Didn't Read It
A guided tour through the stories that have shaped our culture and the world we live in.
Whether you’re a literature nerd, a romance aficionado, or just Not That Into Books, there’s no denying that the “great works” of literature have played a part in influencing everything from public policy to superhero movies. If you’ve ever wanted to know whether that pretentious guy on Twitter is correct in referring to news stories as “Orwellian,” wondered what stories inspired shows like Bridgerton, or just been curious about why, exactly, your high school English teacher was so insistent about assigning books by Dead White Guys, Didn’t Read It is the podcast for you.
Didn't Read It
From Victoriana to Tech Billionaires: Nosferatu, Nosferatu, and Dracula
We're diving into Bram Stoker's "Dracula" (1897), F.W. Murnau's "Nosferatu" (1922), and Robert Eggers' "Nosferatu" (2024) to look at the translation of the OG vampire from page to screen to screen--from the peak of the British Empire, through the Weimar Republic, to whatever the hell it is we're living through now.
As always, we are:
-Asking with all the love in our hearts that you leave us a review or tell a friend about the show <3
-Accepting friends @didntreadit on Instagram
-Accepting nemesis applications at didntreaditpod@gmail.com
-Thankful to Jess Versus (on Instagram @jessversus) for our incredible logo and assorted works of art
-Thankful to Black Iris Social Club for use of their beautiful space
-Thankful to William Albritton for our incredible theme song, "Books 2.0"
-Thankful to Dresden, The Flamingo for our closing music, "I Married Dracula (By Accident)."
A quick note to anyone who has not yet seen Nosferatu 2024. Spoilers.
>> Maddie Wood:So many spoilers.
>> Grace Todd:We're going to be talking about it in depth with the assumption that you either have seen it or don't care, knowing what happens, just a heads up.
>> Maddie Wood:Or to see it with your own two eyes. Which honestly might be the right decision if you were to ask me.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, that's harsh.
>> Maddie Wood:I didn't like hate it or anything, but it definitely, it was over and I was like, well, I don't ever need to watch it again.
>> Grace Todd:I already want to watch it again. But that's more, of an academic reason impulse.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay. Books, books, books, books, books, books.
>> Grace Todd:Hello and welcome to Didn't Read it, the podcast that wants to know why you killed those beautiful flowers.
>> Maddie Wood:And also, why are we as a society so horny for vampires?
>> Grace Todd:I have a good answer for that one actually. But, I am your host, Grace Todd, and with me this week is bestie of the pod, Maddie Wood.
>> Maddie Wood:Hello.
>> Grace Todd:Hi, babe.
>> Maddie Wood:Hi.
>> Grace Todd:How you doing?
>> Maddie Wood:I am just, like I said, like America, so horny to talk about these, these vamp tales to get really deep into the weeds of weird vampire lore.
>> Grace Todd:Would you like to introduce yourself and or our topic for today?
>> Maddie Wood:Well, as listeners know or don't. I don't know. That made me seem like I think that I'm very important to this podcast listeners. You don't know.
>> Grace Todd:You are very, you are load bearing in this podcast.
>> Maddie Wood:I've been on it a lot.
>> Grace Todd:you are our co produce and social media maven and as well as that's true beloved return guest.
>> Maddie Wood:It's me, I'm here and we're going to talk, a couple things we're sort of blending. We're doing a bit of a blend today. We're going to touch on Dracula, the seminal vampire piece in literature and then also some fun movie tie ins. Yeah, yeah. Both a silent film version from the 20s and a current Best Picture nominee.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Maddie Wood:Here in 2025.
>> Grace Todd:The Nosferatus.
>> Maddie Wood:The. The Nosferati.
>> Grace Todd:1922 and 2024.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes. and I'm very excited.
>> Grace Todd:I'm, I am, I am also excited. It's been a. Ah, I have a lot of thoughts. I do too. It's been a journey. So I, I read reread Dracula.
>> Maddie Wood:I don't think mental illness is a hell of a drug. I don't think I've read Dracula. And if I do, I do not remember.
>> Grace Todd:And then we both watched the 1922.
>> Maddie Wood:Version and the 2024 version.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:Which, ironically, both state in the credits at some point that they're based on Dracula. Something tells me they're not really based on Dracula.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, so that is one of the most interesting elements here.
>> Maddie Wood:So is it just like, oh, a vampire equals Dracula. Like, is that how base we're at at this point?
>> Grace Todd:Nosferatu 2024 is a pretty close remake of Nosferatu 1922. Nosferatu, 1922 is a very loose, unlicensed adaptation of Dracula.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:And there are some things that are changed about it that, to me, make it almost a completely different story in, like, really important ways. And I think Nosferatu 1922 is a lot more a product of the era it was made in and the men who made it than it is really an adaptation of Dracula. But it was considered enough of an adaptation of Dracula that the people who made the movie actually got sued by Bram Stoker's widow.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, interesting.
>> Grace Todd:And she won.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, all right.
>> Grace Todd:So there was a. There was a lawsuit that she. She emerged triumphant, and she, instead of, like, asking for money or for, you know, sort of compensation, she demanded that the movie be completely destroyed.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, sorry. Bram Stroker's video. That did not happen.
>> Grace Todd:Well, so. And this is one of the things, when you and I were gearing up for this, I text you asking which version you had seen. M. Hm. There are a bunch of different versions of the 1922 Nosferatu because it sort of went underground.
>> Maddie Wood:Ah. so maybe they, like. Did they, like, publicly destroy one? But there were, like, director's cuts and all kinds of things that people just sort of held onto.
>> Grace Todd:They were ordered to destroy it, but they were never told to provide any proof that it was destroyed. Loophole. The studio that made it went under.
>> Maddie Wood:It as a result of the lawsuit.
>> Grace Todd:Correct. And it only ever made this one film.
>> Maddie Wood:Wow. Okay.
>> Grace Todd:And it's not entirely clear how this.
>> Maddie Wood:Happened, but Proof that being litigious pays off.
>> Grace Todd:well, kind of. Because despite the fact that she managed to collapse this nascent film studio, prints, of the movie started circulating in other countries almost immediately. And they were being. It was all happening very much underground. And so there were versions of it floating around that had different, intertitles and text cards, and some of them had been, like, edited to give it a happy ending. Some of them. Yeah.
>> Maddie Wood:Like, really rogue.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. So there are a bunch of different versions, but in the one I watched.
>> Maddie Wood:Did not have a happy ending.
>> Grace Todd:No. And it's not supposed to.
>> Maddie Wood:This is interesting. I found that the 1922 version, when I watched it felt like kind of an ambiguous ending. Like, it was not immediately clear to me that she was dead.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Maddie Wood:Whereas end of 2024, she,
>> Grace Todd:Did.
>> Maddie Wood:She. So did.
>> Grace Todd:Spoiler.
>> Maddie Wood:Spoiler alert. She did.
>> Grace Todd:She did it. Hell. But in the 1980s, a group of Italian academics tracked down the original scripts of Nosferatu 1922, and multiple surviving prints of the film and cut them all back together into what is pretty reliably like, the version that they intended to release in 1922.
>> Maddie Wood:And so did she, from a timeline perspective, did she sue them before it ever, like, released in the United States? Or did it release and it was popular and she was like, hold on.
>> Grace Todd:so it was not an American movie.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, it was a. Oh, right, that makes sense.
>> Grace Todd:German movie.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes.
>> Grace Todd:So it was a product of the Weimar period.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes. A delightful short time in the history of the Germanic empire. Yes.
>> Grace Todd:And we're gonna talk about how it's very specifically a product of the Weimar.
>> Maddie Wood:Republic, which is, what, like, 19. It's like post World War I to World War II. Like, it's like the 1918 through 1930 something.
>> Grace Todd:Maybe in 1918, the Kaiser was forced to step down and a republic was formed. And that lasted until, essentially, the Nazis came to power.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah. Okay.
>> Grace Todd:It was a very messy period. It was a period where it was obvious to everyone that, like, things were going to change, but in what way? And where they would end and what the country would look like after all the change had happened was really up for grabs.
>> Maddie Wood:Wow. Really apropos. Yikes. Yikearoonies.
>> Grace Todd:And so she found out about it. Somebody, like, sent her, I think, an advertisement for it, and she was like, well, I certainly didn't give this my blessing.
>> Maddie Wood:And were they promoting it as an adaptation of Dracula?
