Nosferatu The Vampyre (1979)

Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) has a considerable reputation, with some critics deeming it better than F.W. Murnau's original. Yet this viewer found it underwhelming. Despite creative imagery and a pitch perfect Klaus Kinski, Herzog's movie largely feels like a pale imitation. Only in later passages does Nosferatu take flight.

Herzog adheres to Murnau's story while restoring Bram Stoker's character names. Jonathan Harker (Bruno Ganz) goes to Transylvania to sell land to Count Dracula (Klaus Kinski). Dracula returns to Harker's hometown of Wismar, where he takes up residence while spreading disease. Harker returns but seems traumatized (or worse) by his encounter with Dracula. That leaves Harker's wife Lucy (Isabelle Adjani) to confront the vampire.

Nosferatu starts slowly. Herzog recreates the original iconic line by line, often shot-for-shot: the trip through the Carpathians, Harker's tense dinner with Dracula, Lucy sleepwalking, Dracula's shipboard rampage. To be sure, Herzog's artistry is unmatched: Jorge Schmidt-Reitwein provides languorous photography, complemented by Popol Vuh's classics-inflected score. Yet it seems more tasteful homage than original movie. When a remake adheres so closely to the original it can't help feeling superfluous.

Fortunately, Nosferatu gradually gains momentum. Once Dracula arrives in Wismar, Herzog grafts his own vision to the material. He expands on Murnau's rat motif, with hundreds of teaming creatures decimating the town. Herzog stages surreal scenes as Wismar descends into funerals and anarchy, a pagan saturnalia presided over by rodents. In one darkly humorous passage, a surviving official demands Van Helsing's arrest - even though there's no town council to pass laws or no police to inform them!

Herzog stakes his ground by subverting pieces of Dracula lore. Professor Van Helsing (Walter Landengast) is a skeptical busybody who poo-poohs Lucy's warnings. Renfield (Roland Topor) mainly annoys Dracula, who sends him on a ghoul's errand to Latvia. More striking is the fate of our nominal protagonist: Harker grows weaker and weaker, Dracula apparently casting an amnesia spell on him to get in with Lucy. But Lucy won't be had, becoming the heroine by default. It leads to a low key but disquieting finale.

Klaus Kinski owns the film. Besides his striking makeup job, Kinski gives an usually muted, sensitive performance. He mixes Max Schreck's ratlike wraith with the tragic angst of most Draculas: he laments his inability to age, die or be loved, an ugly monster with an incurable curse. It's an interesting fusion that serves Nosferatu well, allowing Kinski one of his most unique performances.

Kinski's costars, unfortunately, don't measure up. Bruno Ganz, an actor rarely lacking in passion, is understated to the point of dullness. Even Harker's end revelation adds little. Isabelle Adjani does well in a role mainly requiring beauty and bafflement. Walter Landengast and Roland Topor prove awkward comic relief; Herzog doesn't know quite how to handle their alternate characterizations.

Despite some striking moments, Nosferatu the Vampyre isn't the sum of its parts. Those seeking a different take on this familiar story might enjoy it.

Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror

The granddaddy of all vampire movies, Nosferatu (1922) holds a special place in cinema history. Todd Browning's Dracula (1931) established the standard screen vampire with Bela Lugosi's sinister, sexy count. But F.W. Murnau's work holds up better through its uniqueness: almost a century later, few vampires evoke the same dread.

The story follows Bram Stoker's Dracula, with names and locations altered. Realtor Knock (Alexander Granach) sends Thomas Hutter (Gustav von Wangenheim) to Transylvania, offering property to mysterious Count Orlock (Max Schreck). After a frightening journey through the Carpathian Mountains, Hutter meets Orlock. Back in Germany, Hutter's wife Ellen (Greta Schroeder) starts sleepwalking, dreaming of meeting the Count. Orlock brings plague and death with him upon arrival in Germany. Hutter enlists Ellen in a desperate scheme to eradicate the vampire.

