycle and seasonal change.
Dracula and the vampire creature are connected to things like decay, death, sterility and disease mostly fear of syphilis. The monster comes to England from a barren decaying land, which is the usually how the monsters home land is portrayed. He comes in a ship with the name of a goddess promising health and fertility and regeneration, but it secretly hides a monster that is only capable of death, destruction, disease. It’s a direct inversion of the Christian moral order where Christ gives his blood so that other may live while the creature takes the blood of other so that he may live, same in Harry Potter.
Dracula and the monster are both creatures of the modernist project which is what spawned the horror genre. Dracula and the monster are the revolution
You wrecked a good review with all your phobias😂 and xenophobic which I don't know what the hell even means😂
@@patrickroy3380 Fear of the other or aliens, real or imagined, whether from another nation or another planet.
@@nathanirby4273 Last Voyage of The Demeter is a really weak movie so I can't remotely guess why your brain thought they were connected?
Idk i think the connection between orlok and nature in eggers' version is pretty central and explicit. He literally says that he isnt evil, he isnt a monster, hes simply unending hunger. And his depiction as a walking corpse is much closer to nature--all the rot and bloat and blood and jaundice are all so bodily and are a central part to nature and the natural cycle of life and death. The extension of his powers and the sort of vague ever-presence he has, to me, depicts him as more a force of nature than a monster
"An adventure story about a real estate agent"
Bwahahaha!
And what a delight is is to listen when Werner Herzog speaks a bout fiilm
Ikr? I love him sm
I disagree that the new version removes thematic elements in general. Yes, it's no longer a plague movie about the societal trauma of mass death, as you put it, but it adds much more depth to Ellen's character to the point where it essentially replaces the plague reaction commentary to the sexual repression, abuse and isolation, superstition around women's health and purity obsession and the societal reactions to those things. I think it does a disservice to the film to just call it a horror movie about nothing more than scares.
Totally agree with this! The 2024 version kept reminding me of Rosemary’s Baby in how Ellen, because of the time period, is completely at the mercy of the men in her life (neglectful, incompetent, selfish) when it comes to her own health, and sexuality. She finally claims control when she willingly gives herself to Orlock to kill him at the end.
I completely agree and wrote a similar comment
Can't agree with the finishing remarks of this video essay - that Eggers' adaptation 'misses the opportunity' (or however it was said in this video) to discuss social issues and how society is affected by mass death, etc. I think that's just expectations borne from the previous iterations. Which, btw, address a particular country's experiences. This version is more universal, in a way. It speaks about very raw, human emotions and is not just some standard horror, it's dark folklore.
i think… you’re trying too hard to make it deep. the story wasn’t structured like that at all.
Agreed. The fact that I'm in a comment section about a movie right now speaks to how effective this movie was at triggering reflection. Like in The Witch, he has nailed something deep, disturbing and true about our collective history to follow men into ridiculously misguided pursuits against the rational advice and ultimately at the sacrifice of women.
@@gounch.1186 I'm not trying anything, the movie has many levels if you're looking to dig into that.
@@dopetone You know, I didn't see it this way but now that you mention it... Guy: let's settle next to this deep, dark forest. I'm sure it's safe :D
I dragged one of my sorority sisters to see the Herzog version. It wasn't her thing and cemented the rule in my group of friends not to ever let the film geek pick the movie! I am looking forward to seeing Eggers version.
Your friends are gay
I get it.
It’s disappointing sometimes when you find out that your friends don’t understand/appreciate art, lol
I adore Herzog's version, it's so wrapped up in the late 70s Eastern European surrealism that it's often breathtaking. The Danse Macabre is one of my favorite scenes in film, period. A
Oh it was wonderful. I’m glad I watched eggers’ first so I wouldn’t compare the three. Herzog made brilliant choices, one of my favorites being when Ellen and Dracula first officially meet, and she rebukes him. Although I really do appreciate all three!
Too bad Kinski is such a horrible person
The coffins? WH had zero budget, but he still made things visually supreme.
I'm amazed that in 1922 the German court stayed strongly on the side of one single English woman who sued a whole German production company.
Why? Germans were not in the grip of the national socialist party yet. The country was a center for groundbreaking cinema in the 20s.
@@sjc4 I didn't refer to the national socialism of later years. It's just astonishing that 100 years ago the German court took one foreign woman so seriously who took action against a whole German film company. As you wrote - Germany was a center for groundbreaking cinema, which was surely connected to a certain pride and power.
@@sjc4Germany had also just finished fighting a massive, catastrophically deadly, and losing war with England only four years before.
