In Conversation with...Paul Cuff on Nosferatu (Robert Eggers, 2024)

Such a pleasure to talk to Paul Cuff on Robert Egger’s version of NOSFERATU. He knos so much that the discussion of the film unfurls into a discussion of the various other versions, Murnau’s original (1922), Herzog’s version (1979), David Lee Fisher’s version (2023), and onto the films of Guy Maddin, Pablo Berger’s BLANCA NIEVES (2012), various versions of THE STUDENT OF PRAGUE and even THE ARTIST (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011), which Paul loathes. We were entertained by, enjoyed -- with reservations -- the rich visual world of Egger’s version, the thick and dense sound, and we praise Nicholas Hoult as the emotional anchor of the film. But Paul articulates his uncertainty about whether the film was a parody of itself or the genre or Nosferatu in its various incarnations. The film seems to be drawing on Murnau, Herzog, Caspar Friedrich’s paintings. But it seems to create a world in which God ostensibly exists but no one seems to believe in the ideology that would sustain this. Paul notes with interest on how Eggers credits the screenplay of the original Nosferatu but not Murnau, the director. Paul highlights how Nosferatu was itself a rip-off of Bram Stoker’s work and the significance of the titles of the most prominent version (Nosferatu, A Symphony of Horror (Murnau) and the German title of Herzog’s version, Nosferatu, Phantom of the Night.) What all versions have in common is that they’re all about sex and death, all about sex and the maiden; all versions have Nosferatu as a sexual figure as well as a figure of death and pestilence, How does Egger’s version sit on the shoulder of previous versions and what does it add to them? We discuss our love of the performances of Max Schrek and Klaus Kinski and much more in the podcast below: