editing in werner herzog's nosferatu

werner herzog's "nosferatu the vampyre" is a homage to f.w. murnau's "nosferatu".

the editing of the film is heavily dependent on the plot (as it should be in any well composed film). this coupled with the amazing cinematography of this film, herzog's nosferatu expresses a large amount of emotion through not only the actors' performances, score and sound design, and mise en scene, but particularly the editing. there are several moments earlier on where jonathan is wandering around dracula's castle after his initial night of arrival. the film employs a few long takes in a sequence that follows jonathan on his exploration of a very visually stunning location. the shots only cut 3 or 4 times during his search. the sparsity of cutting in this sequence builds an eerie sensibility of the scene, as well as genuinely generate tension and suspense. the cuts occur in "real time" ("real" reference the film's reality, not ours) but it's really the lack of cutting that makes this scene so suspenseful.

another example is a scene (also set in dracula's castle) where jonathan wakes up at night to the count creepily entering jonathan's room and slowly moves in on jonathan, giving him the bite. this scene is one of the most suspenseful scenes in the entire film, again because of the lack of cutting. no edits are required mostly because of the way that this scene was shot. the first shot is a wide shot of the count slowly inching towards jonathan's bed while jonathan shoves as back and far from the count as he can/as the frame would allow. the first cut is to a shot of lucy back home, screaming at receiving the psychic information of jonathan's danger. it then cuts back to dracula pulling his teeth away from jonathan's neck. this scene's emotion is heightened in the lack of cutting in the first more prevalent wide shot of the count and jonathan and then the cross-cut to a parallel event where the information in the previous shot is transfered to lucy in the next shot, therefore proposing that the editing here also is giving character information. (implies that there is a psychic connection between jonathan and lucy)

the scenes where dracula is making his way to jonathan and lucy's hometown on a ship act almost as a montage. the shots are singular scenes but are short in length; they happen so quickly and show such a vast array of different times and places (still linearly, however) that the speed of time is implicit while the characters' actions are all conveyed. we hear and see all that we need to that has importance pertaining to the overall plot. these shots not only abbreviate the film's depiction of dracula's ravaging of the ship's crew and journey to the town but also parallel cross-cuts between other abbreviated depictions of the other characters and events happening while dracula is still on the ship.