I remember loving Werner Herzog's version. I watched it and the original for a German film class. Both were great :3
The ending was questionable, but a beautiful eerie movie.
still my favourite version
That's one of the very FEW remakes that I actually like (along with Invasion of Body Snatchers 78, The Thing 82, and Scar Face 83). In fact, kinda pathetic that THAT movie is over forty years old and remains generally overlooked, while this new one gets hyped through the freaking roof before it's even released.
Gotta say: when you mentioned how sped up film is usually associated with comedy, I instinctively thought of "Benny Hill". Imagine my delight not 15 seconds later when that song started playing!
Great video as always!
Happy New Year!
Which is why, when I watch it on RUclips, I slow it down to 75%. It’s much better that way, I think.
I did laugh audibly when the Benny Hill theme played
I’ve been attempting for days to explain to people in my life all the connections and differences between all of the movies but confusing everyone more in the process, so I’m just gonna send this to people from now on. Amazing job, per usual! ✨
I would say that Eggers film has more to say about sexual repression and mental illness. It was Ellen’s continuous dismissal and isolation that brought the blight of Nosferatu on the community. Sexist pseudoscience is mentioned throughout. For example, Ellen is made to wear a corset at night to keep her womb in place, and the word “hysteria” is used liberally.
Ellen’s repression & depression being so dangerous is interesting to me as we live in a time where male loneliness is more often framed as an overt threat. The “lone wolf” trope of the man whose isolation causes him to lash out with violence against innocents is subverted in the character of Ellen. While Ellen ultimately dies to end the plague and save her husband, she is also assigned a large amount of power, power tied up in what has almost always been dismissed.
We live in a “post” pandemic world. But we are also observing a backslide in female autonomy, and in a time of unprecedented loneliness and ubiquitous depression.
“A back slide in female autonomy”?
I mean really depends on where you live so in places like Minnesota and New York they have expanded female autonomy in the realm of “the choice” they have more power and more say in their “healthcare” choices. And to be fair in some places they have curtailed “access”
It’s so great that you find such significance in a word like “hysteria” in this context which is obviously covering up sexual repression, but when I say words like “the choice” and tropes like “female autonomy” they are said in an attempt to actually cover up what is really going on. IE the ending of a life or… redrum. That is just fuckkking fantastic.
Isolation certainly is a running theme in all horror, isolation, but more than isolation “total alienation”. People are usually taken aback when they read Frankenstein and find the most able to talk and read the Greeks and bemoan his station 😂he essentially wants a partner but being a creature a monster he is doomed to that soul crushing alienation that is the cause of his own demise. The alienation theme is powerful and always at the core of the genre whether it’s in “lifeboat” where the victims are adrift in the expansive ocean. 2001 a space Odyssey with them trapped in space. The walking dead or any zombie movie with a kind of “last hold” out element such as “dawn of the dead” holding out in a Shopping mall and “the walking dead’s” holdouts at the ranch, the prison, and Alexandria.
The creature is Id. Its passion free from any moral apprehension. The creature is an inversion of the Christian “myth” of the Christ figure. The lord sheds his own blood so others may live the creature sheds the blood of others so he may live.
It’s actually incredible too that you use the words “power” when describing the ordeal. From an occult perspective to obtain “power” one usually has to purposefully defile the laws of nature to have it reveal its every to you which is why Shelly was largely invested in incestuous relationships.
The creature is the inversion of the Christian ethic and if you understand the Frankenstein myth and its connection to Newtonian physics and what that meant for the modernist project then you get the myth. Dracula was the Modern Prometheus after the advent of Darwin’s “on the origins”.
Technically speaking the kinds of relations you are thinking of are by all standards a “perversion” of nature.
This 100%. I think this video misses that entirely, to focus just on the plague element. Sure, this isn't a Covid movie (and honestly I think it'd be weaker if it was), but instead it's about what Ellen's sacrifice actually means, the societal reaction to abuse and women's health and trauma, and the sexual repression / purity obsession that was key to the period and threatens to pop up time and again today. Changing the dismissal of Ellen's concerns from the plague's cause to Orlok himself as a personal threat makes it scarier *because* it's personal and because of the focus on those above themes
Nailed it.
@@k--musicwhich is very similar to the theme of The Witch. In both movies Eggers does an excellent job illustrating all the unnecessary grief which was conjured by misguided men dragging innocent people into their doomed adventures against the better judgement of anyone with common sense.
I reacted to this upload the same way Aragorn reacted to the beacons of Gondor being lit :D
And the fandom shall answer!
Best response XD
Okay fineeee I'll rewatcj the LOTR movies again.
!!!!!!exactly!!!!
Eggers' version delved a lot into the idea of Amor Fati with Ellen, as well as themes of agency and taking responsibility for one's actions.