Nosferatu came at German Expressionism's height, in-tune with baroque dream pieces like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. Murnau faultlessly mixes mood and technical invention. Different color schemes provide character themes: yellow (usually) for the Hutters, green for Orlock, red for the countryside. Murnau adds more surreal touches: under-cranked scenes of Orlock loading coffins; a photographic negative for Hutter's entry into Transylvania; Ellen envisioning a beach strewn with headstones. Murnau made other worthy films like Sunrise and Tabu but none quite match his artistry here.

One sequence guarantees Nosferatu immortality: Orlock's shipboard passage to Germany. Most Dracula films elide this scene; Murnau makes it Nosferatu's key set piece. Murnau builds the scene with crew members falling ill, tormented by feverish visions of the vampire. A crew member busts open the coffins, finding dozens of rats. The climax with Orlock bolting rigidly upright still has the power to scare viewers 90 years later. Murnau intercuts the scene with Hutter traveling overland, adding urgency and menace.

Murnau eschews the romanticism which not only Stoker but J.W. Polidori's The Vampyre instilled in vampirism. With ratlike claws and rodent teeth, Orlock is neither seducer or tragic antihero but an unstoppable, elemental Evil. Murnau sublimates Stoker's sexual symbolism for disease and decay. Orlock arrives with an army of rats in tow, spreading plague. His victims don't even receive immortality, just death. Many see Nosferatu as metaphor for Weimar Germany, presumably with Knock as a Spartacist inciting Bolshevik-vampire subversion. But a surface read is unnerving enough.

Max Schreck dominates any discussion of Nosferatu. No, he wasn't really undead as Shadow of the Vampire posits, but was by all accounts a strange and eccentric actor. Schreck's other films have faded into obscurity, while Count Orlock remains iconic. Terrifying makeup aside, Schreck shows silent film acting at its best. His cadaverous features play into a primarily visual, with habitual awkwardness and brusque, animal mannerisms.

Other actors are perhaps more interesting for back stories than performances. Greta Schroeder makes a radiant love interest. She remained active through the Nazi era (including a role in the infamous Kolberg), her last film coming in 1953. Gustav von Wangenheim, a Communist, fled to the USSR and played a minor role in Stalin's show trials. Alexander Granach stands out as the gnome-like, gleefully repulsive Knock. Granach became a venerable Hollywood character actor with roles in Ninotchka, Hangmen Also Die! and For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Even if not conventionally scary, Nosferatu still commands respect. Few other vampire movies are as unsettling, with an antagonist not tragic or human but monstrously evil. This approach, along with Murnau's strong direction, makes Nosferatu an enduring classic.

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days

German cinema has produced a number of really excellent period dramas in the past decade: Downfall and The Baader-Meinhoff Complex chief among them. Their thematic honesty, unflinchingly addressing Germany's troubled past (the Third Reich, left-wing terrorism), is highly commendable: would that Hollywood were half as brave. Neither are these stuffy British period dramas with good-looking actors in pretty costumes acting in service of dull scripts and stories. There's real drama, passion and originality in these films that makes them unique and extremely valuable.

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005) is a truly remarkable film. The second major film about Sophie Scholl's brave stand against Nazism (after Michael Verhoeven's The White Rose (1982)), it's one of the most moving and powerful films made about Nazi Germany. Long on talk and thematic concerns, it's nonetheless gripping from beginning to end, with director Marc Rothemund and star Julia Jentsch providing a powerful story of pure, unremitting decency in the face of oppression.

Hans (Fabian Hinrichs) and Sophie Scholl (Julia Jentsch) are two young students studying in Munich during the Second World War. The two are members of the White Rose, a clandestine anti-Nazi group who distributes leaflets questioning the Nazi war effort. Sophie and Hans are arrested and subjected to intensive interrogation, refusing to reveal to Gestapo Inspector Mohr (Gerald Alexander Held) the names of their accomplices. The Scholls realize just how high of stakes they're playing for, when they're charged with High Treason and threatened with execution. But Sophie refuses to bend even an inch, ignoring offers to save her life by betraying her comrades or to recant her politics.

