#I did also feel like there was A LOT of Penny Dreadful in Ellen’s characterization particularly but that’s neither here nor there

[goblins-riddles-or-frocks]

Copying over my thoughts about Nosferatu (2024) feeling more in conversation with Coppola Dracula than either Nosferatu film— primarily because Tumblr DMs simply do not have a search function, and I would like to keep it to look back on

I’m probably going to have to rewatch to have firmer opinions. But at the moment:

For me the biggest departures were in the character of Count Orlok and the general narrative style and how the film imparted its themes

In the former case, I personally felt he was pretty squarely just Dracula. In the book, Dracula is narratively presented more as a force of nature than a fully dynamic character. He’s introduced at his most like human and approachable in the Jonathan at the castle segment, and then from that point on he’s less and less present as a character, rather than something terrifying that’s happening to the protagonists

Both earlier Nosferatu films, by virtue of having a much smaller scale of plot, end up with Orlok being more present for the run of the screen time. I feel he is also more dynamic? I associate that character more with like shame, deprivation, and a compulsive element to sexual repression and therefore sexual desire. There’s something very raw and nearly vulnerable about him between both Schrek and Kinski’s portrayals

Dracula, by contrast, I associate more with power, and control, and the themes of deviance presented more through excess. As the progenitor of Orlok, the above characteristics are present in him as well. But Nosferatu, and Orlok are basically like black out poetry to Dracula. In pairing down other elements, and emphasizing specific things, the end result is very different

In Eggers’ film, the emphasis on Orlok demanding Thomas call him by his proper title, that they are not equals, and that Orlok is his lord, and the later emphasis on the power he has over the Renfield character (I cannot remember his name lol) all feel decidedly Dracula esque, where the focus is more on pride for a faded glory days, and the desire to rule (tying to the novel’s preoccupation with decrepit aristocracy vs the new Victorian age of a modern middle class) rather than a sort of cringing, tragic shame. As does the general colder, more emotionless portrayal, and the line where he says “he is an appetite.” The latter felt the most to me like an attempt to thread the needle between the pestilence and compulsion specific themes happening with Nosferatu, and Dracula as a force of nature. But it still felt like a stronger lean towards Dracula on the larger scale

Re: narrative style, I feel like the Eggers film was also much less interested in the surreal, more intuitive tone the Murnau film set with its Expressionist style, and that the Herzog film followed up on. It was much more logical and about the collective cast of characters trying to figure out The Rules, and best Orlok that way. (It’s a very culturally anglophone approach)

As for it as a rebuttal to Coppola Dracula specifically, I definitely got that sense with Orlok’s general characterization. Where it went out of its way to portray and style him as like a faded Transylvanian warlord but decidedly leaving out the Vlad the Impaler backstory the Coppola film introduced. (Which, I mean they couldn’t really do with Orlok anyway, but it still felt pointed to me, because it’s something that book fans complain about a lot wrt the 1992 film and its impact on the pop culture perception of the character) Additionally, the specific way it handled scenes where Ellen goes into her trances, did feel like commentary on the Lucy scenes and how they had been more eroticized. Where here it’s so very not. The very first scene in the movie goes on to show her moaning in a field (reminiscent in setting to the wolfman assault scene in Coppola) and then ending it on her having a seizure. The use of seizures for horror itself feels a bit stale, but it gets the point across. As does the later reveal that she was probably meant to be an adolescent at that point. The way they shot her sleepwalking outdoors also just felt visually similar to me

There were a lot of little things with the side cast too. Harding particularly felt so much like a cynical take on Arthur Holmwood. And his interactions with Van Franz (I do wonder why they didn’t just call him Bulwer!) felt very specific to the sort of dynamic that exists in the Coppola film specifically

Willem Dafoe’s Van Franz, in general, felt so strongly in conversation with Anthony Hopkins’ Van Helsing. A complaint I’ve seen a lot from book purists (that I don’t personally agree with in this case) is that he’s so mean and sleazy in that film? And I feel in styling, eccentricity, and the light humor of his interactions, he felt very Hopkins esque but Van Franz is so decidedly kind to Ellen. He’s a very empathetic character throughout the whole movie.

Meanwhile, the blood drinking scenes in the castle being framed as sexual assault is very in keeping with Nosferatu. But how explicit it is, and the highlighting of Thomas as a victim, and its concern with his trauma, again felt like a direct rebuttal to the sexier framing of Jonathan’s time in the castle, and the erotic framing of the Brides drinking from him.

And yes, the way it presented Ellen and Orlok’s relationship (and Ellen and Thomas’s) seemed very much informed by the Coppola movie as well. Definitely the framing of it as more monstrous than romantic, but also her emotions being very fraught and complicated about it felt like it was playing off that? There’s the scene with Mina and Dracula late in the movie where she’s like “You killed Lucy; I love you” basically in the same breath. The emphasis on Ellen having sought out some sort of connection once because of an innate mysterious affinity with him (that itself feeling, to me, comparable to the Coppola specific element of Mina being predisposed to having romantic feelings for and a sense of familiarity with Dracula because of the reincarnation backstory) felt informed by that. The scene early on where she describes her dream of wedding death, the concept, and it’s blissful despite being objectively horrible, or the later scene where she tells Thomas about how her childhood (yikes…) relationship with Orlok was “blissful at first.” The ways that the movie went out of its way to portray nuance in their dynamic and that she may have some degree of mixed feelings but that it’s still unequivocally her being preyed on felt very in conversation with Coppola specific themes to me. (And also the more cynical take on how she would be socially treated for it)

Additionally the top down shot after they’ve both died just felt more similar to the Dracula final shot than either Nosferatu film’s in my opinion