‘Nosferatu’ rises again, building on the worlds that came before

“Nosferatu” began its undead life in 1922 as a silent, unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel “Dracula.” But F.W. It all starts with Murnau’s original, which gave us the towering, severe and altogether terrifying Max Schreck as Count Orlok some nine years before Bela Lugosi played the count as a suave Lothario in Tod Browning’s “Dracula.” Still a favorite on the repertory scene, where it plays with musical accompaniment from live ensembles and now, thanks to the Silents Synced series, Radiohead’s “Kid A” album, the original “Nosferatu” matches an indelible performance with a director who would reach his peak as an avant-garde sensualist five years later with the dark romance “Sunrise.” Klaus Kinski and Isabelle Adjani star in Werner Herzog’s 1979 “Nosferatu the Vampyre.” The earlier film showcases Murnau’s already fluid camerawork, particularly his command of shadow play and low angles that made the 6-foot-3 Schreck seem like a force of otherworldly evil. “To be unable to grow old is terrible.” You can picture him slinking off to a goth club to sway and stare away the night to the strains of Bauhaus’ “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.” Bela Lugosi portrays the evil Count Dracula as a suave Lothario in Tod Browning’s 1931 classic “Dracula.” Which brings us to the new “Nosferatu,” which works splendidly in relation to the other two films and as its own feverish entity. At times this “Nosferatu” owes a debt to “The Exorcist,” as well as a more esoteric horror movie, Andrzej Żuławski’s “Possession”, which stars Isabelle Adjani, who played Lucy Harker in Herzog’s “Nosferatu.” Another fun game of connect-the-“Nosferatu”-dots: Willem Dafoe, who plays the Van Helsing-like Albin Eberhart von Franz in Eggers’ film, got to play a very Method Max Schreck in the “Nosferatu”-inspired lark “Shadow of the Vampire”. Willem Dafoe stars as Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz in director Robert Eggers’ recent release, “Nosferatu.” There’s a fierceness to the romantic doom of the new “Nosferatu,” a muscular fatalism achingly vulnerable and ferocious, feminine and masculine, both and neither.