Plenty of films have been made about the military resistance to Hitler, from Night of the Generals to Valkyrie, but those hand-wringing equivocators aren't half as moving as Sophie Scholl, a 21 year-old medical student whose simple decency and conviction shakes the foundations of the Third Reich. Sophie isn't a naive babe in the woods like Anne Frank, but a very conscious and conscientious protestor. The military experiences of her brother, friends and fiance have turned her against the war, and Sophie's vague knowledge of the Holocaust and other atrocities makes Nazism unpalatable. Her interrogators lambast her as an ungrateful fool, unable to see how a privileged and intelligent girl could dare act against their institutionalized evil. That she's a decent person with a mind and conscience of her own never occurs to them.

Often forgotten is how sensitive Nazi Germany was to public opinion. The Nazis were, of course, an absolute dictatorship, but they'd also come to power on a slim plurality vote and constantly feared the German public turning against them. The T4 program, with the euthanization of the crippled and mentally ill, had been shut down in 1942 due to public outcry and church pressure. Thus, vocal dissenters like Sophie and Hans pose a very real threat to Nazi credibility and power, especially during wartime. So afraid of them, indeed, is the Nazi leadership that Roland Freisler (Andre Hennicke), the frighteningly-hammy judge of the People's Court, is brought in to prosecute them. Of course, their prosecution of the Scholls only brings their evil into stark relief, as any regime that considers 21 year old pamphleteers a moral threat is irredeemably loathsome. Virtue stands little chance of winning, but it scores an irrevocable moral victory.

Dramatically, Sophie Scholl is extremely powerful. The film contains long arguments about politics and philosophy that could be boring in other hands, but Fred Breinersdorf's script pulls no punches. Mohr's pompous pronouncements on Nazi are convincingly deflated by Sophie's moral bluntness: basic good is unmovable in the face of convoluted, torturously-justified bad. It's no less compelling a "drama of conscience" than the genre's best work, like The Passion of Joan of Arc and A Man for All Seasons, and its relative immediacy makes it arguably more affecting than either.

Rothemund's direction is solid. Most of the action takes place indoors, but the film retains a crisp pace and Rothemund manages some fine stylistic touches; a few bits are heavy-handed (especially the coda) but it's an admirably restrained and direct bit of storytelling. Reinhold Heil and Johnny Klimek's moody score is also memorable.

Julia Jentsch gives an exceptional performance. She avoids making Sophie a saintly character without diminishing her basic good. She's very much a real twentysomething girl, with relatable dreams, interests and personality, who's nonetheless willing to die for her conscience. Certainly, she's one of the most compelling and original protagonists you're likely to meet, and Jentsch is nothing short of spectacular.

Fabian Hinrichs is solid; we see far less of Hans than Sophie but he still makes a powerful impression. Gerald Alexander Held's Gestapo chief makes a superb antagonist: he's a dedicated Nazi functionary given a glimmer of humanity, being both frustrated and grudgingly impressed by Sophie's conviction. Andre Hennicke's Freisler is alternately comic and terrifying, the perfect embodiment of Nazi evil. Smaller roles are ably handled by Florian Stetter, Petra Kelling, Jorg Hube and Maria Hofstatter.

Sophie Scholl: The Final Days is a superb film that explores tyranny and human decency in a wonderfully unique and affecting way. If nothing else, it shows that, despite seventy years of books, films and documentaries, there's still plenty of interesting, thought-provoking material to be culled from Nazi Germany, if only one knows where to look.

Downfall

Oliver Hirschbiegel's Downfall (2004) is a disturbing, perversely fascinating film depicting the end of Nazi Germany. Making excellent use of an ensemble cast and excellent script, it uses the Third Reich's final days to show how sick and depraved it was.