The idea of Amor Fati, the backbone of stoic philosophy, really ought to have been discussed here in terms of new things brought to the table by Eggers' interpretation.
Herzog's version is so beautifully done. I rewatched it tonight, and it is so eerie and haunting.
I really love all three versions. I think Eggers' version is my favorite film of 2024.
What an amazing day to be a BKR fan!
I agree that there was room for perhaps a larger commentary and the use of Orlok as a symbol like in the previous adaptations but (like you said) I can't fault Eggers for not going that route. However, I think he does use this character and the symbolism on a smaller scale. Not representing the fallout of a global pandemic but rather it can be argued the Orlok character representing the trauma/ptsd/shame that women deal with/dealt with at that time. To steal a comment I read, "I love how it seemed like Orlok was portrayed almost as a manifestation of the trauma and mental anguish she experienced in a society that demonizes feminine sexuality." Given the themes of The Witch, I would not be surprised if that was Egger's intention.
Love your work!
This was my interpretation too. Mental health is scary enough, I can’t imagine how it felt back then. Just fully not listened to, with zero agency, and seen as diseased, delusional. And the fact that Ellen is not a virgin (at least spiritually) makes the sacrifice feel more empowering to me. She makes her own choice, and by being unashamed of her desires, subdues her traumas hold over her and, by extension, evil itself. Her conversation with the van Helsing character was one of the best additions- making clear that in another time period she wouldn’t have had to die.
Absolutely! Honestly, the verismilitude approach worked really well in that sense too, a ton of the horror for me came from all of the ineffective things that the doctors were doing to Ellen during her possession episodes, because all of that was not far off from how a real epileptic woman would be treated during that time. Hell, it's only very recently that first aid instructors will tell you *not* to restrain someone having a seizure (because it's not like you're going to actually stop it, you're just going to risk hurting yourself or the patient), mental ailments are just still something we don't know enough about. Combining that with women's health concerns being ignored all throughout history, as well as the fact that it's the 1830s and people just generally don't know much, and the root of the problem might as well be something as cryptic as the actual devil!
Whenever one of your amazing videos drop, I pick a house chore I’ve been avoiding, and get lost in your incredible research and perspective as I exercise double self-care :) love these lengthy essays! I always learn something and watch something result of your reporting.
Finally, the one topic I've always wished BKR would cover! I still need to watch Egger's movie, so I won't watch this video just yet, but thank you so much for making this
You should know what you look like, right? lol
Isabelle Adjani's ethereal beauty is unmatched 😍😍😍
49:39 this is a very well done comparison of the three works. Though, I disagree with the assertion that the dialogue is just an exposed framework for the story and is an afterthought because of Eggers’ need to maintain the story structure, the tableaux. I think the actors did a phenomenal job with the dialogue and really expressed the psychological and emotional horror that they all were enduring; primarily, Thomas and Ellen.
What a comprehensive, well-researched and thoughtful examination of the Dracula/Nosferatu phenomenon. I love all three films, and they all have their comparative strengths and weaknesses. And I agree: Herzog's eerie bacchanal is one of my favorite cinematic moments of all time. Well done, and well-worth a subscription!
"Dracula, the guy who invented necking" is a banger joke.
When I discovered your channel, I went back and watched every video. The subject matter, research, quality and your incredible voice just hooked me. Thank you for what you do, it's very much appreciated.
Thank you!! 💖💖💖
Does this video includes the Spongebob version?
Go to 33:25
Mostly agree with your analysis, though I do have a slight issue with your analysis of Eggers version. I think there was social commentary, just not of the same kind as the others and as someone who saw it first, then watched the others, it only made me more confident it’s not shallow as you seem to imply
The 2024 Nosferatu mustache is supposed to look like Vlad from the painting if you think about it’s classic mustache villain you’d be scared of which fits perfectly.
I'm a fan of all three for different reasons, as well as most Dracula (and Drac adjacent) films. Thank you for this insightful break down. So nice to learn a lot about the behind the camera stuff going on.
I live in the same city were the 1979 version was filmed, I see those streets daily and it always makes me think of the movie.
the best new years gift a Be Kind Rewind video. love from Romania
I’m glad Harry Styles didn’t play Thomas in 2024 nasferatu >.< I remember hearing that he was originally going to
The first time I saw Nosferatu, I was kid. It was in park at night. They showed movies outdoors during the summer. It was so spooky. I loved it.
0:48 Huh. I've never seen a pic of Eggers, and if you'd asked me to describe him, I 100% would have imagined an older, more gnarled type.
I mean bro does look like a Nord
I’m so glad you acknowledged SpongeBob. So I’m weird and despite being a kid in the early oughts, I actually saw the original Nosferatu YEARS before I watched Graveyard Shift. But even though the ending had been spoiled for me, Graveyard Shift instantly became my favorite SpongeBob episode when I saw it in my twenties.