>> Grace Todd:They weren't being very coy about it.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay. Okay. Because the version I watched, it's mentioned, like, in the intro title cards as, like, inspired by or. I don't remember the exact language, but it definitely stated it. It said, Dracula by Bram Stroker.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, I.
>> Maddie Wood:Who died in what year? Oh, gosh. I'm only curious as far as, like, was his widow old at this point?
>> Grace Todd:She was in, like, her 60s.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:He died in 1912.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay. So not. Not too long dead. What year did the book come out?
>> Grace Todd:Dracula came out in 1897.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay. So long enough to be, like, part of the cultural discourse for, like, a generation.
>> Grace Todd:Yes. And so one of the things that's so interesting about this sort of stack of adaptations is you have a 2024 film coming out in the wake of COVID the sort of rising influence and power of the far right, the continued Nazification of the Internet, all of that, which is adapting a movie that came out in the wake of World War I, which also was followed by Pestilence.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes, right. And the Nazification of.
>> Grace Todd:Well, no, we're not at the Nazification yet. Right.
>> Maddie Wood:That's true. In 1922, we would not be there yet.
>> Grace Todd:We are not. We are. It is so hard. We've done this on the show before. It is so hard not to retroactively project World War II onto the interwar period. It's very important to remember that they do not know what is going to come yet.
>> Maddie Wood:Very fair.
>> Grace Todd:We are at the peak of the Weimar Republic. Things are messy. there is out of control inflation. You've got people in the far left and the far right fighting each other in the streets. Primarily you've got the far right antagonizing people because you are operating sort of under. So we talked about this a little bit in the, Susan Glaspel episode that you've got all these people who are like leftists and creatives and intellectuals who are trying very hard to make strides for their respective countries. But the ruling class is very much operating under the shadow of the Bolshevik Revolution. And so you've got a still very powerful, still very wealthy ruling class in Weimar Germany who are terrified of the specter of communism. And they are trying very hard to kind of lock down on leftist, gains, which is where you get the conflict that's happening in this period. But at the same time, the Weimar Republic was in many ways as open and equal a place as Germany had ever been. Right.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes. I have a great, great grandfather who was a famous German painter at this time, German impressionist named Ernst Kirschner.
>> Grace Todd:That's cool. I didn't know that. Yeah, well, he would have been hanging out with these guys.
>> Maddie Wood:Probably. Probably. Yeah. there's some of his stuff at the vmfa.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, that's f Cking awesome.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And so, yeah, you've got the 2024 adaptation of this 1922 film that is very much a byproduct of World War I and the ensuing sort of mingled fear and hope because everyone can tell that change is coming, but there's no way to know yet sort of where it's going to fall. Which is an adaptation of a novel that is really written at the absolute, like, height of the British Empire and is very Much just like, you know what's great? The British Empire, in case you were wondering, Like Dracula the novel is very like forward looking. It's very preoccupied with like, new technological innovations and like how great it is to be in the British Empire. And like how awesome America. And like we British and Americans are just so great. And we're gonna triumph over adversity and it's all gonna go up from here.
>> Maddie Wood:And then let's make a movie.
>> Grace Todd:Not that it's a really interesting kind of net of influences and attitudes and baggage, shall we say, that filters all the way back to the movie that just came out, if that makes sense.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And so sort of starting with or jumping off From Dracula itself, Nosferatu 1922amounts to a loose adaptation of sort of the first half of the novel.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:So Dracula the novel kind of falls into two fairly discreet halves. You've got the first half, which is about Jonathan Harker going to Dracula's castle. And before he can return, Dracula comes to England and is preying on Lucy. while Jonathan Harker's wife Mina is sort of offstage nursing Jonathan back to health. Jonathan and Mina kind of know what's going on. The people around the men who are all in love with Lucy. The novel opens with Lucy receiving three proposals in one day from the three men who are going to be our sort of main protagonists.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:You've got the doctor, Seward. You've got Quincy, the American. Pew, pew, pew, pew. He's like a, like a gunslinging Western.
>> Maddie Wood:Hell yeah. Now I'm like, I guess I have to read Dracula. This sounds awesome.
>> Grace Todd:Dracula slaps. By the way, Dracula is a genuinely very fun read. And then you have her actual fiance, whose name I am blanking on right at this very moment, who is like, an English lord.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:And so. And then Van Helsing shows up on the scene and so you've got the, the kind of four of them, Van Helsing, the Dutch, you know, eccentric genius, Dr. Seward, the medical man, the, the gunslinging American. And then this sort of scion of English nobility.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:And they all just love Lucy so much.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:And it's very funny because Bram Stoker was almost certainly definitely a gay man. A deeply, deeply repressed gay man.
>> Maddie Wood:Sure.
>> Grace Todd:he wrote some very interesting letters to Walt Whitman that I recommend you peruse if you are on the fence about his sexuality and also the level of repression he was operating from. But it is very funny because especially for the, the beginning of Lucy's illness as she's being preyed on by Dracula. It does read like, it reads as almost fan fiction levels of just like. And what if I was just a helpless little baby and the four nicest, handsomest men in the world loved me so much and they were so strong and so selfless and they just loved me and cherished me and gathered around my bed to save me by any means necessary. Wouldn't that be great?
>> Maddie Wood:I love this. I love this. So deeply different than the movie, which is what I assumed was happening while I was watching it, but yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And so ultimately, tragically, Lucy dies, but she dies after being preyed upon by Dracula for like a matter of. It's either weeks or months. And these men are desperately trying to figure out how to protect her. There are blood transfusions, which was like a brand new technology at the time that Bram Stoker clearly didn't understand super well. But it doesn't matter. Van Helsing is, you know, we're getting the outlines of the, the Dracula myth and like what can and can't kill a vampire. But then in the novel, and again, this is where we get to the deeply repressed homosexuality. Lucy is turned into a vampire.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, so she doesn't die.
>> Grace Todd:She does not. I mean she does, she does, but she is, she dies and comes back as a vampire and is preying on the children of London. She is eating children by night. And Van Helsing has to round up all of these dashing young men.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, and they have to go kill the woman that they've all been obsessed with.
>> Grace Todd:Correct.
>> Maddie Wood:Cool.
>> Grace Todd:And it's very upsetting. Like it's a, it's honestly, it's a beautiful scene, but it's, it's rough. And this is around when Mina comes back on the scene and Mina is unlike Lucy, who is kind of silly and fragile and like a like very curious about sex and sexuality and you know, has all of these men who are in love with her. Mina is, even though she makes a lot of jokes that are meant to, to very much draw a line between her and the quote unquote, like new woman, you know, the Victorian new woman idea. She very much is the new woman. She can write in shorthand and she is the one who like types up all of their notes and she's very calm in the face of danger. She's very put together. And they all rally around protecting Mina for the second half of the novel. But in the second half they actually pursue Dracula back to his castle and kill him there.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay, so aside from his initial going to Transylvania and then, like, being nursed back, is that the extent of John's role?
>> Grace Todd:No, he comes back.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, he and Mina both come back after Lucy has died.
>> Maddie Wood:Any thoughts on why they chose to change all of their names?
>> Grace Todd:Unlicensed adaptation?
>> Maddie Wood:no, no, no. In between 1922 and 2024.
>> Grace Todd:Well, they didn't change all of them or they didn't change their. They didn't change their names from the Nosferatu version.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah, his name is Thomas in the 2024.
>> Grace Todd:So in the 1922, he doesn't have a first name, he's just Hutter.
>> Maddie Wood:No, he's Jonathan. She calls him Jonathan multiple times.
>> Grace Todd:Oh, that was added after the fact. That was not in the original script.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay, I read now coming to learn. I did not watch an OG version. Maybe.
>> Grace Todd:Well, it might have been in the version I saw too, but there was a very withering aside in one of the film history articles I was reading that was like, as a concession to the American need for first names.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, cutting.
>> Grace Todd:He was given a name.
>> Maddie Wood:You Americans so obsessed with a full.
>> Grace Todd:Name in the original.
>> Maddie Wood:Things we're obsessed with, that's probably the least problematic.
>> Grace Todd:So in the original script, his last. His name is just Hutter. We don't get his first name at all.
>> Maddie Wood:Interesting.
>> Grace Todd:and so Nosferatu 1922 is essentially a rewrite of the first half where Mina and Lucy are sort of combined into the same character. And as we know it, all the real action or all takes place and is concluded in this little German town.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay. Other. Does the Renfield character exist in the book? His boss who sends him.
