With Nosferatu (2024), Robert Eggers has given us an insight in to what a woman’s sexual repression can be when it is refused and becomes unleashed; writes Robyn Pond. Looking back on the film as we enter October, she explains that a woman’s sexuality has been seen historically as a fairy-tale, or a dangerous myth; something which plays into the folktales that Egger’s enjoys. As was the case with The Lighthouse and VVitch, the film also touches upon guilt and shame in historical settings, exploring these themes by merging them with folklore and realism, ultimately inviting us to forgive and accept the monsters within ourselves in the modern day.
So, this is going to be a weird analogy but stay with me. If you were to take an all-inclusive cinematic coach trip along the ‘Nosferatu’ branch of films, imagining that each film is a set place along the route, the starting point in the journey would be a place familiar to any self-confessed film fan, the most famous tourist hotspot Murnau’s Nosferatu.
‘Murnau’ is revered for its pioneering twilight visuals rendered in German Expressionist shadow-play, but it’s so well-visited by now that its ‘spots’ are as ubiquitous as the fridge magnets it would sell to the tourists.
Further down the road and we come to ‘Herzog’. It looks just like ‘Murnau’ at first but with a little exploration you come to realise the loneliness of its locals and scenery filled with desolation and melancholy. It’s beautiful but haunting.
You’re grateful to re-board the driverless coach and someone behind you points out that ‘Fisher’ isn’t on the schedule. But barely anyone has heard of ‘Fisher’ and upon realising it’s basically a place filled with Nosferatu-themed MacDonalds and Apple Stores, no-one wants to stop there, shrugging it off as a completely unnecessary rebuild to appease the purveyors of fast-food digital modernity.
Beyond this point, things get weird and you realise you accidently booked yourself on the ‘Deep-Cuts’ Nosferatu tour, watching in horror as you’re steered off the beaten path. In this analogy, ‘Shadow of the Vampire’ is like visiting Milton Keynes, the references to its predecessor locations are still there, but it’s a place that’s been Americanised. It’s meta and uncanny valley, although you’ll still be sure to tell your spouse you were surprised when you saw Eddie Izzard there. Another detour and the bus veers wildly through the backwoods towards ‘Vampire in Venice’. Thankfully this is where the bus breaks down. Triple A are called, a replacement bus is sent and you feel in safe hands again.
You can finally culminate this historic journey with a place you’ve been looking forwards to for so long, a powerful ‘end’ to the grand tour, Nosferatu (2024), where Eggers’ knowledge of folklore and literature blends with his wonderful eye for aesthetics to create a dramatic and romantic landscape. The views are exceptional.
This latest reincarnation of Nosferatu has and always will be, first and foremost a vampire flick. Vampires are traditionally played by men in film – most famously by Max Schreck, Bela Lugosi, Christopher Lee and Gary Oldman – so that when we remember ‘vampire’ films, it’s with a sense of a strong masculine presence and sexuality. They frequently tend to chase down young maidens until they get their fill. This makes a lot of sense as male sexual desire is often seen in society as bestial, unhinged, depraved and powerful – as are vampires. What makes Egger’s film interesting to me however, is that although Orlok/Nosferatu is once again played (in a fantastic performance from Skarsgard) by a man, it wasn’t like it’s predecessors. This vampire didn’t seem to hold the same masculine presence – and here I’m not talking in a Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt or Robert Pattinson way, whose characters were written by women – this Orlok/Nosferatu, although intrinsically tied to Lily-Rose Depp’s Ellen, didn’t seem to be either completely bestial or completely romantic. Its existence instead, felt to me, more like the deep-down, inhibited sexuality of a woman.
I was initially taken off guard when I started to look further in depth to the vampire canon and saw just how many portraits (beyond film) belonged to women. In Carmilla, one of the first vampire novels, the vampire lead is a female and has a particularly sapphic relationship with the heroine. Then there are the demonic vampire women, present in Dracula’s castle (see the book and the Coppola film) smartly deconstructed by Carol Senf in her essay Dracula: Stoker’s Response to the New Woman. Turning to paintings, Pre-Raphaelite artist Burne-Jones’ The Vampire shows a woman lying atop a prone male figure, and Love and Pain (1895) by Edvard Munch uses a red-haired female subject attached to the neck of a despondent looking male victim. These examples, still created by men and could easily be read as misogynistic. It could be that men see themselves as manipulated by women or that they see women as feasting off of the innate charisma or artistic vitality of men. Or perhaps, men are afraid of the powerful, underlying sexuality of women, a concept which is still seen as worthy of shame even a century on, and something which I feel this latest Nosferatu touches upon.