April 1945. Nazi Germany is on its last legs, with the Red Army on Berlin's doorstep and the capital reduced to rubble. In the Reichstag Bunker, Adolf Hitler (Bruno Ganz) and his cohorts try to run the country, still deluded with hope of victory. Hitler's loyal secretary Traudl Junge (Alexandra Maria Lara) grows disturbed by Hitler's erratic behavior and rages, debating whether to stand by her Fuhrer or try and escape. At ground level, fighting rages in the streets, with poorly-armed Hitler Youths and die-hard SS troops opposing Soviet tank columns. Defiant General Weidling (Michael Mendl) is spared from execution only to be put in charge of the city's defense; SS Doctor Ernest-Gunther Schenck (Christian Berkel) desperately tries to help wounded soldiers. As defeat becomes inevitable, Hitler, wife Eva Braun (Juliane Kohler), Joseph Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes) and others decide to die rather than live in a world without National Socialism.

Innumrable books and films have explored facets of Nazism: its hypnotic and domineering leader, its political strength and popular appeal, its criminal and genocidal nature, its monstrous warmaking, even its perverse sexual elements. The objectively evil Nazis are catch-all bad guys in Hollywood, and a convenient punching bag for bellicose pundits: how many asinine "Bush=Hitler" comparisons have been aired the past ten years? It's easy to dismiss discussion of Nazism as cliche (especially if you're Pat Buchanan or David Irving), but there's a reason it's discussed sixty-five years later: Nazi Germany was the purest distillation of human evil in history. Good authors and filmmakers know there are still lessons to be mined from the Third Reich, and Hirschbiegel finds many.

Downfall portrays Berlin as a living Gotterdamerung: Hitler and Co. obliviously cling to hope of victory; Nazi fanatics fight to the last, preparing for death one way or the other; Heinrich Himmler, Albert Speer and others try and escape; others drink, whore and celebrate, resigned to their fate. It's a bacchanalia of death and destruction, with attempts of retaining normality (Eva Braun's dance party during an artillery barrage, Hitler's wedding, the Goebbels children singing a Nazi anthem) striking perverse notes. No film has captured the hideous, dying spasms of a monstrous regime more thoroughly and disturbingly than Downfall.

Most of all, the film shows the logical ends of fanaticism. Hitler's insane rants seem tame compared to actions of his devoted followers: the scene where Goebbels's wife (Corinna Harfouch) methodically poisons her sleeping children is truly horrifying, a portrait of pure evil at work. Above ground, teenaged Hitler Youths and SS soldiers kill each other rather than surrender, and roving gangs of Gestapo thugs lynch anyone found in civilian clothes. Murder is second nature in a Fascist regime, where loyalty to an ephemeral, unattainable cause supercedes family ties, self-preservation and human decency.

If there's any criticism to be had, it's that the scenes outside the Fuhrerbunker are often lacking. The details are extremely effective, but the overarching subplots are ill-used and don't amount to much; certainly they lack the vicious intensity of the scenes inside the Bunker. After Hitler and Goebbels pass on, the movie drags out for another half-hour, losing much of its narrative drive as our surviving protagonists try and escape.

Hirschbiegel's direction is straight-forward but well-done. There are no big battle scenes, just snippets of violence in the streets, with Rainier Klausmann's stark photography emphasizing the chaos and hopelessness of the situation. The bunker itself is wonderfully used, its claustrophobia trapping Hitler and Co. rather than isolating them, and proving a suitable crypt.

Bruno Ganz is inevitably the center of the film. He is absolutely rivetting as Hitler, conveying the Fuhrer's unspooling madness, his destructive nature, and occasionally conveying a humanity that makes his destructive evil that much more chilling. I do not agree with critics who claim that Ganz makes Hitler sympathetic: they make him human. There's a huge difference. Ganz is a good enough actor to recognize this, and gives one of the decade's best performances.

The rest of the cast is no less impressive. The incredibly beautiful Alexandra Maria Lara (The Baader-Meinhoff Complex) shines: her Traudl is neither innocent nor fanatical, but convincingly an ordinary girl in an impossible situation. Juliane Kohner is equally impressive, playing Eva a flighty girl who would never think to question the Fuhrer. The rat-faced Ulrich Matthes makes a truly hideous Goebbels, with Corinna Harfouch equally repulsive as his wife. Christian Berkel (Inglourious Basterds) does well in a small but crucial role, but Thomas Kretschmann (Valkyrie) is ill-used.