Eggers had a VHS copy that was completely silent without orchestra. The first VHS I bought as a kid was 1925's The Phantom of the Opera - no orchestra, completely silent. It's amazing what we interpret when our senses are shut out. Especially with horror films. Another genius approach to film and filmmaking by our beloved BKR.
Call me crazy but I appreciate a bold aestheticist like Eggars. Cinema is a visual medium and sometimes the images are all I need and they were certainly all I needed with this. I loved the intimate closeups between the vampire and Ellen and how terrifying and romantic and tender they were at once and the idea that this poor girl who had some extra sensitivity drew evil onto herself and everyone around her, touched on some themes of queerness and mental health and the burden the person with a different POV has to carry ... I've seen all of Eggars's films and they all left me cold (Norseman was VISCERAL but I admired it more than loved it) but this one really got me. I also felt the bringer of plague thing was nailed home for me ... maybe again because I usually read horror via a queer lens, that the scary outsider that lands in the port brings plague to this otherwise upstanding town where you too can have your precious golden twin girls adorably praying every night and a gorgeous Christmas tree to boot ... living through AIDS and all the ways we were accused of bringing disease (via bodily fluids natch)! My date turned to me after the movie and asked "are the straights ok?" I'm really a little surprised at the cold shoulder Eggars' film has gotten critically, but c'est la vie. If Coppola's Dracula managed to amass a following so will this.
Love this!!!
Dracula and the vampire creature along with Frankenstein’s monsters are many things. The insistence of viewing horror through a “queer lens” is telling the vampire certainly it stands for homosexuality among other things. In movies like “interview” and “the hunger” the metaphor is front a center but it’s there also even in stoker’s. The connection between the vampire creature and sterility and sexual perversion and disease has always been a core symbol at the heart of the story.
The vampire creature does promise disease and decay and death you are right but you’re reading it backwards. The creature’s homeland is usually always portrayed as barren and desolate, the metaphor for tainted, contaminated or corrupted blood should be apparent, that explains so much of F W Murnau’s film and you can imagine the context of what that means in a 1920’s Germany during the Wiermar years with a nationalist pan German revolution brewing in the mix.
The most well known trope from stoker’s version is the ship trope. The name of which is Demeter which is the name of the Greek Goddess of the harvest and agriculture and because of that fertility and life cycles and regeneration. Her daughter who was taken prisoner by Hades ended up making a deal for having eaten 6 pomegranate seeds where by she would stay in the underworld with hades for 6 months and get to go be with her mother 6 months out of the year so she has a direct connection to the life cycle. The ship is coming with the home of the harvest and bounty and regeneration but the specimen it carries brings only decay and disease and death. This isn’t “a queer lens” on the myth, it is the myth. You actually seem to want to sympathize with the monster, the very thing that spells our doom. The creature while certainly homosexual is really sexual perversion which what homosexuality precisely is, a perversion. The creature also represents syphilis.
Mary Shelly and Percy Bishe Shelly and all the romantics were deeply effected by the revolution in France as where most all the English radicals of that day. Dracula was the myth after the advent of Darwinian biologism had won out over Newtonian physics as the “vital elan” of the modernist project. The connections between Dracula and Frankenstein are salient enough to where it’s hard not to talk about one without the other and they were deeply influenced by the enlightenment and the modernist project as a whole.
The vampire creature certainly does stand for “queerness” movies like “interview” and “the hunger” the metaphor is front and center, but it was always there even in Stoker’s original version. The vampire stands for among other things disease, death. Decay, sterility and more directly syphilis. The creature usually comes from a land that’s desolate, barren and after the advent of Darwinian biologism and the eugenics movements at the turn of the century ideas of “contaminated” or “corrupted” blood are apt metaphors in Murnau’s version for a Germany in the mist of a failing republic and a nationalist revolution promising a new Germany free from the contaminate.
The ship the creature comes on is called “Demeter” she is the goddess of the Harvest and nature and because of that has connections to the life cycle and regeneration and fertility. Her daughter who was kidnapped by Hades was forced to spend six months in the underworld and six months free from hades as a compromise for having eaten 6 pomegranate seeds. So she has in Greek mythology a direct link to life cycles.
So the ship is named for a Goddess promising Harvest, agriculture, fertility and regeneration, but it houses a specimen that carries death, disease, sterility and decay linked to it. The creature is a direct inversion of the Christian ethic where Christ gives his blood so that others may live the creature takes blood from other so he may live, the same thing happens in Harry Potter.