Here’s why.
The 1800s were not a time for women to have a sexuality.
Ellen certainly appears most abnormal through a Victorian lens. She challenges Thomas constantly on his decisions, and seems to suffer with mental illness and a lack of self-control. In her initial dream of herself marrying Thomas, and ultimately death, she says their wedding is taking place “beyond chapel walls” implying that she sees themselves outside of traditional marriage.
In the 1800s women in charge of their own sexual identity were considered to be uncontrollable and sometimes could be sent to a nunnery or an asylum if they were suspected of having sex outside of marriage. They were thought to be as ‘lunatics’ (lots of full moons in this film) – “My House has become a bedlam!” Friedrich announces when the night is particularly fraught. Freud believed that ‘libidinal drives could conflict with conventional behaviour’ perhaps that is what we are seeing in Ellen here, a rejection of the conventions being forced upon her. From the beginning we know that she has been treated previously for melancholy, again if we employ Freud here, he says in melancholia ‘a person grieves for a loss they are unable to comprehend or identify, thus this process takes place in the unconscious mind.’ Ellen has repressed her sexual identity for so long, due to societal shame and shame from her father – which she later admits to Dr. Eberhart von Franz, and has yet to reaccept herself as a healthy, sexual individual. Thomas being unwilling to give in to her advances compounds this. ‘When it happens that a person has to give up a sexual object, there quite often ensues an alteration of ego often impacting their identity and self-perception due to the loss of that object of desire.’ Has Ellen created an alter ego, Nosferatu as a coping mechanism?
She is also treated for hysteria, initially the Ancient Greeks believed that this was where the ‘womb has wandered’ causing passionate outbursts or ’embarrassing or unusual behaviours’. It was unfortunately a very common condition diagnosed to women in the Victorian era. We see Sievers and Eberhart von Franz attend to Ellen with various other feminine-attributed medical care, her corset is too tight, perhaps she has ‘too much blood’. Women have a very obvious connection to blood (as do vampires!). Eberhart von Franz however does eventually take a different approach to Ellen’s outbursts. He questions her, much like a psychoanalytic session, letting her explore her own repressed feelings, a process which brings up anecdotes of sexual shame. Only afterwards during a ‘possession’ does he forgo scientific method to calls upon Enochian angels and demons to protect her.
I made a specific note of these demons’ names, because I wondered why Eggers had included them. We have Chamuel, an angel of unconditional love, something Ellen will need as she is going through her self-torment. Haniel, the high priestess of grace and feminine spirituality, called upon on a full moon, how apt! And Zadkiel, freedom and forgiveness. Eberhart von Franz no doubt feels this presence will heal painful memories and free Ellen from the guilt she feels about her own sexual identity. Meanwhile the demons summoned are Eligos, created from the remains of a horse in the garden of Eden (Eve’s punishment), Orabas, giving power and control (something Ellen needs to have over herself and her life) and Asmoday who slayed 7 successive husbands on their wedding nights impeding consummation. He is also a demon of desire and in the Malleus Maleficarum, a demon of lust. These are some very specific strange beings to call upon if you’re dealing with a vampire, why would you need an angel of forgiveness? Or a demon at all? Wouldn’t they be more likely to encourage a vampire, beings who are usually spawned from hell?
Finally, in the 1800s there existed an angel/whore dichotomy. If you weren’t chaste, like the Virgin Mary (or Anna), you were a ‘fallen woman’ like Lilith (or Ellen). In this mindset the Nuns that later appear in this film are a stark contrast to Ellen, wherein she causes Thomas the most pain, they in turn soothe him and heal him from Orlok/Nosferatu’s attack.
In this era, women were supposed to repress the wants, desires and needs of their sexual libido as they were pretty much there to satisfy a husband’s urges and to procreate only. Underscoring this in Noseratu, the character of Anna Harding is the ideal wife for this reason, as unlike Ellen, she has provided her husband with a family but doesn’t seem to harbour her own need for sex.