>> Grace Todd:So you're thinking of Renfield, who is in the novel is implied. I can't remember if it's implied or overtly stated to have been another lawyer, basically, who was driven mad, fell into the thrall of Dracula before Harker went over there. Harker's boss. Is actually a lovely person who does not knowingly send him into the jaws of hell.
>> Maddie Wood:Interesting.
>> Grace Todd:And that is one of the big changes. That is one of the other big changes that Nosferatu makes, is it combines these two figures in a way that really emphasizes the extent to which these characters are all kind of trapped within these structures of power. So canak in the 1922, Nosferatu is Hutter's boss and is also the Renfield character and has been somehow in contact with Orlok and somehow by. By being in contact with him, has been corrupted by him is being controlled by him. And so you've got this hierarchy where Dracula is in control of Kanak, who is in control of Hutter, who is in control of Ellen. Which is a change that I think really underlines some of the major influences on the. The 1922 adaptation.
>> Maddie Wood:That's interesting to smush some of these characters into singles that aren't really. It seems actually that closely related in actual character archetype is a weird choice.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. So it's really interesting to me that they lost the court case because I think, And I don't know how hard they actually tried to defend themselves, but this feels to me much more like what we have now, where you get these kind of constant new iterations on these, like, classic monster stories, than it feels anything like an adaptation.
>> Maddie Wood:That's why my question to begin with was like, is it just like, oh, there's a vampire in it, so it must be Dracula. Like, is it. Well, not more like a trope and less of an actual adaptation because.
>> Grace Todd:Right. Well. And Bram Stoker wasn't even like, he didn't invent the vampire. Not really. There were other vampire. Like it was already an existing, like, folklore. Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:He probably popularized the vampires. Probably a more fair.
>> Grace Todd:I have a feeling that what happened was so. Again, right. Post World War I, Germany is experiencing runaway inflation in part because of the war debt that they are paying to England and America and France. They are being sued by a. An it. By a group that represents specifically British authors. When you think about the difference in their relative spending power. I think it was probably a foregone conclusion from the moment she decided to sue them, that they were.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah, they were going to lose.
>> Grace Todd:I did not have time to read into the court case much, so if that is incorrect, drop me a line. But that is my.
>> Maddie Wood:That makes sense. Yeah. I. This is like the part that I was the most interested in learning more about was how close did it track? And it sounds like if. If Dracula is a sprite, Nosferatu's like a lime lacroix, like so lightly inspired.
>> Grace Todd:Completely different. I mean, the framework is still there. Nosferatu 1922 is made primarily, by three men. Two of them are World War I veterans.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:One of them is very into the occult. One of them is gay, One of them is Jewish. Cool, right?
>> Maddie Wood:Love this little witchy trio.
>> Grace Todd:So we've got the producer and set designer and the man who, like, really is responsible, like producer and set designer almost undersells it. He is the One who is responsible, really, for how this movie looks, including, like, the character designs for, A.
>> Maddie Wood:Two that, like, became very famous visually.
>> Grace Todd:Yes. So that was Albin Grau.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, so it's his doing. I'm gonna tell you that. I had to stop the movie and look at it and rewind and look at it again because it made me laugh so hard. So there's a scene where Renfield, whatever his name is in the Canuck in the 1922 version has the, like, letter from Count Orlok that he's, like, looking at. And they zoom in a couple times on the letter. And it literally reminded me, like, if you were like, hey, fourth grader. Oh, write down what you think occult.
>> Grace Todd:Things would look like. So those are all real occult symbols.
>> Maddie Wood:I don't doubt that piece, but the, like, the childish scrawl of it. I was just like, what? Young person was like, I'm going to put, like, a. Like a Satan's. A satanic sign and a pentagram, and I'm just going to scribble all this stuff onto a sheet of paper and give it to this. Also, I don't know where the archetype began that, like, crazed older men have to have zero hairs on the top of their head and crazy amounts of hair on the sides of their head.
>> Grace Todd:Maybe it began with this movie, maybe because I don't know.
>> Maddie Wood:Holy moly. Did they really lean into that? It's wild.
>> Grace Todd:So Grau, Albin Grau was a World War I vet.
>> Maddie Wood:Is he the one who's into the occult?
>> Grace Todd:Yes. So he was an architect, an artist. He ultimately fled to Switzerland during World War II. Had, a pretty solid career.
>> Maddie Wood:And then as a architect or as a filmmaker?
>> Grace Todd:Architect, mostly, I think. I don't know how many films he did other than this one. And then the young man who wrote the script, so the one who really, like, made a lot of these decisions about adapting Dracula, the novel into Nosferatu, the script was, Heinrich Galen, whose name I hope I am pronouncing correctly. I could not find verification about whether or not Galen was a World War I vet.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:I'm kind of assuming he was.
>> Maddie Wood:I mean, given the place and the time and their general ages and knowing that drafts were a thing, I would. I would. Unless he had some kind of, like, dispensation. I would think yes.
>> Grace Todd:But, yeah, he's the only one who is not, like, expressly and explicitly a World War I veteran. But I am just assuming he was all right, and he was Jewish, and he ultimately moved to The United States, I'm pretty sure during World War II. So they all. They all made it out.
>> Maddie Wood:Right.
>> Grace Todd:And then finally the sort of the director and like the, you know, most famous big name on the marquee creative genius was F.W. murnow. And he is fascinating. So he was also a World War I vet. and before the war, he met and fell in love with the love of his life, who was a Jewish poet who died during the war.
>> Maddie Wood:Sad.
>> Grace Todd:and it was the great tragedy that kind of underpinned the rest of his adulthood.
>> Maddie Wood:And these guys are all German? Yes.
>> Grace Todd:Yes, well, Austrian, some of them.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:And this is the sort of backstory. This is. This is the environment in which this film is made. Right. All of these men have served in World War I. And not just served, but served on the. On the losing side. They have seen the Treaty of Versailles go into effect. They have watched this runaway inflation happen. And they have all, and especially Murnau, suffered really catastrophic losses.
>> Maddie Wood:Does the book have the whole plague storyline?
>> Grace Todd:So Nosferatu, 1922, for those of us who have not seen it, hinges primarily on Hutter being sent by his possessed boss to a foreign country where he encounters Count Orlok, who is a terrifying demon of some kind. He doesn't know yet. But it's a vampire.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes.
>> Grace Todd:While he is there, Orlok sees a portrait of Hutter's wife, Ellen, and becomes fixated on her. Hutter.
>> Maddie Wood:Such an important difference.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:For those of you who have seen the 2024 version and have not seen the 1922 version, deeply different relationship on how it comes to be.
>> Grace Todd:And I really want to talk about the changes they made there specifically, because.
>> Maddie Wood:It'S a wild difference.
>> Grace Todd:It is a huge difference. But very quick, just to hone in on the World War I of it all for a minute. Count Orlok sees this portrait of Ellen and after ravishing Hutter, leaves him for dead. Leaves him for dead.
>> Maddie Wood:And departs in his dirt filled coffin.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:On a boat called the Demeter.
>> Grace Todd:No, it's not the Demeter.
>> Maddie Wood:It is in the version I watched.
>> Grace Todd:It's not. It's not the Demeter.
>> Maddie Wood:Interesting.
>> Grace Todd:I think you watched one of the. So there are versions floating around that have been, like, partially redracula Ized. And one of the things that they did for Americans was change the names back.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, interesting.
>> Grace Todd:Okay, so in the script, the boat is called.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, in the book, is it the Demeter?
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay. I feel robbed.
>> Grace Todd:Well, and it returned. It's the Demeter again in the 2024 version. But no, this. In the. In the 1922 version, it has a different name that is like one of, Grau's little, occult references. okay, the empusa. Oh, it's called the empusa, which is, apparently some kind of occult reference. But where was I?
>> Maddie Wood:So the plague piece is.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:So in the. In the 1922 version, he ravishes Hutter and then he leaves, sort of trapping him inside his castle.
>> Grace Todd:And one of the big things in the 1922 that gets way downplayed in the 2024 and is not present at all in the original is the idea that Nosferatu have to, rest during the day in plague dirt in earth that has been tainted by the dead of the Black Death.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, interesting, because that's not.
>> Grace Todd:It is spelled out depending on which version of the movie you watch.
>> Maddie Wood:So the version I watched, it was not plague earth, but it was the earth that he was originally buried in.
>> Grace Todd:In the original script, it is plague dirt.
>> Maddie Wood:Interesting.
