51 Things We Learned from Robert Eggers’ ‘Nosferatu’ Commentary
Physical media is where it’s at, friends, because if you have the movie, you can watch the movie, period. Another reason to love your 4K UHD, Blu-ray, and DVD collection? Special features like commentaries featuring filmmakers, critics, and other film fans. After living for more than a decade elsewhere on the internet, Commentary Commentary has been reborn here at Dread Central – and as is fitting for its return from the dead, it’s now all about the horror.
Writer/director Robert Eggers’ wheelhouse is genre period pieces, meticulously crafted from the ground up to create immersive worlds where horror, adventure, and utter weirdness can thrive. 2015’s The Witch arguably remains his best film, but after detours into Viking bloodletting (The Northman) and coastal insanity (The Lighthouse), Eggers returned to horror by tackling a stone-cold classic.
Nosferatu is Eggers’ biggest box-office hit yet—an impressive feat given it’s a dual adaptation of century-old source materials that have already hit the screen many dozens of times—and it delivers an unflinching look at the nightmare Bram Stoker created in Dracula and F.W. Murnau illegally brought to the screen a quarter century later as Nosferatu.
Now keep reading to see what I heard on the (extended cut) commentary for…
Nosferatu (2024)
Commentator: Robert Eggers (director, writer)
1. The opening production company logos are all based on studio logos from the silent film era.
2. Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgard) is speaking in Dacian, an ancient—and extinct—language that was originally heard in what is now Romania.
3. The vast majority of the film was shot on sound stages built in the Czech Republic.
4. Eggers points out the boy on the ladder at 5:49 working as a clerk. He adds that no one seems to notice the boy and that “I’m sure he has a terrible life.”
5. He always adds an atmospheric haze to his interiors, but he admits they may have gone a bit too heavy with it in a couple of scenes. “It was important to have the period atmosphere.”
6. Eggers also points out the pentagrams and other occult symbols that Knock (Simon McBurney) quickly hides beneath papers on his desk.
7. He worked with composer Robin Carolan to ensure the music embraced both the romanticism and intense horror of it all.
8. “The cat’s name is Greta,” and it’s a nod to Greta Schroder, who played Ellen in the original Nosferatu from 1922.
9. Nicholas Hoult and Aaron Taylor-Johnson have been friends for many years, but this is their first time working together. Eggers found that their existing relationship helped capture the chemistry between their characters.
10. Friedrich Harding’s (Taylor-Johnson) two young daughters are played by Czech actors who’ve been dubbed over by English performers.
11. Nosferatu cinematographer Jarin Blaschke was “alarmed” by the amount of colors and patterns in Harding’s house, but it’s historically accurate. “In fact, we toned it down quite a bit.”
12. Eggers has some notes for himself regarding the scene with a naked Knock in the candle-lit room. “You can barely see the skull and crossbones in the very top of that cabinet, maybe a little too much haze in this scene. You also see, we should have staged it differently with the placement of the book behind him.” It’s the book that Willem Dafoe’s character finds later in the movie.
13. While early landscapes were shot in the Czech Republic, Thomas Hutter’s (Hoult) ride to visit Orlok reveals the mountains of Transylvania. Both locations were used for his walk to the castle, but Eggers made a point of using the “very famous” sandstone pillars at 24:10 that were previously used in numerous films, including Jan Svankmajer’s Faust.
14. The vampire hunter is played by Jordan Haj, who’s actually a Czech pop star.
15. The innkeeper’s mother-in-law who warns Thomas not to go to the castle is played by Gherghina Bereghianu, a non-actor they discovered on TikTok. She’s from Romania and is doing a Transylvanian accent.
16. The virgin on the horse is based on the belief that she can lead them to a vampire’s grave because the horse won’t pass over it.
17. “Trying to sort out the Romanian folklore and how that works with the Nosferatu mythology was a bit of a challenge at times.” One example is the idea that vampires have red faces, so they added those touches only to see much of its visibility lost to the firelight.