When Anna’s husband Friedrich advances on her at the beach, her first thought is of being seen, and she quickly stops him in a socially responsible manner. It is important here to recognise that in Nosferatu (1922) the character of Anna didn’t exist. Instead, Harding lives with his sister Ruth. So why did Eggers make this change? Perhaps to more starkly contrast the characters of perfect Anna and outsider Ellen. Friedrich tells his wife she “must not be swept up” in Ellen’s “fairy-ways”, he doesn’t want his wife to become the free-thinking sexual libertine that he sees Ellen as. Of course, Anna eventually succumbs to the disease which Ellen/Nosferatu has unleashed, after spending time in bed with her.
Later, Von Frantz declares, “This is no mere plague!” No, it is a feminist sexual awakening! As a typical patriarchal figure Friedrich is constantly trying to suppress Ellen. He tells her to watch her tongue when speaking to him, chastises her for wanting to go about unchaperoned and is very open to tying her down while she is suffering. Although he loves the ‘good‘ women in his life, his ways of thinking are fast becoming outdated, and just like his emblematically traditional family, he too is eventually condemned to die.
But if this isn’t a plague, if it is a sexual awakening in Ellen, what might that mean for the apparent source of the unfolding carnage?
Ellen and Orlok/Nosferatu are one and the same.
You never see them together in the same room! Just kidding… Though it’s interesting how often, when they do appear in the same scene, Nosferatu isn’t really seen by anyone else.
Take the first scene, where the formless Nosferatu addresses her seemingly out of nowhere. “You,” he says. “You are not for the living.” Beyond the frame, we as the viewer know that he is invisible, we may see a pareidolic shadow on the curtain, but we don’t see him as a solid object. When we’re then outside in the garden, we can see Ellen being pinned down but only when we look up to see him ‘on top of us’ do we SEE him.
Fast-forwarding on to when Nosferatu and Ellen meet again, Anna is conveniently ‘asleep’, and therefore never sees Nosferatu. Nosferatu announces “…tonight you have denied yourself!” I see this as a direct, literal quote. Ellen is denying her own innate nature. Ellen then wakes up from this encounter which could mean that when we were seeing Nosferatu, we saw him as if we too were in her mind/dream. He is a figment of her.
When Herr Knock first talks to Thomas, he compares Ellen to a sylph. Why does he choose a sylph in particular? He really seems take pause and think about this choice of word. This film has some heavy Paracelsian leanings, Paracelsius being a Swiss physician and alchemist who held Hermetic beliefs, but more importantly for this argument, he was known for his description of Sylphs.
A Sylph is a creature of folklore, and airy creature much like Ariel in The Tempest, and do you know who else is airy? Nosferatu! He can enter through windows like a breeze, flit with speed about a room, and create ‘tempests’ which blow his ship across the ocean. If Knock thinks of Ellen as a Sylph and he is on special terms with his master, who is also sylph-like, could he perhaps be comparing the two?
Now, if you’re wondering where Thomas actually meeting Nosferatu figures in to the idea that few can see him but Ellen, I’ll explain further so bear with me whilst I take you through a substantial lump of the film.
We know this is a magical, folkloric film. Mysterious things happen like doors opening on their own; a figure appears at one end of the stairs or at a table when we don’t see them move; and a coach literally drives itself – so we can assume that things are not what they seem. There is a magical realm on display here, with its own rules. So, I would argue that when Thomas is travelling to see his monstrous host, he is actually encountering a metaphor for the meeting of his and his wife’s sexuality. The journey that Thomas undertakes is like Theseus entering the Labyrinth. He leaves the safety of Wisbourg for love, on a horse, as a chaste knight, and enters the twisting forests.
In a scene reminiscent of German Romanticist Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Wanderer above the Sea of Fog,he stops to stare off into the distance across a valley. David Friedrich is said to have written about this painting, “When a region cloaks itself in mist, it appears larger and more sublime, elevating the imagination, and rousing the expectations like a veiled girl.”
