Certain to be in there, or in one of Herzog’s other career retrospectives, are the increasingly crafty and volatile circumstances that befell “Nosferatu.” Filmed in Czechoslovakia and the city of Delft in the Netherlands, Herzog not only was tasked with keeping Kinski under control for “Nosferatu,” but also “Woyzeck,” which he wanted to shoot back-to-back with five days in between both productions. But instead of applying for new permits with the country’s governments, he pretended both were one long project.
“I just tricked them — they are natural enemies, bureaucracy and art. You have to out-trick them, outsmart them. I would engage authorities with what they love most: paper. I would fill out pages with random figures, and they couldn’t make sense of it but they were engaged. Sometimes some of the things I did with the necessary natural amount of criminal energy.”
That criminal energy also carried over slightly into one of the most iconic and discussed elements of Herzog’s “Nosferatu”: the plague-ridden rats, over 10,000 in all.
After haggling with the city of Delft for a permit after sealing “every single gully, side alley, and house entrance” for filming purposes, Herzog and his team had to dye each individual lab rat a dark shade of grey from their original white color. And then there was the matter of storing the rodents.
“We had them stored in a nearby farmhouse outside of Delft,” Herzog said, “And somehow the people who got the money for feeding them ran away with the money. There was trouble with the farmers, and when we were about to pick up the rats they were so enraged they pulled up with a Caterpillar and drove into the truck that we brought. They broke through the windshield, but there were people sitting on the other side of it.”
He continued, “There was some violence, actual violence that I instigated. Police finally arrived and I tricked them into going into the wrong barn. They had parked their two police cars in some sort of a causeway so we couldn’t push one car to the side. But the other was sitting there, and so we toppled it over and rolled it into a ditch. Got out with the rats.” Herzog paused a moment, and then said with a faint smile, “I just say this as encouragement for the young filmmakers.”
“Nosferatu The Vampyre” is screening through May 22nd at Los Angeles’ Cinefamily and out on Blu-Ray next week. You can also catch it and many more on the streaming service Fandor, who are hosting six of Herzog’s films over on their site, or on Shout Factory’s 16-film box set, out July 29th.