>> Grace Todd:And that is even more interesting because in Dracula, it's consecrated earth.
>> Maddie Wood:The opposite.
>> Grace Todd:It is the exact opposite thing.
>> Maddie Wood:Interesting. That would make Willem's, like, whole consecration scene in the 2024 one sort of irrelevant.
>> Grace Todd:Yes, Lil. Bet. So in the 22 script, you've got these big changes, and what they amount to are a young man being sent by forces that are beyond his control to a foreign land and then finding out that the blight and the violence that he discovers there has followed him home and that the. The cursed soil of that place has now come to taint the soil of his home. And if that's not a war veteran story, I don't know what to tell you, boy.
>> Maddie Wood:Not only that, but couple that with the, like, the optimism of a young man going into war. And, like, I'm doing this for my family, and I'm doing this for the. Like, I have to do this for my wife, my new wife and my family. And it's like, the right thing to do. And, like, no one would have not my best interests in m mind. And then to get there and be like, oh, no one. No one cares about my interests. And, like, this is a disaster, and my life is basically over.
>> Grace Todd:Like, I am going to die alone here in this horrifying place, and then someone is going to go back to my home and kill my wife.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes.
>> Grace Todd:What?
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah, yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And sort of to round that out, one of the things that I think a lot of people miss, because it can be very hard visually to catch what era things are supposed to be in when they weren't made in our contemporary era. Is that between Dracula and Nosferatu 22 there's been a time shift. So Dracula is set essentially when it is released. It's set in like the 1870s. Again, we are peak Victoriana. Peak British Empire.
>> Maddie Wood:Interesting.
>> Grace Todd:Right?
>> Maddie Wood:The movie goes back into the 1830s.
>> Grace Todd:Yes. So Nosferatu 22 is a period piece.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes.
>> Grace Todd:And it's set in the Biedermeier period. Do you know anything about the Biedermeier period?
>> Maddie Wood:Boy, do I not.
>> Grace Todd:The Biedermeier period. So from the perspective of 1922, setting a film in the Biedermeier period is kind of the equivalent of making a movie right now and setting it in the 50s.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:So the Biedermeier period. It's your post Napoleonic Wars. You are before the first wave of upsets and revolutions that lead to World War I.
>> Maddie Wood:It's the happy Days period.
>> Grace Todd:It is so what, what it was in Central Europe specifically. So like Poland, the many nation states that made Germany at the time, I can't. I cannot remember when everything was sort of unified under Prussia. Forgive me, German, history nerds, but that whole area in Central Europe, it's. It's the Biedermeier period is kind of the catch all for that. That time in that area. You've got, mass growth in the middle class and you've got mass growth in sort of mass consumption. And it's an era that's marked by art getting really, really boring and sentimental and kind of lowest common denominator. Y. Because you're trying to cater to this huge middle class that just want to buy things and don't really want to be challenged or like think particularly hard. All right, so the movie is intentionally set in this period of doomed false happiness and lack of controversy. Again, it's. It really is the equivalent of setting something now in the 50s where you are doing it with the retroactive knowledge of everything that was being hidden underneath that veneer of agreeableness.
>> Maddie Wood:Which very much comes through. It's like a very cheery start to the movie.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:interestingly enough, I did not find any of that reflected in the 2024 version.
>> Grace Todd:No. And that's. The 2024 version has gone so gritty and has gone. I don't know when the 2024 version is supposed to be set. Do we get it?
>> Maddie Wood:It says German. I think 1838 is roughly what I.
>> Grace Todd:Remember the Chiron because it feels Victorian.
>> Maddie Wood:It does. And that's why it's interesting that it feels actually probably closer to the time period of Dracula. Yes, but m. The fashions of the 1830s, but the darkness that I would associate with like early industrial, like the very beginnings of industrialization. And like, and it's definitely like, for what it's worth, Bobby, if you are listening, are you okay? Like, are you good? I'm deeply concerned about you. Like, deeply concerned, but that's neither here nor there, I guess. and it, again, this all could be very much just stylistic choice and how it's shot, but it's very dark.
>> Grace Todd:It's very. I mean, it's also like literally visually dark.
>> Maddie Wood:That's what I mean. Like it's visually. It is a dark movie.
>> Grace Todd:Another. Another movie added to the list of. Gosh. Would have enjoyed it a lot more if I could have seen it.
>> Maddie Wood:yeah, it's like the final season of Game of Thrones. It's just moving lumps.
>> Grace Todd:But the other kind of, the other thing that it's important not to overlook in the 22 version that, that really jumps out when you realize that it is meant to be this kind of period piece that is studiously asking you to kind of wonder what's going on underneath all of these things is the queerness. Right. It was created by a gay man in this period in the Weimar Republic where it's not like you could swan about being wildly, flamingly homosexual on the street, but like you kind of could.
>> Maddie Wood:All right.
>> Grace Todd:It was definitely as good as it got. It was. It was as good as it had ever been for the gay community of Germany.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:And Nosferatu himself is this queer figure, right. I mean, he ravishes Hutter, who is useless, by the way. Hutter is this sort of charming.
>> Maddie Wood:You, know, that remains true through both films.
>> Grace Todd:The phrase I want to use is like all American. But he's this like charming, fresh faced young man who has no idea what he's getting into.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah, he gives like he's a himbo a little bit.
>> Grace Todd:He is ravished in Orlok's castle, in his bed. And he comes home again to find that his wife is also being ravished. And especially again thinking about like the experiences that young men had together away on the front, quietly behind a shrubbery, down a foxhole, and then coming back and being like, There's some things I know about myself now that I did not.
>> Maddie Wood:Here's my wife. Great.
>> Grace Todd:And Nosferatu is this kind of terrifying predator, but also. And this does, I think, carry forward a bit into the 2024. He is a. He is a figure that can be read as kind of the embodiment of repressed sexuality. And when.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, I think that's actually much more apparent in the 2024 one.
>> Grace Todd:Well, yes and no, because I think Nosferatu 22 is an embodiment of repressed sexuality for everyone involved, the men and the women. And Nosferatu24 seems much more interested in Allen.
>> Maddie Wood:Yep. Nosferatu 2024 could be like Nosferatu colon the Ellen show.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Maddie Wood:Like, she went from being a character that's, like. I don't want to say, not important, but if you looked at, like, minutes on screen in 2020, in the 1922 version, it's far lower.
>> Grace Todd:The thing that gets me about the 22 version, though, is that she is arguably the most important character and the most interesting character, and that still works without her having to, be horrifically abused by the living men in her life.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah, I could have done without. There's a lot I could have done without. but the level of, like, we're gonna tie this poor young woman down to a bed exorcism sort of vibes that. Okay, one scene I get, but it's like a gratuitous. I'm like, okay, how many times.
>> Grace Todd:And that's very Victorian, do I have.
>> Maddie Wood:To watch her writhe about?
>> Grace Todd:This was the other. This was one of the biggest things that really jumped out to me, looking at all three versions, is it is not until 2024 that anyone is angry with or interested in punishing the women in these books for their own afflictions. In 22, Nosferatu, we have repeated scenes of Ellen, who is sleepwalking. She's behaving in ways that confuse people. She has this very interesting sort of psychic connection with Nosferatu that is not initiated until after he sees her portrait. It is very important in the 22 version that everything that happens to Ellen is a direct result of Hutter and Orlok making contact. However, once this psychic connection is made, she saves Hutter by appearing to, like, call to Orlok through that connection when he is about to outright kill Hutter. And then she has these kind of repeated sleepwalking episodes. But at no point is anyone upset with her. No one.
>> Maddie Wood:No.
>> Grace Todd:Punishes her for being ill. No one punishes her for acting. Strangely, the. If. If there is any real emotional vibe to those scenes, it's like, oh, no, I'm so sorry something is wrong with you. Like, that's terrible. What can I do to help?
>> Maddie Wood:There's also no. Like, I felt like by the time in the 2024 version by. By the end and the time she, like, makes the choice that she's gonna sort of, like, self sacrifice. It's very much. It was framed to me very much in a way of, like, well, of course this is what she should do, because all of this is her fault.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:And, like, how could she not? Because, like, everyone in her life is dying, and it's her fault.
>> Grace Todd:And that's.
>> Maddie Wood:And I don't know why you, like, there was no need to make that choice.
>> Grace Todd:That is the big change that I have been trying to wrap my head around. Why make Orlok Ellen's fault? Because that's what it is.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah, it is. They make it.
