Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897) has become the foundational narrative about vampires in the Western World and the silent film version Nosferatu directed by F.W. Murnau in 1922 has become the foundational film for many later versions. Nosferatu (2024) written and directed by Robert Eggers credits both sources. What has happened to this oft-told tale? It has become more sexually explicit as in Francis Ford Coppola’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1992). I will explore the gendered representation of sexuality, power, and desire in Eggers’ film.
Traditionally masculinity has been defined quantitively, as in the phrase, “How much of a man are you?” And femininity has been defined qualitatively by how beautiful a woman is. The former is about power and action, the latter about appearance and passivity. In films, it is common for male power to manifest itself by controlling women within marriage or by rescuing and saving them from threats outside marriage. Nosferatu complicates this dichotomy with the presence of an inhuman vampire.
Eggers’s film begins in a startling manner with a closeup of Ellen, a young, beautiful woman (Lily-Rose Depp) as she calls out with intense sexual desire for Nosferatu: “Come to me. Come to me. A guardian angel. Spirit of comfort.” She envisions him as beautiful although she has never seen him and strongly feels his presence in dreams which will soon become nightmares. She then walks trancelike until the mood dramatically shifts with Nosferatu’s loud, inhumanly deep, exaggeratedly masculine voice, “You. You awakened an eternity of darkness. You, you are not for humankind. And shall you, you be one with me ever-eternally? Do you swear it?” Cut to an extreme close-up as she says, “I swear,” and engages in orgasmic sounds and facial expressions. The mood is again broken by a terrifying noise and a monstrous image of Nosferatu rising. The next scene begins with a title “Years Later.”
The opening sequence foregrounds how Eggers will emphasize power regarding gender, sexuality, and desire. The relationship between Ellen and Nosferatu is contradictory: she has the power to awaken him, but he has the power to control and shatter her dreams, life, and death.
‘Nosferatu’ • Photo: Focus Features.
We soon see that Ellen’s husband Thomas Hutter (Nicholas Hoult) is under the power of his employer solicitor Herr Knock (Simon McBurney), but in turn Hutter dominates his wife Ellen. When Knock orders Hutter to go on a six-week journey to see Count Orlok/Nosferatu (Bill Skarsgård), Ellen begs him declaring, “You cannot leave,” but he does, leaving his wife in the care of his friend Friedrich Harding (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) who dominates Hutter by loaning him money. In a startling scene we soon see Knock naked, surrounded by candles as he invokes his master Nosferatu who dominates him from afar.
The male characters in the film are caught in a spiral of collapsing patriarchal power. Dr. Wilhelm Sievers (Ralph Ineson) is called in to treat Ellen’s worsening condition as she falls deeply into Nosferatu’s power, but the doctor fails to cure her. He seeks help from his college mentor Professor Albin Eberhart von Franz (Willem Dafoe) who dominates the doctor by taking over Ellen’s treatment. The professor also fails.
The leading female characters Ellen and Anna are under the control of their husbands, seemingly powerful men who fail them, and they are further under the control of Nosferatu who kills them. Ellen begs Hutter not to leave, but he insists she stay with their friends Friedrich (Aaron Taylor-Johnson) and Anna Harding (Emma Corrin). Harding is a successful businessman who uses money to dominate others but collapses emotionally and physically after learning Nosferatu has killed his wife and daughters. We have seen Nosferatu brutally throwing the corpse of one of their children aside as Anna awaits her fate.
After Ellen’s plea “Come to me, come to me,” Friedrich talks to Dr. Sievers as Ellen moans in the background, “He’s coming to me. He’s coming.” Similarly, Knock tells Sievers, “He is coming.” Nosferatu’s power extends over both men and women.
‘Nosferatu’ • Focus Features.
Nosferatu initially appears in the Carpathian Alps as a mysterious figure, his face shrouded in darkness, but we soon see his nearly skeletal hands with grotesquely long fingernails. His mouth reveals two sharp teeth which quickly enlarge with his desire to bite a victim, and he wheezes when he speaks. His body is rotting, giving off the smell of rancid meat. Nevertheless, he has strong sexual desires. In one scene, Hutter sees Nosferatu rising from his coffin and we see his naked body. Tight skin covers his bones. Nothing is fleshy or substantive with one striking exception: he has a prominent long full penis. When the film wrapped, Eggers gave Skarsgård the prosthetic penis as a gift.
Nosferatu’s penis implies that he is highly sexual and three shots in the film represent his bloody attacks as sexual acts: Nosferatu feeds on Thomas by kneeling above his prostrate body, making thrusting movements that look like intercourse; Anna lies on the floor moaning in ecstasy when she is ravished by rats controlled by Nosferatu. The final shot in the film makes this metaphor explicit.
The film concludes by tying these images and themes together. The major male characters Thomas, Friedrich, the doctor, and the professor, hatch a plan to kill Nosferatu and save Ellen. The professor privately tells Ellen, “I’m convinced that only you have the faculty to redeem us.” Thus, the power dynamic seems to suddenly shift to a woman, since Nosferatu’s desire for Ellen enables her to trap him to die in the dawn sunlight.
The professor misleads the other men to the cemetery to find Nosferatu’s coffin, giving Ellen the time she needs to enact her plan. Mayhem ensues, including Friedrich making love to his wife’s corpse in a coffin. They open what they think is Nosferatu’s coffin and drive a stake through his heart only to discover it is Knock. Thomas realizes the professor has misled them while Nosferatu is with Ellen. Thomas and the doctor rush wildly to save Ellen as the professor stands surrounded by the fire he sets to destroy the coffins.
Meanwhile Ellen seduces the vampire and quickly gets into bed naked. We see his rotting body as he lies on top of her. She moans in ecstasy as he enters her. We then see the sun rising, intercut with Hutter rushing to Ellen’s rescue, and her embracing Nosferatu in her bed. As the sun hits Nosferatu, he dies slowly with blood gushing out of his mouth and eyes as Ellen embraces him. Hutter and Sievers rush into the room just as Ellen is dying. Sievers looks on helplessly as Thomas holds her hand and closes her eyes. The last shot of the film is an overhead of Nosferatu’s naked body lying sexually on Ellen.
The paradox of the gender and sexuality issues in this film are that the men fail to save Ellen, but she alone has the power to save them all. She kills the all-powerful male vampire by offering her body but in yet another paradox, she dies in the process, the ultimate loss of power. The final paradox, however, is that although Eggers explores sexuality and eroticism the film is not erotic for the spectator; it is unrelentingly dark and horrific.
Peter Lehman is Professor Emeritus in Film and Media Studies at Arizona State University