Downfall is a fascinating, horrifying film. It is perhaps cinema's best depiction of Nazi Germany's perverse evil, showing that even the hoariest subject can be made fascinating.

The Baader Meinhof Complex

The Baader Meinhof Complex (2008) is a fascinating political drama. Depicting one of the more infamous left-wing terrorist groups of the '70s - the German Red Army Faction, aka the Baader-Meinhof Gang - it eschews editorializing, depicting the terrorists as young, reckless, ideologically-motivated and extremely dangerous thugs.

West Germany in the early '70s. A demonstration against the Shah of Iran turns violent when police side with Iranian students and attack the demonstrators. Along with an assassination attempt against leftist Rudi Dutschke (Sebastian Blomberg), this convinces a clique of left-wing malcontents - including young lovers Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) and Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek) and journalist Ulrike Meinhoff (Martina Gedeck) - that West Germany is no better than the Nazis. They form the Red Army Faction, engaging in a wide range of terrorist activities, from assassinations and bombings to bank robbery and kidnapping. Even after the original gang members are killed or jailed, a new "generation" of terrorists escalates the violence.

The Baader Meinhof Complex does excellent job of exploring the nuances of terrorism. The movie shows us the environment which created the RAF - the time of Vietnam and radical demonstrations across the world - but doesn't excuse or endorse their actions. Perfectly-crafted montages contrast the RAF's lofty rhetoric with the consequences of their actions - destroyed buildings, killed and maimed victims. Certainly, it's unnerving that a democratic state like West Germany could resort to fascist methods towards dissenters. More unnerving still, however, is the RAF, a group with no program beyond violent nihilism, who nonetheless gain wide public support.

The RAF were better organized, and certainly more successful, than American equivalents like the Weathermen and the Symbionese Liberation Army. But the movie shows them as, essentially, rowdy spoiled-brats with guns. Baader and his buddies fire guns during a joy ride, steal cars for fun, bicker childishly and treat their training in Jordan as a vacation. Their radical leftism seems a fig leaf for more personal motivations, particularly in Meinhoff's case; her failed marriage spurs her into collusion with the young hotheads. It's the generation gap turned into open warfare.

The movie's one weakness is the subplot with government official Horst Herold (Bruno Ganz). In these scenes, we're treated to a lot of hand-wringing by well-intentioned but clueless adults, demanding that we find the "root causes" of RAF terrorism. This might be okay, except we never get such an exploration, either by the film or the characters themselves, and these scenes appear unnecessary.

Perhaps the film's point is that the causes are beyond understanding - there are injustices in West Germany, but surely nothing to warrant machine-gunning officials to death. And nothing short of a global revolution will satiate the likes of the RAF anyway. Their ideology may well be sincere, but its practicality and morality are highly questionable, as the film shows. The film leaves it up to the viewers to decide, and a more left-leaning writer than myself will likely have a different perspective.

Uli Edel (Last Exit to Brooklyn) provides excellent direction throughout. The shootouts and bombings are perfectly staged, the movie is beautifully shot by Rainier Klausmann, and as mentioned above, Alexander Berner's use of montage and editing is exquisite. There's also a nice, driving score by Peter Hindertuhr and Florian Tessloff.

The cast couldn't be better. Martina Gedeck (The Good Shepherd) is excellent, channelling her personal resentment and indecision into a political cause. A cotiere of young German talent - Moritz Bleibtreu (Munich), Johanna Wokalek, Katharina Wackernagel, Alexandra Maria Lara (Downfall) - shines as the principal terrorists. Bruno Ganz (Downfall) gets rather a thankless role.

The Baader Meinhof Complex is a truly great film, and one of the best of the last decade. If it leaves some questions unanswered, it's certainly to it's credit; the RAF is not subject to easy classification, except as a bloody tragedy for all involved.