>> Grace Todd:It is explicitly said that Orlok is there for her, that he has contrived all of this, because, again, as opposed to Dracula, this has been contrived by Orlok. Orlok has summoned Hutter to him via Kanakh in order to come back and prey on this young woman.
>> Maddie Wood:And it begs the question all along of, like, why that was. Like, it brings up. In my opinion, it just brought up a lot more questions than gave additional, like, helpful reference. Like, if it was that contrived, just come over here on your own. Like, why did you need to do this whole, like, rigamarole?
>> Grace Todd:Okay, I have a theory.
>> Maddie Wood:Lay it on me.
>> Grace Todd:And I want to be clear. This is, like, an English major ass theory. Let's Hear it in 2024. Count Orlok.
>> Maddie Wood:Uh-huh.
>> Grace Todd:Is the Internet.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, wow. Okay. Is that. Is that a woman's fault?
>> Grace Todd:Well, I think what we are watching is Ellen, because there's this. There's this thing they keep underlining, right. That she invited him in because she was lonely and because she needed connection and she didn't understand what she was inviting in. And in her big confrontation with her husband, they essentially trade barbs that illustrate that each of them considers themselves a rape victim, and each of them considers the other damaged for having been assaulted. And I think that what the sort of metaphor we are dealing with here is that they have both gone into this ungovernable place and have been damaged by it. And the damage, the different damage that it has wreaked on them has left them forever separated. I think there's a metaphor there for her being, like, a young woman who went online and made connections that were not good for her and, like, met people who were not. And I don't think this is a very feminist framework. But I. I kind of think it's what we're dealing with here that she either, like, got into, like, sex work or was taken advantage of or exposed to things that she thought she was going to be able to let go and live down, but they were always lurking there. And that it is her getting married and thinking that she can live a normal life that brings all of this to the forefront. And that it is this connection that leads her husband into getting sucked into the metaphorical manosphere that is already occupied by his friend, who ties her to the bed and abuses her Friedrich. And that ultimately she dies as a consequence of the dark parts of the Internet breaking loose into her real life.
>> Maddie Wood:Wow.
>> Grace Todd:that's my theory. And I think that's where all of the contract shit comes from, because that is also an addition. That contract thing is not anywhere in any of the source material.
>> Maddie Wood:That Three Nights thing also. So, I, don't not like your theory. It also makes me think that, like, okay, so in the 1922 version, there's this, like, Book of the Vampire.
>> Grace Todd:Mm.
>> Maddie Wood:so could you potentially also extrapolate a little bit of, like, knowledge, like, not just the Internet, but, like, knowledge in its. Or, like, if we were to take it from a very, like, female lens or woman lens of, like, women becoming more learned now? The connection's already established. Yes. But they do play up the book in the 1922 version, and then the book doesn't exist at all in the 2024 version.
>> Grace Todd:The 22 version. I think the book is partly a byproduct of expressionist cinema, and sort of the layers and texture that they were trying to go for. And it also is an homage to the fact that Dracula is an epistolary novel. Dracula is a combination of letters and diary entries and news articles, beginning to end.
>> Maddie Wood:Like, I also could see it as a framing device for a silent film. Like, you need potentially some additional things to be, like, you're reading. Like, they do it with his letters when he's, like, writing to her from the castle.
>> Grace Todd:So I'm. I'm not.
>> Maddie Wood:Another thing. No, go ahead. First.
>> Grace Todd:So I'm not sure. Again, I'm not sure about the version that you watched, but apparently some of the versions that are circulating only have, like, two thirds of the interstitial cards that they're supposed to. And so the effect of the film when it's put back together is way more sort of epistolary. You see a lot more letters and book bits, and it's also very clearly framed as there's a framing device. The interstitial cards are from the perspective of a narrator.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes, I got that.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. Okay. I'm not sure. I wasn't sure.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes. And there were a decent amount of interstitials and there was stuff from the book. There was the letters that he writes. There's some of the stuff I think from the contract or maybe like, like I said, the paper that Cannock has with the instructions. It also is framed and narrated in a like sort of a third person. Like as if this was someone who had found out that this was the real reason for the plague.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:And the troubles.
>> Grace Todd:It is. It's an implied nary. The whole thing is a book.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes. It reminded me of our time with Mary Shelley.
>> Grace Todd:Yes. So the opening, the opening page is the title page of the book which is like the account of the plague by an innkeeper. And so I think the sort of book within a book is very much an homage to the epistolary stuff. But I do think. I don't think your instinct is off on the idea of like books and knowledge and the consequences of knowledge.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah. the double edged sword of it all.
>> Grace Todd:But I don't think that the 22 version is interested in being like, gosh, it sure is a problem that that woman got a hold of a book.
>> Maddie Wood:No, I don't mean it quite like that. I think it's probably the larger, the larger just cautionary tale of like knowledge in general. and once you know, you can't unknow.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Maddie Wood:Which all of these men would have very much experienced. all of them in the around and find out era of their lives. Okay. I don't want to like jump. Transition too much, but I am reminded of another scene that is in the 2024 one that I was like, what the is happening? the scene with the naked virgin on the horse.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:Any source, Any source material on that guy?
>> Grace Todd:No.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay. Didn't think so.
>> Grace Todd:Unclear what's happening there.
>> Maddie Wood:Unclear like what we're even really supposed to take from that scene other than like I took it as he did actually go out and follow them into the woods. This, this like band of people is like their own attempts at like warding off a vampire.
>> Grace Todd:So it appears that these Romanians, because the closed captions say specifically that they are speaking Romanian, live in a place where they just have a kind of constant low level vampire infestation.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:Is the. Is what I took from it.
>> Maddie Wood:and he was like watching Them make sure the vampire was dead.
>> Grace Todd:I think he was watching them kill a vampire that they had recently realized was a vampire. And the woman on the horse, I am assuming is, like, a Lady Godiva reference, maybe. and that she is meant to be there to protect them.
>> Maddie Wood:Sure. Okay.
>> Grace Todd:It was not totally clear to me.
>> Maddie Wood:No, no. I found that m. Because it. It made me. In part. There's, like, a line or there's an interstitial when he's reading the Book of the Vampire, when it talks about, like, a virgin. Like, the blood of a virgin who you're. He's like, well, is the only one who can hold him until, like, the crows. And I was like, are they gonna, like, offer her up? That's where I originally thought the scene was going.
>> Grace Todd:That actually makes good sense. She's there as, Just in case.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:She's like, there's backup. We'll toss her in case it doesn't work.
>> Maddie Wood:We'll toss her at him.
>> Grace Todd:Well, I don't think she has to be tossed.
>> Maddie Wood:No. They'll just slap the horse's ass.
>> Grace Todd:It has. Well, no, I mean, like, she has to be willing. That's the whole thing.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, that's right. That's right. That's right.
>> Grace Todd:And that. And again, the 1922 version. She has to be willing. It's.
>> Maddie Wood:That is outlined in the source interstitial. Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:She has to know what she's doing. You can't just sacrifice a woman to him. She has to be willing to do it.
>> Maddie Wood:Also, virgins used in the interstitial. That. In the version I watched, that it was like, a willing virgin blood. and maybe that is because of the version I watched.
>> Grace Todd:My version had it translated as maiden, I think.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, okay.
>> Grace Todd:Not virgin.
>> Maddie Wood:which caused a lot of.
>> Grace Todd:Because Ellen is married, correct? Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:And I was like, hold on, hold on.
>> Grace Todd:I have read some. I have read some things about the 22 Nosferatu that speculate that one of the implications is meant to be that Hutter and Ellen haven't actually consummated their marriage. And I do think there's a case to be made, for them being in some kind of, like, a lavender.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah. Like a little bit of a bearded situation.
>> Grace Todd:Uh-huh. I think they're both Also, in the 22 version, especially him, but a little bit her. At the beginning, they're portrayed as being kind of childlike.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes.
>> Grace Todd:They're very young.
>> Maddie Wood:I wrote, like, ultra naive in my notes.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. And I think. I think this is partly both of them being sort of crash coursed into the most horrifying parts of adulthood. And one of them gets to survive and one of them doesn't. One of them sacrifices themselves for the other. And weirdly, I don't think Nosferatu 1922 is hugely concerned with gender.
>> Maddie Wood:No, I didn't.
>> Grace Todd:In a way that Dracula very much is.
>> Maddie Wood:And the 2024 one is.
>> Grace Todd:Yes, 1922. I. They don't seem that hung up on.