The horror genre is largely linked to the modernist project in fact they invented it. Dracula is a more popular story but I think as far as myths go Frankenstein started it all and while vampires are far more popular in all kinds of media, videos games, movies, books, tv shows, Frankenstein has had a more profound impact on the genre. Everything from Horror to sci-fi owes its roots in Frankenstein, but not just the genre but the various tropes. The “zombie” trope and the “clone” sci-fi trope start in Frankenstein and get played out in Hitchcock’s “lifeboat” and Carpenter’s “the thing” and even “the walking dead” and do I have to spell this out for movies like “them” and “specimen”?
You are correct in assuming that that Ellen’s interaction with the vampire is a stand in for some form of sexual perversion that usually doesn’t end well. In Bram Stoker’s novel Johnathon Harker actually contracts a “mysterious” sickness after having come into contact with Dracula’s wives. He writes in his diary about it he talks about the “voluptuousness” of his mistresses and how red and sticky hot their lips are but their breathe smells like death, like that kind of iron bloody smell. He can’t write about what happens only that something happened and while he is recovering in a Budapest convent a nurse over hears in his mad ramblings something of what happened but when questioned by Mina the nurse swears to her oath that she will not reveal the “mad ramblings” of the sick. Harker gives Mina the dairy and tells her to read it or not read it to do what she will and never speak of it again. She decides not to read it and never to speak of it again. Harker did something less than holy with those ladies and caught something, then he passed it on to his wife.
The creature is Id, its passion free from moral apprehension. “How dare you sport thus with life” the creature is a stand in for the moral apprehension that got repressed and because of that someone did something and now they have to pay for it, but as Victor Frankenstein found out it’s those around us who usually pay for our sins, the monster kills both his brother and wife then him. In Dracula Harker infects his wife with his same mysterious illness and in alien the greedy capitalist allows gets his comeuppance and the horny teenagers are always the first victim of any slasher that knows his role. 😂
There’s far too much to discuss and RUclips keeps deleting my post it takes me like 40 mins to re write the whole thing every time. Would love to discuss Mary Shelly and Percy and Godwins and Wordsworth and the occult revival that lead to the great horror genre’s in Gothic England and Expressionist Germany but there really is too much. It’s really moral apprehension in the face of the modernist project. All the horror greats were bone fide modernists Stoker, Shelly, Murnau, all the Romantics heavily involved in alchemy and the occult and just like Victor Frankenstein working to “learn the secrets nature has to hide”
@@Person0fColor "Queerness" means strange or weird and was only used in that context during the time Dracula was written. The modern use of that term should not be used in interpretations of it. It also cannot be used in the modern context when applied to "Interview" because it was written in the 70s about events that happened in the 1700 and 1800s to the characters.
"Are the straights ok?" LMAO that's a funny thing to ask when almost everyone was affected by events from the past few years and when extremists on both sides are throwing temper tantrums when they don't get their way. Gay people are also affected by the crappy economy same as straight people and if you can't see how similar we are in that regard, I don't know how to help you. You're also reading way too much into the movie.
"He MUST devour her. he IS an appetite." I got chills! Fantastic video
(That Charli XCX moment where Nosferatu is "yassified" made me wheeze-cackle out loud lol)
That line got me. It was so indicative of psychopathic behavior in general. People always want to know a “why” and that we the best why possibly delivered.
Herzog from the 70s is my new crush
I love the fact that the new one was shot on super 35mm, gives it a real retro look and feel.
Baby, wake up! A new Be Kind Rewind video has arrived! 😮
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
Love your drag race videos!
no literally
Oi! Hello! I also adooooore "Be Kind Rewind !" 😂❤
qween is everywhwere
While I understand that Eggers not focusing on the plague can seem dismissive four years after COVID, at this point, I think a chunk of audiences would have seen it as pandering, if he did.
The plague is there it’s in the background, that’s where I want it, I want a film about the person not the plague.
Overall, it goes to show that society right now left the pandemic quickly (mentally speaking) and want it in the past, they don’t want to be reminded of it 4+ years after.
I really loved the 2024 Nosferatu. And I'm not afraid to say it's one of THE BEST horror movies I've ever seen in my life. What a treat to end a horrible year.
Agree 💯 but the mustache really threw me off
@madtitanangelo5079 It's the Vlad the Impaler mustache!
Sort of looked like Freddie Mercury or Omar Sharif
@@westfield90 yub thank you 👍👌 was looking for that 😂
Horrible year?
Do you mean for you personally?
08:51 you already made my day
This is an excellent analysis of the three main versions of this story. I was surprised how straight forward and traditional the structure of Eggers version was and I understand your disapointment the film didn't lean harder into allegory and surealness. Your writing and research were both on point and made me eager to rewatch all three films. Keep up the great work!
