So the other night I rewatched the F. W. Murnau Nosferatu and the Robert Eggers Nosferatu back to back, which has got me thinking a lot about the differences and the way Eggers' film expands on and adds to the original.
First of all, I don't really see silent movies and talkies as the same medium. The experience of watching them is completely different. Each can do things the other can't. Eggers' Nosferatu is an adaptation, not a remake, of Murnau's. It's more like making a movie out of a book than making a colour movie out of a black and white movie.
This is relevant because we can't be looking for an exact one to one with glitzier special effects and different approaches to acting like we might in a usual remake, we're looking at something that can do things with the narrative and storytelling that isn't possible in the original.
Anyway, the upshot is that this is one of the rare cases where I feel that an adaptation actually improves upon the original while also respecting it.
Aside from the medium, most of the differences are additions to (rather than deviations from) the plot. This makes a lot of sense, because you can simply fit a lot more plot into two hours with dialogue than you can into an hour and a half with intertitles.
There are some deviations, though, and for the most part I think they work quite well. Most of the differences boil down to simply more characterisation for all the characters.
The biggest addition is a prior connection between Orlok and Ellen.
In Murnau's movie, Orlok becomes interested in (not necessarily obsessed with) Ellen after seeing her picture in Thomas' locket. This works out just fine, narratively, but it lacks some oomph and misses a lot of opportunities for character development or worldbuilding (but the film really doesn't have the space for much more, honestly).
In Eggers' version, Ellen prays for a companion and Orlok is what answers. There's an implication that Ellen is somehow Different™, with a brief mention of her thinking of herself as a changeling, and Orlok tells her she's "not of humankind" (but do you really want to trust him?). There's room for interpretation, so pick a reading and run with it, but at the very least she thinks of herself as Other.
But whatever might be different about her, it's something Orlok is deliberately taking advantage of, not something that genuinely connects her to him without him doing that on purpose.
I tend to hate Dracula adaptations that make Mina special and significant to Dracula, but the ending of Nosferatu actually works best with some kind of preexisting relationship between Orlok and Ellen. I especially like this "demon lover that answered a nonspecific prayer" take, because it makes it unambiguous that this is something Orlok is taking advantage. The reincarnation bullshit that a lot of Dracula adaptations pull makes Dracula less predatory and Mina more consenting, which is not a deviation from Stoker's novel I appreciate at all.
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Another big difference is Thomas' characterisation.
In Murnau's original, Thomas doesn't really take his own fear seriously. Spooky things happen at night and scare him shitless, but when the sun comes up he puts it down to a bad dream and isn't particularly affected by his dreadful nights. he comes back home and is shaken but fine. His distress isn't really narratively relevant (I don't have a strong opinion on if this was a deliberate characgerisation choice or if it was cut for time, difficulty of portraying in a silent film, or as part of filing of the serial numbers), and this is one of the ways in which Thomas Hutter differs from Jonathan Harker.
Eggers' Thomas is actually a bit more like Stoker's Jonathan here. He's scared shitless the whole time (and Nicholas Hoult's acting sells it especially well), and when the sun comes up and nothing spooky is happening, he doesn't dismiss anything. Eggers' Thomas is more likely to take his own expereinces literally and trust what he sees, too.
Orlok's bite mark being clearly human teeth that can't be mistake for mosquito bites probably helps this along, but even without that Eggers' Thomas simply doesn't bounce back from anything that happens.
When Eggers' Thomas gets home, the first thing he does is topple off his horse, and then he spends the next few scenes bedridden and having nightmares, and limps through the entire rest of the movie.
Caveat that as both a whumper and a huge fan of Stoker's Jonathan, I am incapable of actual objectivity here; I'll take a tormented woobie over a guy who bounces back any day even if it doesn't serve the plot all that well, and given a choice of two Jonathan expies I'll always pick the more Stokeresque option. But when I try to come at this objectively I think this does add some more depth and richness to the plot. And it creates a background and foundation for exploring and developing Thomas' and Ellen's relationship, which is central to Eggers' movie.
One thing I can be objective about is the parallels between Ellen and Thomas' experiences. That echoes Mina and Jonathan's parallels in Dracula, but is completely absent in Murnau's Nosferatu.
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One of the most obvious differences is one that, to me at least, feels both monumentally significant and hardly a difference at all. Orlok's character design.
In Murnau's movie Orlok is an interesting interpretation of Dracula that emphasizes the connection to rats. 1922 was long before we'd established any of the vampire tropes and visuals that are so familiar and iconic to us now. Max Schreck's Orlok is monstrous and decidedly ratlike, and he isn't not corpsey, but he isn't quite a corpse, either.
In Eggers' movie Orlok is a corpse. Full stop. The general silhouette is similar, especially with the iconic gnarled and clawed hands, but Bill Skarsgård's Orlok is, quite simply, a dead thing.
