Nosferatu Explained For Cinephiles | I Am An Appetite

If you just want a quick explanation of Nosferatu, here it is. Nosferatu is about liberation from the burdens and judgments of society, especially around the idea of sex. 

Remember, storytelling in mainstream cinema often relies on the relationship between the first and last scene to convey the overall theme. When we apply that to Nosferatu, what do we see? 

• Beginning: Ellen has sex out of wedlock
• Middle: Ellen’s emotionally and literally haunted by the encounter
• Ending: Ellen recreates the affair in order to redeem society 

What’s the first interaction Ellen has with Thomas? She tries to get him to stay in bed and fool around. Except he’s late for a meeting so runs out. What’s the last thing Thomas and Ellen do together? Have sex. And how does Ellen kill Orlok? Sex. 

So we’ve established a recurring motif of sex. But why is that such an emphasis? What’s the meaning of it all?

The metaphor of Ellen and Orlok

As much as Orlok pursues Ellen, he says at one point that he was just happily sleeping then Ellen summoned him. Look closely at this conversation between the two:

• Ellen: You. I felt you crawling like a serpent in my body. 
• Orlok: It is not me. It is your nature. 
• E: No. I love Thomas. 
• O: Love is inferior to you. I told you, you are not of humankind. 
• E: You are a villain to speak, sir. 
• O: I am an appetite. Nothing more. Over centuries, a loathsome beast, I lay within the darkest pit. ‘Till you did wake me, enchantress, and stirred me from my grave. You are my affliction.
• E: I care nothing for your afflictions. 
• O: Yet, even now, we are fated. Your husband has signed his name and covenanted you to my person for but a sack of gold. For gold, he did absolve his nuptial bonds. And the resignation must be completed by you, freely of thine own will. 
• E: You are a deceiver.
• O: You deceive yourself. 
• E: I was but an innocent child. 
• O: And thought you I would not return? Thought you I would not? Your passion is bound to me. 
• E: You cannot love. 
• O: I cannot love. Yet I cannot be sated without you. Remember how once we were, a moment, remember. 

The key line there is “I am an appetite.” Obviously, he’s a vampire who wants to feed on blood. But there’s more to it than that. Metaphorically, he represents Ellen’s appetite. Her passion for sex. A passion she indulged in before her marriage. And that “transgression” has haunted her ever since. 

Through a modern lens, that might seem silly. But Nosferatu takes place in Germany in 1838. It was an incredibly conservative time. Which is exactly what Friedrich and Anna Harding represent. They’re part of the entrenched status quo that Thomas and Ellen hope to be part of. Except Ellen actually embodies a more progressive mindset. And Thomas is torn between them. Most of the movie, he’s trying to be like Friedrich, to play by the traditional rules, and that almost costs him everything. But, by the end, he rejects Friedrich (whose denial of events brings about the ruin of his family) and embraces the progressivism of Ellen and Professor Von Franz. 

Back then, female sexual appetite was considered a monstrous, foul thing. One of the most famous books in American history, published in 1850, is The Scarlet Letter, a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne about Puritans condemning a young woman for having a baby out of wedlock. Even today, there are groups of people (usually Puritan-like in their traditional beliefs) who attempt to shun and shame women who enjoy sex. 

Orlok is a manifestation of the shame Ellen felt about her “appetite”. That shame is a byproduct of the society she lived in. Which is why you have the whole plague subplot. In such a society, sexual appetite is considered a kind of sickness. One that people believed would bring about the downfall of civilization. 

Ellen’s defeat of Orlok really is a defeat of that toxic mindset around sex. Which is essentially the text, context, and subtext of Von Franz in the last 20 minutes of the film. When he raves after setting the casket on fire, what does he say? 

All of that adds up to this idea of bringing the “appetite” out of the darkness and into the light. In the darkness, it’s this evil thing. But in the light, it’s purified. That’s what Nosferatu is about. The difference between demonizing sex versus viewing it as a normal, healthy activity. 

The wrong view of Nosferatu

I’m sure there will be people who try to spin Nosferatu as condemning of sex, who view Eggers taking a conservative stance. They’ll argue Eggers punishes Ellen and makes a negative example of her. “Give into your appetite, ladies, and this is what happens.” But I think that’s a really unfair interpretation of the movie. And misses the point that Eggers is condemning Puritanical societies. He did a similar thing in The Witch. He uses the occult to represent the influence of the heavily conservative notions of the times.

Confirmation from Robert Eggers himself

I like to do this thing where I write the article then look for director interviews that prove my point, and, yup, just found one. Here is an excerpt from an interview Eggers did with the New York Times. It confirms my theories! 

NYT: All of your films are about female desire upending the world. The usual modern spin on any movie that’s about woman and desire is rah, rah, feminism, burn the patriarchy down. But you come at it differently. 

Eggers: Ellen doesn’t put on her husband’s trousers and jump on the horse and kill the vampire with the stake. Yet to say that she is a female character with a ton of agency is a fact. To say that she’s a victim is also a fact. But she’s as much a victim of 19th-century society as she is a victim of the vampire.

People talk a lot about Lily-Rose Depp’s character’s sexual desire, which is a massive part of the character, of what she experiences — being shut down, and corseted up, and tied to the bed, and quieted with ether. Misunderstood, misdiagnosed. But it’s more than that. She has an innate understanding about the shadow side of the world that we live in that she doesn’t have language for. This gift and power that she has isn’t in an environment where it’s being cultivated, to put it mildly. It’s pretty tragic. Then she makes the ultimate sacrifice, and she’s able to reclaim this power through death.

There’s a lot of literary criticism about Victorian male authors who have strong female characters with chthonic energy and understanding, who are then punished unconsciously by the male authors by making them die. While there’s certainly validity in that [critique], I’ve also read feminist literary criticism that says how it’s interesting that in this very repressed Victorian society, over and over again, this archetype that was needing to consummate itself in the patriarchal imagination is a woman who understands the darkness and the sexuality and the earth juju, and should be the savior of the culture.

Cast

• Ellen Hutter – Lily-Rose Depp
• Thomas Hutter – Nicholas Hoult
• Count Orlok – Bill Skarsgård
• Friedrich Harding – Aaron Taylor-Johnson
• Anna Hardin – Emma Corrin
• Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz – Willem Dafoe
• Dr. Wilhelm Sievers – Ralph Ineson
• Herr Knock – Simon McBurney
• Based on – The novel Dracula by Bram Stoker
• Also Based on – The movie Nosferatu by Henrik Galeen
• Written by – Robert Eggers
• Directed by – Robert Eggers 

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