“Nosferatu” is a reminder that Hollywood has never made a great version of Bram Stoker’s book
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“Nosferatu” is a reminder that Hollywood has never made a great version of Bram Stoker’s book

Posted on by Amelia Pressman

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Nosferatu.

Put on your gothic garb and hold on to your crucifix, because Nosferatu is now in cinemas. The Robert Eggers-directed remake of the classic 1922 film has been a long time coming since it was first announced all the way back in 2015. Clearly a passion project for the auteur, it will be released widely in cinemas across the country on Christmas Day excellent reviewsincluding a 9/10 Rave from IGN.

But for all the praise for the film’s performances, cinematography, and contemporary set design, Nosferatu continues the tradition of adaptations and reworkings of the original Dracula novel that muddle key elements of the source material. This problem is so widespread that certain aspects of the book have been completely overwritten in the popular imagination by adaptation changes reflected in one version after another over the decades.

So today, let’s take a look at what these changes are and why the original novel still doesn’t have a definitive film adaptation.

An ancient evil

To make sure everyone is on the same page, let’s start with a quick refresher: Dracula by Irish author Bram Stoker is a gothic horror novel published in 1897. The book is written in letter format, meaning the text is the takes the form of notes. Letters and documents written by the story’s in-universe characters. There is little objection among literary scholars that it is not the most famous and influential vampire work of all time, as Dracula himself has become one of the most recognizable figures in popular culture. Yet much of the context surrounding the novel’s actual plot and characters has remained hidden from the public consciousness as adaptations have distorted popular perceptions of it, beginning with the earliest film and stage productions.

Much of the context surrounding the novel’s actual plot/characters has remained hidden from the public consciousness because the adaptations have distorted the perception of the novels.

The original Nosferatu, an unlicensed 1922 German film adaptation by director FW Murnau, summarized and reinterpreted much of the plot and characters. The film moved the action from England to Germany and renamed all the actors. The most famous example was the transformation of Count Dracula into Count Orlok. This was largely a failed attempt to avoid copyright infringement lawsuits. The Dracula play written by Hamilton Deane in 1924 (and revised into its better-known version by John L. Balderston in 1927) also condensed the plot and cast, removed all sections outside England, and merged Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra into one character in Balderston’s version, Lucy called Seward. The play served as the basis for Universal’s 1931 film directed by Tod Browning, starring Bela Legosi as Dracula, a role he had previously played on stage.

Some of the most noticeable departures from the source material that became standard began in these early adaptations. Vampires die in sunlight? Not in the book. Dracula is merely weakened from sunlight, but he can walk around in it without any problem. The 1922 film introduced the idea that vampires are killed by the sun. Is Dracula a suave aristocrat who charms his victims? First introduced in the 1924 play. In the book, he starts out decrepit and repulsive and later transforms into a less monstrous figure, but is still not considered handsome or charismatic. Van Helsing is a vampire expert? Only in the 1931 film. In the novel, Van Helsing is just an eccentric professor who has studied the occult and has never met vampires before. But most versions now portray Van Helsing as Dracula’s nemesis and a skilled warrior against the supernatural, whereas in the book he’s actually just guessing at how he deals with it.

Hell, Dracula isn’t even there unplugged in the book. He is beheaded and stabbed in the heart with a knife. But these are details. If you want to see where the Dracula adaptations really failed, it’s in the portrayal of the book’s two main female characters: Mina Harker and Lucy Westenra.

Women of the 19th century

As a story, Dracula has always been more of an ensemble piece, but if there’s one character who deserves to be called the book’s protagonist, it’s Mina Harker. She doesn’t appear in the first few chapters, but once she enters the narrative, she becomes a key figure in the war against Dracula due to her intelligence, composure, and loyalty to her friends and loved ones. She does not physically fight Dracula, but is instrumental in his defeat by assembling the letters and documents that make up the text of the book, thus providing the research material the heroes need to find out Dracula’s weaknesses. She helps everyone with their personal crises and helps them to endure the situation psychologically. And although she is attacked and mind-controlled by the Count, she turns her psychic connection against him through force of will and reveals his whereabouts to her comrades, an act that leads directly to Dracula’s death.

Unfortunately, this version of Mina simply doesn’t exist in adaptations. Often her role is reduced, she is merged or swapped with her best friend Lucy, or she is transformed into a helpless (or worse, willing) victim. The latter happens in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 film, in which Winona Ryder plays Mina. This version is a complete betrayal of the original character, because instead of being defined by her intellect and moral strength, she is a brainless virgin who falls in love with the Count because she is apparently the reincarnation of his long-lost wife. What makes this particularly egregious is the fact that in the book, Dracula forces Mina to drink his blood against her will, which is a blatant metaphor for sexual assault. This means that the film takes a character who is essentially raped by Dracula and has her lovingly fawn over him. It is absolutely reprehensible and completely misses the core of who Mina is.

Lucy Westenra is treated similarly. In the book, she is defined by her innate goodness, a pure soul who is tragically destroyed by Dracula and turned into a vampire, forcing the three men who love her to help hunt her down and her to destroy. In Coppola’s film, she is reimagined as a shameless flirt who plays her suitors against each other and constantly makes sexual innuendos. By portraying Lucy in this way, her sexuality becomes something for which she is punished, turning her into a monster that must be put down. Like Mina, it is a complete misunderstanding of the character’s original context and her role in the thematic framework of the story. It’s also just plain bizarre to see female characters from a book published in the 1890s being less regressive than their counterparts in film adaptations released a century later. Unfortunately, the new version of Nosferatu doesn’t change much about that.

Symphony of Light

The new Nosferatu begins with our Mina analog Ellen Hutter (Lily-Rose Depp) calling out into the night, only to be answered by Count Orlok (Bill Skarsgård). The delicate and disturbing connection between the two forms the backbone of the narrative, with the film’s most interesting idea being that Ellen isn’t completely put off by how monstrous and disgusting this version of the character can be. From then on, the film largely follows the outline of the novel’s plot, although the character names from the 1922 film are used instead. However, as with Coppola’s film, Ellen/Mina’s character traits are not retained. She screams and cries throughout the film instead of keeping her wits about her, and she clearly betrays her husband Thomas (Nicholas Hoult) through her desire for Orlok rather than being loyal like in the book.