18. The crossroads in the forest at 25:10 were difficult to find but worth it. “Obviously, if you think about it, the crossroads should have just as much snow as the side of the road. But if we had done that, you wouldn’t be able to see the crossroads.”
19. One change Eggers made from Bram Stoker’s novel and the many iterations for the screen is that the carriage that arrives for Thomas in the woods has no driver aboard. “We thought it would be even more mysterious and magical.”
20. He says the carriage is an incredible prop covered in elaborate carvings of medieval Transylvanian images, but you can’t see any of it because of the darkness and backlight.
21. The entrance doors to Orlok’s castle were built on location, but the arch within is a real place. It’s actually the same castle that Werner Herzog used for Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979). Eggers didn’t want to reuse the same castle, but they discovered this entrance hadn’t been filmed by Herzog, so he was content.
22. Orlok is wearing iron heels, barely visible to the eye, which were common for wealthy noblemen to wear during this period.
23. Orlok’s speech at the table when Thomas first arrives was trimmed for the theatrical release of Nosferatu. But Eggers likes having it back for the extended cut to recognize Skarsgard’s performance and his creepy laugh.
24. “There was much conversation about how large [Orlok’s] hat could and should be,” and while they landed on the smaller side for the period and Orlok’s position, Eggers still thinks it’s veering on comical.
25. The film’s sound designer, Michael Fentum, added an audio nod to Eggers’ The Lighthouse into the film at 35:00. (Hint: it’s the seagulls.)
26. The contract that Orlok passes to Thomas to sign is written in neolithic symbols found in the Baltic region. “We thought they would be cool for Orlok’s secret, magical language.”
27. While past adaptations of the novel have seen the Thomas character with a photo of his love, “I thought that having it be her hair that he smells would be more effective and also different.”
28. The shot starting at 41:07 looks into Orlok’s library, but the room was never intended to be filmed from that angle. They couldn’t fit the camera beside the desk, so they had to film through the pillars, but they didn’t have time to dress the back wall with the shelves and books. “Those bookcases are actually CG,” Eggers says, adding, “They look great.” They do, but you can hear the disappointment in his voice that they weren’t able to capture it practically.
29. Transylvanian folklore explains that vampires bite the chest, rather than the neck, to taste the heart blood. “Of course, the throat makes more scientific sense, but this is closer to the folklore.”
30. Eggers challenges viewers to count how many times Hoult appears to lose his footing in Nosferatu. “He’s very good at tripping and slipping naturalistically.”
31. The shadow work, usually of Orlok’s hands and silhouette, was done practically and required lots of camera tests. The exception, obviously, is the shot of Orlok’s shadow reaching out over the entire city.
32. The beat where Dr. Sievers (Ralph Ineson) calms Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) with the ether-soaked handkerchief seems to get laughter from audiences. “I don’t mind, but it was certainly not intended.”
33. Thomas’ jump into the river, complete with a camera tilt-down at 50:30, is “maybe one of the only things in the movie that I would think is, maybe we didn’t execute that the best.” He adds, “But you have to have a few things that you don’t like to do better the next time.”
34. Christian Dunkley-Clark is a British expat and plays a hospital orderly here as well as “another role in the film, quietly, secretly, because only he could do it.” That other role is listed as “Raving Maniac,” and the appearance can be seen at 1:38:15.
35. The pigeon-eating gag is done through a combination of sleight of hand (passing the real pigeon for a prosthetic one), CG (the bird’s eyes), and practical effects (hard candy head and pumped blood).
36. He notices at 1:00:28 that the novice nun is holding her cross with her left hand, which would have apparently been sacrilegious. “Oops.”
37. A cross fade occurs at 1:01:16, and he’s pretty sure it’s the only one in any of his movies. “I really like hard cuts.”
38. The theme that plays over Orlok at times is literally meant to pair with saying “Noss Ferr Aa Tuu” with each syllable rising in pitch.
39. Professor Albin Eberhart (Willem Dafoe) stands to hug Dr. Sievers at 1:03:45, and dust arises from the professor. The gag is lifted from 1944’s Tall in the Saddle, which has a scene with Gabby Hayes patting another old prospector with similar results. “I saw it as a kid, and it really stuck with me.”