Thomas is on a personal quest to uncover his ‘veiled girl’. Which makes his experience with the Roma camp at the inn all the more interesting. We see Thomas confronted with a different, more wild and ‘free‘ way of life than that of Wisborg. Upon passing through a gateway, a portal, children run up to him and surround him, perhaps reflecting his or Ellen’s inner desire for a big family. Everyone is playing music or dancing, or eating, sating their appetites. A young woman, uninhibited by the men surrounding her, dances and bends herself backwards for the camera/Thomas. Beyond her we approach the leader of the clan, who leans casually and haughtily in the doorway of the inn. He blocks the threshold. When he laughs, everyone laughs as if they are one being, collectively laughing at Thomas, laughing at his fear of jouissance.
Thomas’ stay at the inn is interrupted when he witnesses a disturbing scene that night. Outside the camp, a naked virgin is led to find the grave of an undead being. As the phallic object pierces the heart of the vampire, spurting forth blood, Thomas cries, “No! By the Grace of God!”, he has witnessed the carnal scene and the group’s leader eyes him with silent suspicion, as though offended by his objection to the ‘filthy ritual‘. Sir Thomas’ horse is stolen the next morning, confirming this faux-pas has seen him unknighted by the gypsy camp, and he must now travel on foot, eventually crossing a bridge from a side filled with crosses and protective emblems to untamed wilderness. When he comes to the crossroads in the deepest part of the forest, a coach is sent to bring him to Orlok’s castle, a fortress where Ellen’s inner desires are locked up tight.
His encounter with Orlok is filled with fearful experiences. Orlok is commanding and dominating. It scares Thomas, he doesn’t feel in control at all, much like his marriage to Ellen. As he explores the castle, he finds rats and mirrors. Rats are a symbol of fertility – they breed with speed. The mirrors, meanwhile, reflect his true self, and tie in nicely with the idea of the Thesian/Jungian labyrinthine journey. In Psychology and Alchemy, Jung writes: “…the right way to wholeness is made up, unfortunately, of fateful detours and wrong turnings. It is a long journey, not straight but snakelike, a path that unites in the manner of a guiding caduceus, a path whose labyrinthine twists and turns are not lacking in terrors.” Well, this is certainly terrifying. He sees himself punctured through the heart (not the neck!), and becomes more and more sick before trying to escape.
When Thomas stumbles across Orlok’s tomb, picking up a stake in readiness to slay the beast, however, the corpse (perhaps of Ellen’s undead sexuality) awakens before it can be struck down. Thomas is then chased by wolves (a materialisation of Ellen’s innate feral, animalistic nature), before then locking himself inside a room. The freshly risen Nosferatu manages to unlock the room using his shadow-self. If this were anything but a psychological manifestation, how could that be?
Ellen simultaneously sleepwalks in Wisborg, as Thomas is entranced far away. As he is approached, we see Nosferatu transform briefly into a naked Ellen, with blood coming from her mouth and eyes – exactly how we will later see Nosferatu as he lays dying.
Further on in the film Thomas will also see this vampiric version of Ellen when they are lying in bed together. What is it about his visit with Orlok that translates in his head to his marriage with Ellen? As Ellen falls to the floor (literally a fallen woman), Nosferatu feasts on Thomas without a fight.
Nosferatu is Ellen’s ravenous lust.
Thomas and Ellen are married but haven’t consummated their marriage. They have twin beds in their own home. Thomas wants to wait until he is promoted and appears to care more about his work then satisfying Ellen, he denies her advances even though he is already late to meet Knock (would being even 10 minutes late really matter?).
When Thomas and Friedrich are talking, he refers to Friedrich as the “ever the rutting goat”, but when Friedrich asks “and when will you two newlyweds…” meaning join Ellen in the marital bed, Thomas can only speak of the money he owes. That same evening, when Ellen entices Thomas into some passionate kissing in the Harding’s house, the scene fades into her hair. Cinematic signifiers of this kind often appear before a scene of post-coital bliss, messy hair and cigarettes. But the next scene is of Thomas fully clothed on their bed, and while Ellen is sitting by the mirror, most of her hair still perfectly styled upon her head. Nothing has come of it.