I yapped about this in an earlier post about the movie, but Eggers did something I have literally never seen any other movie even try to do. He put a folkloric vampire on the screen. Orlok is a rotting corpse, not a handsome bad boy. He drinks from his victims' chests. He's sexual, not sexy.
The two movies are similar in that they are both doing something new and different with vampires which isn't actually *new*, but which is fresh and unfamiliar to the audience.
Bill Skarsgård's Orlok has voice and language as a significant part of the character design. The dark and creepy voice does a great deal with characterize Orlok and to signify what kind of monster he is. Terrifying, ancient, dead, imposing, frail.
This is one of the biggest things that has me saying this is an adaptation and not a remake. Eggers' movie makes significant and plot-relevant use of sound, which is simply not part of the medium Murnau was working in.
Making Orlok a different kind of vampire is itself a large departure from Murnau's original, but making Orlok a new (to the audience, at least) kind of vampire is entirely in keeping with what Murnau was doing.
Max Schreck's Orlok did have a lasting impact on pop culture vampire tropes and visuals, but he didn't have nearly the impact that Bela Lugosi's and Christopher Lee's Draculas did, and today he kind of stands as his own thing. Bill Skarsgård's Orlok feels spiritually similar to Schreck's simply in how he owes nothing at all to Lugosi and Lee.
I haven't seen Bill Skarsgård in anything else, so when I looked up the cast I was surprised that there was someone so young and new underneath that costume and behind that voice. He did an amazing job of making Orlok real and terrifying (it's tempting to say "come alive", but one of the great things about this performance is just how dead Orlok is). This is definite someone to keep an eye on for monster roles in the future (I personally have zero interest in killer clown movies, but I hear his work in It was similarily impressive).
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The Hardings are so minimal in Murnau's version that at least one version lists them as brother and sister in the credits rather than husband and wife, and there's nothing in the movie that could contradict that. They are background elements rather than full supporting characters.
Eggers simply expanded them, fanfic style, into major supporting characters. They provide background and contrast for the Hutters, and they have their own arcs, which are interesting and complete in their own right.
Friedrich Harding somehow manages to look exactly like his counterpart from a century ago, which is a fun nod to the original.
I don't really have much to say about Friedrich and Anna here because this is all compare and contrast and their entire character arcs, and even characterizations, are entirely new. But they are the kind of major supporting characters that are interesting in their own rights.
Anna is lovely, while also having a bit more depth to her than just "nice lady who gets got by the monster". Her friendship with Ellen doesn't get too much screentime, but both actors sell it quite well and it's a friendship that's significant to the narrative.
Friedrich is an ass, but isn't entirely unsympathetic. We can tell that he's trying his best, but his best isn't much and he only tolerates Ellen because she's Anna's friend and Thomas' wife (he says as much, to her face. As I said, an ass).
Their kids are, well, they're vampire chow. No characterisation, and they're only there as props that show us what kind of relationship Friedrich and Anna have and make everyone sad when they get eaten. This is somewhere I feel the movie could have had some more depth.
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Professor Bulwer (renamed von Franz in Eggers' movie) literally does not have a role in Murnau's movie. He exists as a nod to Van Helsing, and he doesn't interact with the main cast at all. Ellen sends Thomas to fetch him, but he never shows up to even infodump at the other characters. He's got a scene in the middle where he's teaching a class which infodumps some worldbuilding for the audience, and that's it.
Eggers took that and, like he did with the Hardings, made a whole entire character out of it. Von Franz owes a lot to various movie Van Helsings, and is a very fun character in a movie that is otherwise incredibly bleak and tragic. But this is handled well and doesn't detract from or undermine the tone of the movie.
Mostly, von Franz plays the same role as the book the Thomas finds in Murnau's movie. Where Murnau has intertitles in fancy calligraphy (version depending, lol) explaining what's going on, Eggers has von Franz conversing with the characters. More of that adaptation vs remake thing,
In Eggers' movie, Ellen's final sacrifice is something she discusses and plans with von Franz, with von Franz in on the plan to keep Thomas and everyone else out of the way, while in Murnau's she reads the book, realises what's up, and sends Thomas out so she can pull it off.
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Knock isn't really handled differently between the two, but I do feel the need to mention that I love it when a Dracula adaptation does something a little more with Renfield. Knock as Thomas' boss who kicks off the whole plot by sending Thomas to Orlok deliberately makes the whole story more of an intentional plan than the wrong-place-wrong-time tragedy that Stoker's Dracula is.
Knock getting staked by Thomas instead of chased down by an angry mob is the biggest difference here, but it brings things full circle in a narratively satisfying way, and also supports von Franz as an actual role.
