[In Nosferatu-The Vampyre] Herzog tells the story with a certain irony (most salient in the deliberately archaizing mode of some of the performances) but without any intention of parody: he is asking us to take it in all seriousness. True, his source of inspiration was not Bram Stoker's Dracula but the first film rendering of it, F. W. Murnau's silent Nosferatu, the one occasion in which Stoker's tale yielded a great work of art…. Herzog is paying his respects to an old film he particularly admires, and attempting to reinstate the story to the kind of validity Murnau was able to give it. (p. 14)

Despite the recreation of the vampire's makeup, and the adherence to some significant changes the old film made in the plot of the novel, Herzog's conception of Nosferatu diverges notable from Murnau's. Herzog shows us his Nosferatu very often in close-up, or with the...