Nosferatu’s wolves often give chase to Thomas – he is the prey being hunted! Ellen is preying upon him, but he seems reluctant to give in to his own urges. “I am most impatient!” Orlok/Nosferatu says, echoing Ellen’s restless and eager desire to make love to Thomas. In the castle a raging fire (the flame of desire or inflamed passions) is seen in the grate, threatening to spill over. When Nosferatu finally has hold of Thomas and is moving in a disturbing, gulping, sexual manner, they are in front of the fireplace (think Women in Love), the fire is now out, he is being sated.
When Ellen first encounters Nosferatu, she has called out for company, she is alone and making soft moaning sounds, like she’s masturbating. He next appears in a cold, dark, far away, locked up castle – a metaphor for Ellen’s self-denied libido. Perhaps this is because her father caused her immense shame when she was found naked when she was young. ‘“Sin! Sin!” he said.‘
Ellen’s constantly displaying signs of a sexually aggressive, repressed nature that comes out in her ‘possessions’. She sweats, moans, writhes, says ‘He is coming!’. Her eyes roll back into her head, her body undulates, she tears her clothes away from herself, sticks her tongue out and drools. The way she treats Thomas also compounds on this theory, she pushes him to the floor, grabs his throat, crawls towards him and places her head against his crotch, tries to goad him into jealousy by saying ‘you could never please me as he could,’ basically saying it’s better with him. (Importantly, it’s only after being goaded by a raging, ‘possessed’ Ellen into having sex, that Nosferatu’s end can begin to come about.)
Eventually, when Ellen and Orlok meet again in the bedroom of Anna Harding, we have the most interesting conversation. This is the now infamous “I am an appetite” conversation which many a young woman (at least on Instagram) has taken for a declaration of love much akin to the “I have crossed oceans of time to find you” speech from Coppola’s Dracula. But I don’t see it as that, I see Nosferatu declaring himself as an appetite to be Ellen’s sexual appetite, so when Ellen says “I have felt you crawling like a serpent in my body”, it is like Eve in Eden, like Lilith in John Collier’s painting, being wrapped by a snake and how bound up sexuality would feel when it writhes around inside someone without an outlet. Here Nosferatu responds with “It is not me, it is your nature!” as if to confirm this. “I am an appetite! Nothing more!”
We can take this quite literally; Orlok is nothing but sexual drive. He then adds “I lay within the darkest pit [repression], till you did awake me, enchantress [sexual liberation]… and stirred me from my grave [she is no longer dead, but awake and alive]… you are my affliction.” Ellen is causing herself pain, with the shame of her ‘original sin’. “I was but an innocent child!” she protests, but Nosferatu continues, “Your passion is bound to me!” – and Ellen agrees she cannot love, “Yet I cannot be sated without you.” This is again a confirmation that this is desire incarnate speaking; it isn’t love, it is lust. Later, when Ellen is talking to Thomas, she will also concede that Nosferatu “…is my shame. He is my melancholy.”
The Ending.
Ellen is the only one who can stop Nosferatu. It is her feminine lust, her desire that is a plague on the town of Wisborg. “I have brought this evil upon us,” she says, adding, “Thomas it was you who gave me the courage to be free of my shame.”
In this era, by entering in to marriage, Ellen was given the right to have a sex life, a semblance of sexual freedom within accepted societal boundaries. But even then, Thomas is quite cold, and he often rebuffs her. The world she exists in says she isn’t supposed to crave him or enjoy sex, and so she still fights against her own sexuality, she says “I am not to be touched” and “Keep away from me, I am unclean.” It is why her imagined vision of herself as Nosferatu is so monstrous. That is how she truly sees herself.
Von Franz is the only one to truly advocate for the freedom of women in this film. In his last conversation with her, he says in heathen times, Ellen would have been a Priestess of Isis – a cult where women were strongly represented. He goes on to say, “Yet in this strange and modern world, your purpose is of greater worth. You are our salvation.”
Ellen is the catalyst for change in the modern world, if she would only accept herself, she could be a figurehead for other women to come to terms with their true nature and end their own suffering. Ellen therefore becomes the bride of her own identity. She puts on a veil, dresses the marital bed and says “I do.” She enters into a contract with Nosferatu, and through this union, finds acceptance of herself. She chooses to feed and nurture Nosferatu, giving it everything she has, she freely shares her blood, her life-force, and in that little death, finds peace for the breaking of a new dawn.