Another brilliant essay. LOVE your channel. Keep it coming: you do have fans!
i lovedd eggers’ version! this was definitely one of my favorite releases this year for sure. and you can tell for a lot of people that this was either their first eggers film or gothic horror from the discourse brewing around.
stories like this are always going to be “problematic” if we apply modern standards to it. which we shouldn’t, especially within the realms of gothic fiction where monsters are exactly that: monsters. orlok is a predator but he’s also the object of her desires. it’s an allegory for abuse but it’s also a romantic fantasy. it’s meant to be grim and dark. i’m not sure why people are so adamant to twist the story by infantilizing ellen when both the actors and the director himself say otherwise.
Orlok is also meant to be a figment of mental illness, such when he was a figment of Death in Herzog or Facism in Murnau. It's using Orlok as a base monster to underline contemporary pressure of the times or a universal fear we all share.
@@daltonanderson3718yes!
This was Eggers favorite story growing up as a kid. He focused on what he liked from the original goth story as a kid. It makes sense that he didn't focus on the historical context in which the original movie was made but in the context of the time when the story is taking place. If you know Eggers you know that criticism doesn't make any sense to him
@@daltonanderson3718 how did you land on orlok representing fascism in the silent film?!
@@macsgrave Krakauer's essay that German Expressionist films of the 1920s serve as warning of the leaning tide of Fascism slowly creeping in from the shadows to take dominion and that it's of the willingness of the public to be under their control.
I appreciate all the context!! Something that struck me with the Eggers film was the line, you could have been a priestess of Isis in another time. I don’t know how many other films have entirely explored that concept and having the main heroine in that archetype. But I thought it was unique and meaningful :)
I watched Murnau's Nosferatu for the first time in high school (early to mid-2000s) and it genuinely terrified me; maybe that's just because as a kid/teen I was exceptionally wussy when it came to horror (iirc the only other character that scared me as much as Orlock was the Queen from Snow White in her old-hag disguise), but silent films can definitely still hit modern audiences the way they were meant to!
I remember seeing Murnau's Nosferatu as when I was about 9 or 10 on PBS in the late 70s (part of as Silent Film retrospective) and it gave me more nightmares than any horror film I had since then, including The Omen or The Exorcist!!
Saw the original in college, and unless you're a real film nerd yeah it needed updating. I don't think Eggers's goal was to recreate German expressionism, and I enjoyed the expanded role and LRD's performance. I saw the 2024 version as more of an examination of how mental health issues manifest and how little we knew about them at the time. Ellen as a symbol is one thing, Eggers tried to make HER human. In my opinion. And I find Herzogs movie so freaking slow lol.
I look forward to being able to look back at the new one with the same scholarship and study that the others have enjoyed. I am sure that there is plenty of symbolism in Egger's version that hasn't had the luxury of time to be fully appreciated and I personally can't wait for that to happen!
Kind of amazing how Nosferatu is so much its own thing that its characters have their own Wikipedia pages, separate from the Dracula versions.
Something else I find interesting is that both this new film and the original came about not long after major pandemics and they both feature them as a major part of the plot where Dracula didn’t include one.
31:20: I always had a private feeling Herzog's Nosferatu was the most overtly bisexual Dracula adaptation (add to what you said the fact that, to become a vampire himself, according to some vampire lore -which, as we know, can change from version to version- Jonathan would have had to suck Dracula's blood himself)
It's very interesting to me that the newest version discarded that focus on "bringer of the plague" after the horrors of COVID. It's something modern audiences would absolutely connect with in their very real, recent trauma.
I disagree. I think Eggers’ version is very much a bringer of plague.
@@maxo8917Yes, but it's just background noise, it doesn't add anything to the characters.
@@DeltaSpartan141 He kills 2 of the main characters directly with the plague what do you mean?
name one single good piece of media that centers COVID in its text. I'm not sure why but there's an inescapable and inherit cultural cringe to COVID; the lockdown fatigue is still so palpable that any work which attempts to explore or unpack it cannot be met with anything but an exhausted eyeroll.
how im feeling now by charli xcx, is the exception as the single good COVID work.
My college roommate was OBSESSED with vampires- this was a good 10yrs before Twilight, oddly enough- and I've sat through every atrocious vampire movie known to man. There are more of them out there than you might think. The one I found the most intriguing was- of all things- Eddie Murphy's "A Vampire in Brooklyn" (1995). It's a very unique, African-American twist on the old Dracula story and I really liked it. It's one of those films that looks like a joke on the surface, but actually went way harder than it needed to. I would, in fact, rec it to anyone interested in Horror/Vampires as a fun little aside to the genre that deserves more love and recognition than it gets.
I'm going to check out that Eddie Murphy vampire movie. I love when supposedly lightweight comedies have more depth - sometimes more than supposedly "deep" dramas!