>> Maddie Wood:On who dies as long as, like.
>> Grace Todd:I mean, she has to be, you know, it is very like, it is very emphatic that it has to be a woman.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:But I don't. It doesn't feel to me like the. The screenwriter and the filmmakers are as preoccupied with like the woman question.
>> Maddie Wood:No. And knowing now what we know. I know what you've shared about who they were. That makes more sense.
>> Grace Todd:And I think ellen in the 1922 version is meant to be a metaphor for the innocents, plural. The many people who are innocent in the sort of suffering country of post World War I Germany as much as she is meant to be a person. Yeah.
>> Maddie Wood:And I also think there's probably some, like, there's a lot of innocent death at wartime.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:As well.
>> Grace Todd:So that kind of jumps to one of the other big differences that I was struck by between 22 and 24, which is the plague.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes.
>> Grace Todd:So in the 2020. In the, in the 22 version, there is an actual plague. They. The town gets put on quarantine, everyone is sent back to their homes and locked in. And there's a man going through and putting white chalk crosses on the doors of the households of the afflicted. You are seeing a like substantial real time body count in Dracula and in Nosferatu. 24. We are not really concerned with anyone except for the people in our immediate vicinity.
>> Maddie Wood:Correct. There's like one scene in the 2024 when they're in the hospital and the doctor and his nurse or whatever, he's telling her we can't accept any more patients and there's too many people. And she's like, well, what are we gonna do with what are they? That's like kind of it.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, it's all blink and you'll miss it.
>> Maddie Wood:It also focuses much heavier on the rats.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:But like, not in a way that actually like, ties together. The rats ended up feeling very like.
>> Grace Todd:Well, the rats are where the plague comes from.
>> Maddie Wood:Well, I mean, I know I more meant like sometimes the rats are there and they're eating people. Sometimes just. That's one of Those parts of it that I was like, okay, this feels very gratuitous. You just, like, wanted scenes of, like, lots of rats. Rats everywhere. but ironically, there's a scene in the 22 version where, like, when they're on the boat and the rats are on the boat and he, like, breaks open. Not, anywhere near that. In the 2024 version, they kind of gloss over. I feel like, in some ways, the ship part, where I felt like the ship part was, like, a substantial chunk of time in the 22 version.
>> Grace Todd:So in the novel the Last Voyage of the Demeter, the chapter that becomes the sort of last voyage of the Demeter, the ship's log, you could read it by itself. And it is so effective. It's so moving. It's so tragic. It's beautiful. It is, like, beautifully done. And I think in the 1922 adaptation, they couldn't resist including it, even though it doesn't really make any sense.
>> Maddie Wood:No. And I mean, in the 22 version, I was definitely like, we're really on this boat. Like, we're.
>> Grace Todd:Well, and what's funny is, like, if you think about the geography, why are they on a ship at all?
>> Maddie Wood:Well, that was my first question. I was like, wait, he rode a horse here. Why is he suddenly on a boat? And also, where is that boat going?
>> Grace Todd:It's one of those kind of artifacts of the Victoriana version of the story.
>> Maddie Wood:At one point, there's, like, a note about. I can't remember if it's an interstitial. In the 22. Yes. It's the captain, like, it's like log. They're, like, reading from the book, and it's like the Strait of Gibraltar. And I was like, where is this ship going?
>> Grace Todd:One of the things that makes a lot more sense from, like, a Victoriana perspective is this idea of the English love, the navy. If you are writing from the heart of. Of the British Empire, ships are where dirty foreigners and diseases come from, from icky mainland Europe and the New World. Ew. Boo.
>> Maddie Wood:Disgusting.
>> Grace Todd:Gross.
>> Maddie Wood:The only way we could get the plague is from a boat.
>> Grace Todd:And so Dracula arriving in England via a, ship is very. It's not just logistically necessary. It's a very important kind of metaphor for all of these gross foreigners who are gonna come. Just feels like they ruin our beautiful English Empire.
>> Maddie Wood:The way they picked and choose, like, what to include and what to not is just very interesting. Well, I just.
>> Grace Todd:I genuinely think they couldn't resist because it's too good a, It's too good A piece of writing and it's too good a story, especially as a horror set piece.
>> Maddie Wood:I mean, good for them. We love standing by our, artistic choices.
>> Grace Todd:So in the. In 1922 and anywhere you have ships and ports, disease is a constant worry. And so that's not. That makes sense in terms of being like, the plague has arrived and it arrived on a ship.
>> Maddie Wood:But then they added this whole other layer in the 2024 by making Friedrich have all of his wealth based in.
>> Grace Todd:The shipyard that's in 22. He's a shipbuilder, is he? Yep.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, okay, I missed that.
>> Grace Todd:It's less important in the.
>> Maddie Wood:I was gonna say it's 22 version seems very, like, key to him and all of his money that he can't shut up about.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, no, that's not really important in the 22 version. But he is a shipbuilder. Also, the woman in the 22 version is a sister, not his wife.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Maddie Wood:And so that's why there's no children.
>> Grace Todd:And she's kind of boring, but she's not a.
>> Maddie Wood:They'Re in. Their relationship was very weird to me.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. And it's such a. It's such a lit down because I.
>> Maddie Wood:Think there's this, like, real opportunity for, like, showing, like, a very, like, staunch female friendship. And then they like. We're like, oh, but we want to do that. But jk. No, we don't. But we do. But we don't. And I'm like, okay, well, so, okay.
>> Grace Todd:Dracula hinges very heavily on Mina and Lucy's friendship. And it's actually a really lovely portrayal of a meaningful, close female friendship. And I understand why in the 22 version that's kind of been stripped out. It's a very spare film. But also, films could. Films were shorter back then.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes. There's also. I feel like you're very limited in some ways by the manner of the film as well. Like. Yeah, I think it's really hard to creatively impart some of these more, like, soft, relational things when you can't have actual, like, spoken words.
>> Grace Todd:But it disappointed me that with all of the padding they put back into the story in 2024, that they made the relationship between Anna and Ellen so, like, antagonistic.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:But that kind of depends on what the 2024 Nosferatu is about. Because I would venture to say that what we have are three different stories about three completely different things. Despite having nominally the same plot three times.
>> Maddie Wood:I think that's fair. I got very different things from the Two movies. Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:What is this new version? What story is it actually telling? And I think a lot of that comes back to Orlok and like what he is in this narrative. Because the other big change to me was him.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh yes.
>> Grace Todd:The original character design of Nosferatu is considered iconic in part because it is unsettling and kind of animalistic, but also alluring in a strange way. It's hard to look away from.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:He's not like grotesque, but he is frightening.
>> Maddie Wood:He's scary, but in the kind of way that it's like you can't look away from.
>> Grace Todd:Whereas, whereas this orlok in 2024 is, is grotesque, is uncomfortable to look at. He's literally rotting. There are holes and pockmarks and it's like decaying flesh. And I don't think it's terribly subtle when you look at the structure of the 2024 film and all of the things with the contract and the sort of Russian ness, even that Orlok is very clearly being positioned as a decaying, decadent, flesh eating, ultra wealthy predator.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah. Just like the creepiest old man.
>> Grace Todd:Yes. Which in my opinion kind of feeds back into this reading of Orlok as a representation of a hyper concentrated, dark side of everything that our current class of like tech billionaires have given and taken away from us.
>> Maddie Wood:That I think isn't, is a, is an easier read. I can go along with that one. I, I, I think what I found the most striking about the difference between the two Nosferatu's also had to do with how I feel like vampires are traditionally portrayed in general. And that I think normally there's like, they're very like austere and beautiful and glamorous and like sexy and especially with this like, rise of like monster romance. And like that's a real thing. I'm gonna call it Monrom. Sounds like really technical term for like genitalia. But this whole like rise of that like subculture of romance novel is all very much based on this idea that like vampires are beautiful, like so stunningly like beautiful. And like, that's part of their like thrall and their allure. And while the version from 1922 is not like beautiful, there is part of that allure that like, you can't look away piece of it. Whereas there was something about the 2024 version where I was like, I don't even want to look at you.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. I mean it's, it's grotesque, like deeply unsettling.
