Nosferatu (Herzog)

I watched Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the other evening, and then I watched it again with the director's commentary. Not many directors' commentaries are worth listening to, but Herzog's always are.
It is, of course an extraordinary film, with the matchless Bruno Ganz playing Jonathan Harker and the incomparable Klaus Kinski as the vampire. Kinski was a notoriously difficult actor to work with, but somehow Herzog managed to coax some of his finest performances out of him. Actually performance is something of a misnomer, as he inhabits his characters rather than produces a performance. In the commentary Herzog says Kinski was, for him, extremely biddable and caused very little trouble; normally he would pick fights with crew members, and stage fearsome tantrums on a regular basis. His portrayal of the vampire has an extraordinary humanity, which is largely absent from other versions. Nosferatu here is needy, imprisoned by his ungovernable desires. He is acutely aware of his condition and of its implications. Kinski brings the vampire to life; there's an extraordinary scene in which Ganz as Harker, cuts his finger. The vampire knows that he must, and will, suck Harker's blood, but, at first, turns away, almost in horror and disgust with the knowledge, before suddenly pouncing. In the commentary Herzog states that Kinski performed the scene in a single take, and was entirely self-directed. Kinski seems to have understood the vampire on a visceral, instinctive level, producing an extraordinarily moving performance, giving the vampire a fragile, needy dignity and vulnerablity.
In the book, Herzog on Herzog, he states that, although he is actually on the screen for only 17 minutes, his presence dominates every single scene, such is his power, and that in the next 50 years no-one else will be able to produce a performance that comes close to it. I have to agree; Kinski is mesmerising.
Of course, as with all Herzog's films, music is central, and the film is meticulously scored, with beutiful and unearthly music from Florian Fricke, who scored several of his films.
Herzog talks about his motivation for re-making Murnau's famous 20s film, one of the classics of German Expressionism. He needed, at this point in his life, to reconnect with the roots of German cinema, as he puts it, 'a declaration of my connection to the very best of German cinema' and with the German cultural heritage, which had been so savagely breached by Nazism. He succeded triumphantly with this beautiful film, and went on to make Woyzeck immediately afterwards, using the same crew, and Kinski. So, the next one on my list!