Nosferatu (Alternate Soundtracks)

Del Rey and the Sun Kings: Nosferatu (2007) ***
Nosferatu: The Gothic Industrial Mix (2001) ***1/2

F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu was released in 1922. It would be another few years before sound-on-film would become pervasive. In the silent era, music for film originally functioned as both score and sound effect. To modern ears, the stings of these early film scores sound melodramatic, much in the same way that most silent film acting seems overwrought. While there was disagreement, even at the time, at how much actors in silent film needed to ham it up to compensate for the lack of dialogue, there was no such option in the music. The soundtrack had to be indulgent, otherwise there'd be little way to connect with the happenings onscreen.

It's a bummer for us, I think. If we were alive to see a film like Nosferatu when it was originally in theaters, we wouldn't consider the sound at all the same way. All of the ideas would still be quite novel and the film would have an actual wallop. We don't watch films like Nosferatu with fear anymore -- we've already been scared too many times by films with more complicated mechanisms.

Obviously the advent of film sound didn't mean the end of music in film. Now that the music doesn't have to babysit the action so much, it works towards a higher purpose. It helps to give us a sense of presence -- that feeling that we can empathize with what we're seeing. We can't truly know the feeling of reality on the inside of the image because we aren't there. We can't feel the temperature in the room, can't smell the room, can't taste it. Our hearts beat differently sitting in our chairs in theaters or at home on the couch. But even so, done well, music can simulate these missing pieces.

Anyway, while searching for vampire movies on Netflix, I came across two versions of Nosferatu (well, three, if you count the original, to which, incidentally, I'd have given a 4-star rating). I watched both of them consecutively and found each, at the very least, intriguing. When evaluating both versions, I tried to measure them by how well the modern sound developed chemistry with the aged visuals.

First was the Del Rey version. The sound pallette consists of reverby, vibrato electric guitars set against a backdrop of airy electronica. The song structure relies mostly on mysterious repeat figures, creating a moody, trance-like effect. At one point, the feel switches to more of a 60's brit-psychedelic feel, which is a little out of place in a film like this. But the music is all pretty good and, most of the time, any given moment of film is reasonably well matched with the music.

My problem with this version, and the reason I didn't give it more stars is that the music doesn't really seem to shift at all with the action. Pieces play through one scene into the next scene, with little regard for changes in the pace of the film. It's like we turned the sound down on the tv, picked out a down-tempo electronica cd at random and just let it play. I'm reminded of a bacon-chocolate ice cream cone I had at Scoops in LA once -- despite what you might predict, there wasn't anything wrong with either flavor in particular, but they didn't do anything special together.

The Goth Industrial mix is more successful. Like the Del Rey version, the sound pallette is pretty soft and trancey -- except for some spots where the onscreen action kicks up; these scenes are accompanied by a goth-rock drum pulse (think Closer by Nine Inch Nails). Unlike the Del Rey version, its score is assembled from previously published material, meaning someone watched the film, figured out where the action was punctuated and then combed through their goth collection to find tracks that worked for each individual segment. Whoever did this was careful about dividing lines, and the music is all pretty apt. The connection between sound and visual is much better here.

I said earlier that I'd have given the original Nosferatu a higher star rating. I feel like it'd be hypocritical of me to say that it's because there's better continuity between the sound and visual in the original. Anyone who's seen it might cite the strange Bartok-esque sounds accompanying the romantic scenes of Harker and Mina embracing at the beginning of the film, or that bizarre snare drum beat when Harker is escaping from Count Orlok's castle. Film scoring isn't an exact science. Composers see and hear individually and no two soundtrackers would assemble precisely the same score. Perhaps I'm just faithful to the original because it's the original and because I've seen it so many times. However incongruous the original score can be at certain times, I can't imagine it sounding proper any other way. On second thought, yes I can, but it'd be in the hands of a far more talented composer than the ones working on these two versions.

Good music, meh on the chemistry.