I love Eddie. This was missed. ruclips.net/video/_Q8b-UT-0f0/видео.html
Excellent analysis. For anyone binging different versions of Nosferatu, I would also highly recommend season one of "Penny Dreadful".
Great content on these Classics!
There are plenty of Nosferatu film analysis RUclips videos coming off of Eggers' movie, and this is the best, and only one anyone actually has to watch.
I really loved all the detail and intrigue in this video, but I’m a bit disappointed in what seems like a lack of investigation into the thematic components of Eggers’ changes. I agree that Eggers tightens the focus of the narrative away from larger societal issues, but disagree with the idea that that tightening doesn’t bring up anything new in the process.
Seriously, and imo it keeps just as much societal issue exploration as the original, it just changed the issues from those surrounding the plague to those surrounding Ellen. It's a bit of a shallow read to just see that the plague isn't the focus and determine that as removing theme entirely. Instead, it changed which themes were most prominent. That's fine for a remake to do imo.
You're so amazing at what you do. As a cinephile we are blessed to have you.
Amazing review!!
I find Eggers focus on personal trauma rather than wider societal ills to be very poignant commentary (intentional or not) about where we find ourselves in the mid 2020s.
Fantastic look through the three films. Nicely done!
This is EXACTLY the video essay I needed in my life, thank you
Every video is a banger. This was so thoughtful!
Great analysis. Well written, sourced. The first movie made me a lifelong fan of film and cinema. Herzog is worth a deeper dive on his own. Thx!
Great Presentation 👌
8:51 I actually got JUMP SCARED by this edit 😭
On a road trip now! How did you know I needed an hour long video on this topic for this occasion?
Wow I’ve never seen a crystal clear version of the 1922 version as you show here. Plus this whole video is so interesting and informative. Thank you.
I think there is an AI remastered 4k version on YT, there is even a 4K colourised version of Metropolis on YT I saw.
Excellent discussion, BKR. The original 1922 Nosferatu and 1979 Herzog film are unnerving and unsettling and the visuals tend to last a while in my head. Nosferatu got me thinking of Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Although Bergman's Death was famously "unknowing" vs Nosferatu, who is painfully aware of all he is missing.
"Dracula Dead and Loving it" was my first Dracula and Vampire movie EVER and when I first saw it as a kid I thought it's actually scary (and brutal). That it's a comedy helped me not being TOO scared of the concept. But some things are so over the top, in my childs mind they were horrific. (Like the autopsy scene for example, i had nightmares of that)
Watching it today it doesn't have the effect anymore, but I appreciate it as my entry point to Nosferatu/Dracula Stories.
There's something interesting that Robert did in tying the film much more to believing women. There's a very striking chapter in Dracula where Dracula comes into Minas bedroom and sucks her blood and Bram very clearly makes it an allegory to SA especially how Mina describes it after the fact. I don't have enough to say to link this to the most recent film but I do think there is some sort of thread Robert is pulling at
There is indeed a thruline in the new version of no one in Ellen's life believing her and her trauma, and the way the blood sucking was depicted was very, nay, extremely explicit in what it represents
Coppola's version is #1, not even debatable. Werner Herzog's one comes in at #2, closely followed by Polanski's comedy version at #3 (the cinematography is great in that one as well, regardless of it being a comedy).
to me the 2024 film is more about the main female character being silenced or numbed about having maybe mental illness , or sexual desires, or trauma and how that leaded her to wish for a demond/monster to come to her.........
There's also a lesser known Nosferatu-film from 2023 (with Doug Jones).
this is by far the best video about Nosferatu!
I remember the first time I saw Nosferatu as a child, and it scared the ever living shit out of me. I'm in my 40s now and it still gives me nightmares.
Another movie that gives me the creeps is Valerie's Week of Wonders, which is in the Czech new wave genre. One of characters in that movie reminded me of Nosferatu and the movie gave me nightmares as well.
There was also a 2023 remake with Doug Jones. They kept the orginal film and added the new actors with cgi.
That must have been... something.
Where can I watch that?
I just watched Nosferatu 2024, and I took from it that ‘the grotesque’ is something we must accept as part of us and face to try to move past it. I feel the grotesque is somewhat representative of the current time, given some of the recent occurrences of the last few years. But that was only my interpretation.
Last night the '79 Nosferatu popped up in my suggestions. Now I'm thinking it's been so long since I watched the original version, it'll be like watching it for the first time all over again.
Shadow of the Vampire shouldn't be overlooked, Willem Dafoe did the best performance of Count Orlok only after Max Schreck's.
Incredible analysis. Thank you for making this. Herzog’s adaptation is one of the most influential films of my life.