>> Maddie Wood:So disgusting. I was so like taken by how different and how much that changed how I felt about like the storyline as a whole. But then even just at the end, like they still managed to make me feel like this like weird small amount of just like pity. See, I at the very end, pity might not even be the right word. But just like this version, I felt like, gave much more to this idea that he felt something for her outside of just like. Whereas I feel like the 22 version didn't give me that. And it's possible it's just like shorter and there's less. It's like a sparser story. But it felt much more like the obsession went both ways in 20 in 2024.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Maddie Wood:Than it did in 20 in the 1922. And I don't know to your, to your theory if it's the sort of the double edged sword of the Internet in that we like, love it and hate it, need it but don't want it, are bound to it now, but maybe it's awful for us.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, I think that fits in very tidily with my reading. I also, like, I want to be clear, I'm not entirely sure that this movie knows what it's trying to say.
>> Maddie Wood:That I think is also the piece where I like, don't wanna, I don't wanna give them the credit of perhaps this retelling, but who knows?
>> Grace Todd:Come with me enthusiastically sign on to my reading because I think it's fun. I do think there is that. I think once, once you make Orlok something that Ellen has invited in and that everyone around her is suffering for, then you have to accept the moral responsibility of that decision falling on her, even if it was something she did because she was lonely. And so unless the story you are trying to tell is about how women will destroy the people around them because they don't understand the forces they're playing with, unless you are trying to go full conservative biblical Eve story, then you have to have some understanding of what Orlok means. That puts us as the consumers of your story, in a position to fall into the same trap that Ellen has. And understandably, yeah, I go along with that. And so that combined with the sort of grotesqueness of the character design, which feels much more appropriate in 2024 than in 20 than in 1922. Because now with the advent of social media, we are so much more aware than we have ever been of the absolute ugliness of the people who are ruining our lives. Like it's so much more tangible. Right. You wake up every morning in a world where Elon Musk is destroying people's livelihoods and being the most pathetic mother in the world on the social media platform he bought to make himself feel like he has friends.
>> Maddie Wood:All true.
>> Grace Todd:I don't think it was better when we were being oppressed by, like, royalty. But at least they were physically far away from you and had fancy outfits. And you never got close enough to know that they made shitty jokes and smelled bad.
>> Maddie Wood:No, I mean, isn't that truly, like. That is the worst of the advent of the Internet is that it's taken the blinders off of humankind.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. We're being eaten alive by something that we are addicted to.
>> Maddie Wood:Well, and also just. You can't pretend to not know anymore.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:And that's the, That's the crux of it, is that I think, like.
>> Grace Todd:And we can't pretend to not know because we're addicted to it.
>> Maddie Wood:Well, yeah. And I mean, in 1980, you could maybe think, oh, maybe my neighbor's a little bit racist. But you'd never know.
>> Grace Todd:You wouldn't have to.
>> Maddie Wood:You wouldn't have to know. And now you log into Facebook and they've posted some insane, like, Tea Party QAnon theory. And now you know, and you can't unknow, this is the devil. This is the. This is the devil's deal.
>> Grace Todd:And every day that we spend trying to figure it out, these people get richer because we are also directly enriching them with our engagement every day.
>> Maddie Wood:Correct.
>> Grace Todd:So my conclusion, personally, is that Nosferatu 2024 is unsettling, but ultimately not unsuccessful. Although I think there is a world in which it could have been done much more tidily. Because one of my concerns with the 24 version is that it is equally open to the interpretation that Ellen is gross and icky and her sexuality has doomed us all.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:I think a movie that had a clearer idea of its own ideas would not have left that quite so ambiguous.
>> Maddie Wood:I think. Very fair. And I think that's why that particular storyline gives me as much pause, because I feel like, as the filmmaker, it's your responsibility to make it clearer. Or.
>> Grace Todd:And it's the same ambiguity from the witch the vvivitch.
>> Maddie Wood:which I never saw.
>> Grace Todd:It's. It's a very similarly. It's a very good movie that I like very much. That is a very neat little metaphor for religious fundamentalism that kind of falls apart in the third act when the witches are real and actually eating babies, which, undermines the first two acts. The first two acts.
>> Maddie Wood:Cool.
>> Grace Todd:so this this might be a little bit of a Robert Eggers special, which is fumbling the landing after, like, trying to. To make movies that are these kind of, like, feminine antihero parables that kind of fail to stick the landing, leaving people like me to just make up our own ideas of what the story.
>> Maddie Wood:Is about to go theory wild.
>> Grace Todd:And I maintain that this movie is about tech billionaires, the manosphere, and, the fact that, consuming pornography and sex work in general are not actually dangerous unless you are surrounded by people who are intent upon punishing you for it.
>> Maddie Wood:I don't think you're wrong. I want to be very clear.
>> Grace Todd:That's my takeaway. That's the movie I'm choosing to have seen.
>> Maddie Wood:I'm down with that. I'm down with that. I, And to be very fair, I didn't, like, dislike the movie. It just was a movie that I was like, okay, I probably don't need to watch this again.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Maddie Wood:Just from, like, a personal joy meter.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, that's fair.
>> Maddie Wood:I, do want to talk about Willem.
>> Grace Todd:My baby boy.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:My sweet angel.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah. And just, like, probably the highlight of the film. The only reason I would watch it again.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Maddie Wood:Only reason is him as, like, a. A disgraced doctor who's taken a turn towards occult research.
>> Grace Todd:Now, interestingly, and I honestly think that this is why he is such a standout. As you know, as our listeners may not know, Willem Dafoe is not from the 2022 Nosferatu. William. Willem Dafoe is straight up just Van Helsing yoinked out of the Dracula novel and dropped back into Nosferatu. And it's better for it.
>> Maddie Wood:Well, Van Helsing appears in the 2020 or, the 1922 version very briefly, where maybe they don't. Maybe this is a difference in version. And my interstitials called him this, but yours did not. But there's, like, a professor. There's a scene with a Venus flytrap.
>> Grace Todd:Dr. Bulwer. That is not Van Helsing.
>> Maddie Wood:My interstitials called him Van Helsing.
>> Grace Todd:That was a lie. They lied to you. Because Van Helsing in the book is so sweet. He's so. He's, like, charming and energetic and deeply, deeply comforting. Like, one of the nicest things about him as a character is every time he's on the page, you just feel like you're being hugged. And Dr. Bulwer is completely useless and might as well not be there.
>> Maddie Wood:So I definitely wrote in my notes, Van Helsing, who is not Hugh Jackman. which was a little Muppet Christmas girl joke just for me. but I was just like, wait, this like, elderly man?
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. No.
>> Maddie Wood:Is supposed to be Van Helsing. I was so confused.
>> Grace Todd:That is very much a 19. The Dr. Bulwer in the 1922. Again, we're looking at a parable of like, post World War I Weimar Republic. Like one of the points that they, I think, are going out of their way to make is that in this universe, in this story, there are no charming old wizened academics coming to rescue you. The medical profession is as baffled and useless as everyone else. The only thing that can save them is Ellen. Contrast that with 24. We have lifted Van Helsing up out of Dracula and just brought him along for the ride. And thank God. I love him so much.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah, he was a real highlight of the film for me. Yeah, the film got significantly better for me once he showed up also because he ended up just being like this, like a nice foible to, like how gross Friedrich ended up being.
>> Grace Todd:Yes.
>> Maddie Wood:And like how aggressive he was. He was like such a. It was a balance of energy that I like very much needed, that I was just like, oh, thank God. But they don't call him Van Helsing in the movie. They give him some other name.
>> Grace Todd:They call him Von Franz.
>> Maddie Wood:Okay.
>> Grace Todd:But he is very much Van Helsing. Like everything about the character is Van Helsing, down to the idea that he's, like a sort of renowned expert on diseases of the brain who also has kind of lost some of his reputation because he's wandered into the occult. That is Van Helsing's backstory. That's his whole thing.
>> Maddie Wood:Gotcha.
>> Grace Todd:Which is why he is uniquely positioned to diagnose what ails Lucy and to try and save her, but fail. But then he saves Mina. And I will say, you know, to. To loop back around to giving 2024 a little bit of credit, I think, from when Von Franz. From when Willem Dafoe comes on the screen, there is between him and Ellen a sudden kind of moral clarity that the rest of the movie lacks. The minute he is there to understand her and she feels understood by him, they are kind of operating on a different level. And he is the one who like, sees and acknowledges and enables the sacrifice that she is going to make.
>> Maddie Wood:The age old tale that a woman alone can't be true. But when a man comes along and says, no, you're right, then all of a sudden she's right.
