| NOTE: This article is about the 1979 remake version of Count Orlok and Dracula. For information on the original Orlok film, its 2023 and 2024 remake and the original Dracula novel, please click these four here. |
| “ | Listen... listen. The children of the night make their music. | „ |
| ~ Count Dracula |
| “ | Death is cruelty against the unsuspecting. But that's not what I perceive as cruel. Cruel is when you can't die even if you want to. Give me some of your love... | „ |
| ~ Dracula to Lucy Harker about cruelty. |
| “ | Time is an abyss... profound as a thousand nights... Centuries come and go... To be unable to grow old is terrible... Death is not the worst... Can you imagine enduring centuries, experiencing each day the same futilities? | „ |
| ~ Dracula on his Immortality - his most famous quote. |
Count Dracula is the titular main antagonist of Werner Herzog's 1979 film Nosferatu the Vampyre, a remake of the original 1922 film Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror, and its novelization (written by Paul Monette). He is based upon the original character, Count Orlok, as well as the character from the original novel.
He was portrayed by the late Klaus Kinski, who also portrayed another version of the character in the 1988 pseudo-sequel Vampire in Venice, Loco in The Great Silence, R.M. Renfield in Count Dracula, and Lope de Aguirre in Aguirre, the Wrath of God.
Personality[]
| “ | This vampire is someone millions can identify with. He personifies the mingled sadness and desire of people who want to kill themselves because they can't live without physical and spiritual love. | „ |
| ~ Klaus Kinski in a interview[1] |
Unlike the original character, this version of Dracula is a tragic character who is weary of an eternal life spent alone in the dark, thirsting for human blood while yearning for human company that he can never have.
Biography[]
At the beginning of the film, when he invites Jonathan Harker to his castle, he bites him during his sleep, infecting him with the vampiric curse and eventually travels to town. He has managed to already bring the plague to said town, killing hundreds, including every last one of the authorities.
Now aware that something other than the plague is responsible for the death that has beset her once-peaceful town, Harker's wife Lucy desperately tries to convince the townspeople that something evil is at work, but they are skeptical and uninterested. With help from Jonathan's friend Abraham Van Helsing, she finds that she can vanquish Dracula by distracting him at dawn, but at the expense of her own life. She lures the Count to her bedroom, where he proceeds to drink her blood.
Lucy's beauty and purity distract Dracula from the call of the rooster, and at the first light of day, he collapses to the floor, petrified. Van Helsing arrives to discover Lucy, dead but victorious. He then drives a stake through the heart of the Count to make sure Lucy's sacrifice was not in vain, killing the count. But in a final, chilling twist ending, Jonathan Harker awakes from his sickness, now a vampire, and arranges for Van Helsing's arrest. Harker is last seen traveling away on horseback, stating enigmatically that he has much to do.
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Trivia[]
- According to the director Werner Herzog, this version of Dracula is "not a monster, but an ambivalent, masterful force of change. When the plague threatens, people throw their property into the streets; they discard their bourgeois trappings. A re‐evaluation of life and its meaning takes place". Dracula's actor Klaus Kinski also stated; We both see Dracula a little differently from F. W. Murnau's film. We see him more sympathetically. He is a man without free will. He cannot choose and he cannot cease to be. He is a kind of incarnation of evil, but he is also a man who is suffering, suffering for love. This makes it so much more dramatic, more double‐edged.[2]
- Kinski's makeup process as Dracula was applied by Japanese artist Reiko Kruk, and was inspired by Count Orlok from the 1922 film. Kinski had to sit for four hours every day for her to shave his head, pale his skin, affix rat-like teeth, sculpt pointy ears, and attach long sharp nails to his fingers.[3]
- Fabio Giovannini describes this version of Dracula as "without doubt, the most repugnant vampire in cinematic history".[4]
External Links[]
- Count Dracula on the Nosferatu Wiki
References[]
- ↑ "I Become My Characters" [nytimes]
- ↑ Dracula Is a Bourgeois Nightmare, Says Herzog
- ↑ "Nosferatu Reawakens: An Evening with Werner Herzog and a New 35mm Print of Nosferatu the Vampyre"
- ↑ [Giovannini, Fabio (1997). Il libro dei vampiri. Dal mito di Dracula alla presenza quotidiana (in Italian). Edizioni Dedalo.]