You analysis of Eggers movie confirms pretty much every concern I had. Eggers is the horror genre's Christopher Nolan. A technically gifted film maker with vision and an uncanny ability to bring ideas to life with high aesthetics and fidelity to the time period/scientific concepts they wish to depict. And depict them, they do. In jaw dropping detail.
BUT
The emotional aspects, the storytelling and the deeper meaning with all this spectacle and attention to detail, is mostly puddle deep and tells you little to nothing about the human condition.
I have watched The VVitch, The Lighthouse, The Northman and I plan on watching Nosferatu as well, but every time I watch a Robert Eggres movie, I prepare myself for an emotionally hollow experience.
I go through the same with all of Nolan's movies. All of them are fantastically made and none of them have stayed with me or touched my soul in a way that made me contemplate my own life and how I live it.
Their movies are like talking to a really cool guy on a date and you feel his passion for his job and his hobbies and he is really good at what he does, but at no point does he let you in. At no point do you feel like he is showing you who he is on a deeper level and when you leave the date you just feel like you learned a lot about this man's interests, but you have no fucking clue who he is deep down.
There is a lack of vulnerability and it makes it difficult for me to connect with Eggers and Nolan movies.
I felt that way when I watched Nosferatu, but I think there was good depth to The Lighthouse.
I like Eggers, and i LOVE Dracula. Love the silent Nosferatu. Did not like Eggers Nosferatu. How you gonna use Orlock but NOT the iconic look.
Couldn't disagree more.
@@andymontanez56 Okay well i could agree more so whats your point
looking forward to the extended cut, it did seem a little edited down
I very much disagree with the conclusion that the new film is not ripe with interpretations. I agree that it's more focused on the personal, but there are still many ways to interpret Ellen's experience with Orlok and how she is treated by those around her.
if I had a nickel for every Robert Eggers movie featuring a young woman whose sexuality is viewed as a threat by the society she lives in and is also intimately tied to the demonic force menacing her immediate family, driving a wedge between her and her support system . . .
well, I'd have two nickels but it's weird that it happened twice.
Its like you are living my dream amd make them reality when you make these videos. Like you broke into my subconscious and ploop out amazing content that I feel is made specially for my brain. Thank you for making the end of the year happy.
Kudos to Eggers for making his own art and not falling into the stale trap of using an existing story to slip in COVID commentary. Why would you want that? We can’t escape artists who try and fail to “say something” about modern times via classic stories. Eggers’ devotion to returning to the sheet music is the more unique radical approach in this hyper-politicized, everything must beat you over the head with subtext age we’re in.
Exactly! Thank you!
I'm glad you think you're smart.
The 1979 film is here on RUclips too.
Indeed. I need to watch them both.
I absolutely loved this documentary I can’t wait to see your other work.
Yay, comparison video! These are my favorite.
I loved the new movie. The atmosphere is heavy, the visual storytelling is impactful, and the performance are over the top. This movie is a statement.
Loved the film and really appreciate your analysis! Happy new year!
There's a fourth version of Nosferatu that you've overlooked (though that's possibly for the best): director David Lee Fisher funded a remake on kickstarter back in 2014, to be named Nosferatu: RMX with Doug Jones as Count Orlok. Due to numerous unspecified production delays, it was pushed back and pushed back with nobody involved in production saying why, only to be finally released on streaming in October of 2023 as Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror. I haven't seen it yet, but from the trailer it looks very cheap, like an Epic Rap Battles of History video or something.
0:53 so my husband is a musician, and this past fall he played for a number of showings of the original movie using a reconstructed version of the original orchestral score. The original school was a small chamber of Orchestra arrangement.
First video of yours I have seen (it was recommended to me by RUclips). I am very impressed. The editing is terrific. The research is very, very good and the narration is superp. It is not too fast, as some are wont to do (usually out of nervouseness). It is not AI nor does the narrator sound pretentious and, in fact, has a wonderful speaking voice. A Thumb UP from me (a former Renfield (on stage) and I just subscribed.
I am watching this too early. Will be back once i’ve seen the latest in theaters! But also, wow this makes me want to watch the og expressionist film before the latest one. Complete the trio even if i’ve watched out of order. Thank you for letting us know it’s in YT✨💐💃
The mere thought of watching "Nosferatu" (1922) in complete silence seriously scares me.
I first watched it at home, and then later in a theatre with a live quartet doing the score. It was an interesting experience live, but honestly, watching it at home in a small screen by myself with teeny, tinkly, old-timey music made it all the scarier for me.
Silent films back then were accompanied with live in house classical orchestras or an in house pipe organ musician (like in church). Silent films were rarely ever watched in silence. Unfortunately a lot of sheet music that accompanied these films have been lost.