>> Grace Todd:I think one of the redeeming features of the sort of storyline, in a general sense, is that Ellen does what she does, knowing even up to the end that none of them still really believe her. And Willem Dafoe's character, Von Franz, enables, her to make her sacrifice by deceiving the rest of them.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes. I found that, like, lovely scene where she walks him to his door. They're like, all together. And she's like, I'll walk you to. And they kind of come to their understanding together. And I was like, this is nice. I'm glad you have someone.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. I think. And, this is a conclusion I have drawn since we started talking about it, but I think that this is a complicated and I don't know how successful attempt at really blending Nosferatu 22 and Dracula. The more we have picked through it, the more elements I'm kind of tracing back to the novel rather than the intermediary film. And I was. I was, I think, tricked a little bit because the plot is so, like, thoroughly 22 Nosferatu. But the third, there are lots of. There are elements. The medicalization, the larger role of Dr. Seward Van Helsing himself.
>> Maddie Wood:Part of me wonders, like, would it have been better for him to just make a film adaptation of Dracula as opposed to trying to, like, take this movie that very clearly made some choices to not be a one for one adaptation.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Maddie Wood:But then still try to, like, wedge back in some of this source material. But then you're left with this thing that does feel at points, like, sort of clunky or, like, a little bit disjointed. Because especially if you've watched the 22, the 1922 version of Nosferatu as himself is like, such a quintessential horror archetype. Like, visual.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Maddie Wood:That I understand the need to be like, I gotta really do something different to, like, separate myself from this. And I. Apparently that means, like, making Bill Skarsgard just, like, look like a. Like a walking corpse, but also a huge, terrifying walking corpse.
>> Grace Todd:Well, and that's.
>> Maddie Wood:How do you have parts of your back with no skin, but you maintain that much of a mustache? I had some, like, logistical questions, I gotta say.
>> Grace Todd:Like, Nosferatu 22, the villain really is Death. Right. Like, Nosferatu himself is Death. And yes, there's a very engaging and worthwhile reading of additional things that Orlok can mean. But Orlok is Death. Right. I mean, you look at the character design and, like, that is.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah. He's like the pallor that is a Corpse.
>> Grace Todd:An aristocratic corpse.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes.
>> Grace Todd:Which feels very fitting for a post war horror narrative. 24 Nosferatu is decay, not death.
>> Maddie Wood:Which is. Yeah, they're very different decay.
>> Grace Todd:And, that does feel very appropriate for a traumatized collapsing empire. Maybe that's what it is, is we've got a narrative that is the peak of empire, where the only thing that could threaten us is coming from without. And if we band together, we beautiful, happy white men, we can defeat it. We've got a story from the aftermath of an empire which is everyone I love is going to die. And I have been so immersed in death that I don't know if I will ever be able to live again. And now we've got. We've got the Nosferatu Dracula from a world that is suspended in a state of what feels like perpetual decay. And here it is.
>> Maddie Wood:Here we are. Here we are, 2024 Nosferatu. The Nosferatu we deserve.
>> Grace Todd:Fingering Daddy Orlok's back holes as he murders us.
>> Maddie Wood:I really was.
>> Grace Todd:I was like, her finger's about to go in that hole.
>> Maddie Wood:It was so close to that hole.
>> Grace Todd:I was like, oh, here it goes. And then she just got into it.
>> Maddie Wood:She also, like, made out with him with a level of perceived fervor that I couldn't. All I could think was the smell.
>> Grace Todd:That's how you gotta keep his attention till the sun comes up, baby.
>> Maddie Wood:No, I mean, I know. Great actress. Like, we're doing it.
>> Grace Todd:One important note. Dracula being killed by sunlight was an invention of the 1922 Nosferatu.
>> Maddie Wood:Interesting. Also, he bursts into flames.
>> Grace Todd:Uh-huh.
>> Maddie Wood:In the 22 version. And in this one, he just sort of, like, mummifies. Yeah, I guess. Had to get that, like, really crazy shot of her naked covered in blood. With his, like, crypt, like, skeletor body on top.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Maddie Wood:And flowers sort of around.
>> Grace Todd:Around.
>> Maddie Wood:Thanks, Willem.
>> Grace Todd:That's also a reference to the novel, and how successful it is, I think, like we've been saying. Really depends on what you think it's saying.
>> Maddie Wood:I. I, think that for me, part of the reason that I didn't find it m more terrifying in any kind of way was that it was a period piece. I don't know why, but for some reason that, like, immediately, like, disarms as if scary things didn't happen in the past. Like, that's the stupidest thing my brain's ever come up with. But that's okay.
>> Grace Todd:I mean, my. My favorite horror movies are period piece horror movies. I just love them for some reason. Maybe because I find good horror to be incompatible with iPhones. I just. The minute you have a smartphone in a horror story of any kind, it's. It's just. You have to spend at least a solid chunk of the beginning dispensing with the cell phone, and I get annoyed by it.
>> Maddie Wood:That's fair. Yeah, that's fair. But, I don't know. Go watch them.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah.
>> Maddie Wood:Read the book.
>> Grace Todd:Dracula. Having reread it now recently, for the first time in quite a while, Dracula slaps. It's so fun and it's so compulsively readable, especially because of the epistolary nature of it. The first little bit kind of drags getting Jonathan Harker to Dracula's castle. You're in his travel log and he's. Bram Stoker is a little too excited to show off all the Transylvania research he did. But from when you are in that castle, it is, it is a galloping read. It's so good. It's so fun.
>> Maddie Wood:All right, so go read Dracula, everyone.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah, Go read Dracula. Watch the 1922 version. Try to watch. So I've. I've heard people say that the frame rates are a mess, but the Kino version appears to be the most complete version that I could easily find here in the United States that has the correct, like interstitials and has all of the scenes correctly assembled. And the, original tinting is correct, which is very important because that's what lets you know if it is daytime or nighttime or Twilight.
>> Maddie Wood:Yes. That's, ah, very difficult to do in a black and white film.
>> Grace Todd:Correct. and the tinting is how it would have been originally presented. So, yeah, the Kino version and then.
>> Maddie Wood:Obviously the, the new version.
>> Grace Todd:We don't need to tell you to watch 2024 Dracula, or I kind of.
>> Maddie Wood:Wish it were 2024 Dracula.
>> Grace Todd:We don't. We don't need to tell you to watch 2024 Nosferatu. You either already to or don't intend to or will not, so we won't.
>> Maddie Wood:Make a difference whichever camp you're in. That's okay.
>> Grace Todd:But now you know a little bit more about its, its influences and the things that it is building on. So isn't that fun?
>> Maddie Wood:Look, a little break from my gulag. What a thing to come out of gulag related episodes about.
>> Grace Todd:All right, well, baddie.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:Thank you.
>> Maddie Wood:You're welcome.
>> Grace Todd:This was fun.
>> Maddie Wood:Yeah.
>> Grace Todd:I hope you had a good time. We, honestly, we were much more serious than I expected. We were very academic.
>> Maddie Wood:We were. And that's normally not our speed at all. It's actually a little bit jarring. Really.
>> Grace Todd:surprised at the lack of, like, giggles. Yeah. And. And raunchy jokes, so.
>> Maddie Wood:You're welcome, everyone.
>> Grace Todd:Is there anywhere you would like people to find you?
>> Maddie Wood:I'd like people to follow. Didn't read it on Instagram or Blue sky, our new channel.
>> Grace Todd:Yeah. All right.
>> Maddie Wood:Follow. Follow. Follow the pod.
>> Grace Todd:You heard the lady. And, follow the pod. Follow the pod. Check out our new merch store. There's fun stuff there.
>> Maddie Wood:Oh, yeah.
>> Grace Todd:And it will help me keep making this beautiful show.
>> Maddie Wood:Deeply important.
>> Grace Todd:And, yeah, other than that, we'll be back next week with more rip roaring adventures. I think it'll get. I think it's gonna be some Raymond Carver. Oh, yeah. Gonna get a little saucy.
>> Maddie Wood:That's fun. Some dames resurrecting American short stories.
>> Grace Todd:And as always, if you can this week, this month, this pay period, consider supporting a living author, because they could really, really use love. Bye. Didn't read. It was created, written, researched, and recorded by me, Grace Todd. Maddie Wood is our co producer and social media maven. Editing by Tallie, a true podcasting professional, and M. Grace Todd. Our theme song is Books 2.0. Written, performed, and recorded by William Albritton. Our logo was designed and illustrated by the incredibly talented Jess versus Special thanks to blackiris Social Club in Richmond, Virginia. Reach out to us with questions, concerns, or academic scrutiny at. didn't studentreaditpodmail.com.