40. Ellen’s movements on the bed around 1:10:00 aren’t enhanced with CG or editing. “She could even do a backbend more extreme, but it seemed more athletic” than would feel real. The vocal work is all hers, too. The end result is a mix of various recording attempts during post-production.
41. The shot at 1:22:50 of Dafoe looking through the magnifying glass is a nod to Peter Cushing’s frequent use of them in his films. Eggers made sure it’s in this extended cut for “the vampire nerds.”
42. Eggers watches Jack Clayton’s The Innocents twice a year and gives it a nod at 1:25:00.
43. He wanted to make sure Orlok was a real monster and as far from modern vampire tales—romantic, sexy, emotional—as possible. “Bill was often saying, ‘Look, I know I’m like this undead wizard who has all these powers, but where would I feel self-conscious?’” They found the answer during the face-off he has with Ellen at 1:30:00 as his weakness comes clear.
44. Those are real rats crawling all over Anna (Emma Corrin). “I didn’t know that rats are incontinent, so they are constantly urinating and defecating all over Emma during this scene.”
45. He can’t believe they didn’t build those prop coffins out of balsa wood. “They were insanely, insanely heavy. You can see all the struggling that these background characters are doing with the weight of the coffins is real.” A side note on those coffins: the real ones they’re based on have a mechanical release at the bottom so the bottom drops out, which allows bodies to be dropped into a mass grave and the coffin to be reused. “A nice little detail that no one will ever know.”
46. The scene where Friedrich visits the mausoleum contains two “oops” moments that Eggers regrets. First, Friedrich says his daughter’s name is Louise when it should have been Louisa in German. Second, Friedrich spits blood into a shadow on the coffin, so they had to tweak the color grade of the blood to make it visible, with the result being that it no longer looks naturalistic.
47. Skarsgard was forbidden from blinking while on camera, and you can see him struggle during the scene around 2:03:15. The haze in the air made it even more difficult, “but it actually makes him seem more vulnerable, so we kept it.”
48. One unexpected challenge was trying to get the sound design of Ellen sensually “caressing his rotten back holes” to seem disturbing but not comical.
49. Orlok appears to still be slurping off Ellen despite the sunlight pouring over them, but the folklore actually specifies that “the cock’s crow” kills vampires as opposed to literal sunlight.
50. The final shot is a reference to the Renaissance art motif of “Death and the Maiden,” while the specific appearance of Orlok’s bony body is based on Otzi, the Iceman from 3300 B.C., who was first discovered in 1991.
51. Eggers apologizes for his Nosferatu commentary being “dry”—it’s not—but he talks about having learned about filmmaking from film commentaries, so he’s trying to share the kind of stuff that he sees as helpful for young filmmakers.
Quotes Without Context
“It’s hard for me to believe that I have something so fluffy and colorful in any of my movies.”
“Those are real cobblestones.”
“The wolves were well-trained. The rats were well-trained.”
“Sometimes vampires don’t even drink blood, they just suffocate you or even rape you.”
“This is Merchant Ivory meets Hammer Horror.”
“This is one of my favorite stoves.”
“We get away with it because Willem’s character is a bit of a whack job.”
“I thought about having maggots in his mustache for that moment, but it seemed a bridge too far.”
“This is Willem Dafoe doing Willem Dafoe the way that no one else can.”
Eggers’ Nosferatu is exactly the precise, detailed, and faithful adaptation you should expect from him, for both better and worse. It hews so close to the source that there are probably no real surprises on the narrative front, but it still earns and deserves praise as the work of a filmmaker who rightfully insists on authenticity in his art. Nosferatu is gorgeous, one that unsettles and disgusts—and thrills, for those of us who dig horror films killing off kids onscreen. It leaves us even more excited for Eggers’ next movie, which sees him tackling old-school werewolves. His commentary here, as on past films, is an extremely detailed look at his approach to making movies, and it should serve future filmmakers well on their own journeys.
Categorized:Editorials
