Sightlines · reception
How Nosferatu the Vampyre was received
1979 · Werner Herzog · Nosferatu the Vampyre on Sightlines
The arc
In 1979 it drew respectful but divided notices — a Silver Bear at Berlin, yet plenty of critics called it a slow, sacrilegious retread of Murnau. Today it's canonized as one of the great vampire films and a peak of the Herzog–Kinski partnership, with the 2024 Eggers remake sending a fresh wave of viewers back to it.
What’s debated
The eternal cinephile debate: which Nosferatu reigns — Murnau's 1922 original, Herzog's, or Eggers' 2024 version — with Herzog partisans insisting his is the most haunting and detractors calling it beautiful but inert.
Its footprint
Kinski's pallid, rat-fanged Count is one of horror's most reproduced faces, and the film is a fixture of every 'greatest vampire movies' list; every new Nosferatu or Dracula adaptation gets measured against its images.
Where it stands
A load-bearing pillar of the Herzog–Kinski canon and a Letterboxd horror-cinephile rite of passage — the arthouse vampire film you're expected to have seen.
Did you know? Herzog shot the film twice, scene by scene, in German and English — two complete versions with the same cast — and famously imported thousands of white lab rats that had to be dyed gray for the plague scenes.
Named by the director
- Nosferatu (1922) — Herzog called Murnau's original the greatest film ever made in Germany and conceived his version as a direct homage to it.
- F.W. Murnau — Herzog repeatedly cited Murnau as the ancestor he was reaching back to, framing the remake as reconnecting postwar German cinema with its Weimar-era legacy.