Have you ever watched a movie that was so radically different and extraordinary that it changed the way you watched movies forever?
When I was a sophomore in high school, our school’s film club chose a German film that none of us had heard of for the first inaugural screening. It’s name: Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht.
Our moderator, an English teacher who often integrated his obsessive love of film into his teaching methods, suggested the film. He spoke enthusiastically about it, and we learned that it was a 1979 remake by director Werner Herzog (most recently known for his critically acclaimed documentary Grizzly Man) of F.W. Murnau’s 1922 silent horror classic Nosferatu, itself a retelling of Bram Stoker’s gothic novel Dracula. It was October, and we all agreed that it sounded appropriately spooky.
When the screening rolled around, I had no idea I would be watching a film that would radically change the way I thought about cinema as a medium.
There is one scene in particular that puts me in awe. Jonathan Harker, a young estate agent, is in the middle of his long journey to Transylvania to deliver property papers to a nobleman named Count Dracula. He walks through winding roads and past churning waterfalls, and stops to rest for the night. As Jonathan sits on a rock overlooking the valley, the camera turns to reveal a stunning shot of the Carpathian Mountains as the clouds slowly envelop the evening sky. This shot is set against the E flat major triadic-drone of the “Rheingold Prelude”.
A lesser director would dismiss this inspiring scene as a waste of time but, with Herzog, the journey becomes the plot and the viewer is completely taken in by the scenery and music. You actually feel as if you are dreaming, no small feat for such a low-budget film. It made me realize that I had preconceived ideas about what the pace of a movie should be. I had to give it my full attention and patience, just the same as I wouldn’t rush a butterfly that was emerging from its cocoon. This film was completely different from anything I had ever seen, and I felt inspired by the thought that there could be so much more that could be accomplished on film than I had ever imagined.
This movie has one of the strangest sound tracks you will ever hear. A German experimental rock band, Popol Vuh, composed a trance-inducing score of demonic men’s choirs, sitars and theremins characterized by cyclic, deceptively simple sequences of notes that results in music that’s both sublimely soothing and disorienting.
Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht will be playing at Webster University on Saturday, Nov. 1 at 8 p.m. Go see it! (It’s one foreign film that’s worth putting up with subtitles).
