One of the most secret elements about Robert Eggers‘ Nosferatu—a reinvention of a silent film that, as is known, took its plot from Dracula—is what Count Orlok would be seen. Before the film hit theaters, marketing material showed Bill Skarsgård’s vampire only in silhouette or shadow. This was expressed in the discussion of how monstrously scary The character would appear on screen, but now that the film is released, audiences are also taking note of a surprising grooming choice.
Obviously… it’s that mustache!
In a spoiler interview with VarietyEggers was asked why Count Orlok has such distinctive facial hair. As is often the case for this writer and director, it all started while doing extensive research before production.
“To try to create a scarier vampire than we’ve had in quite some time, I went back to folklore,” he told the company. “It’s something I like anyway, but the first popular vampires were written by people who believed vampires existed. There was going to be some good stuff there, and the vampire of folklore is a putrid, walking corpse.”
That led him, he explained, to ask himself: “What does a dead Transylvanian nobleman look like?”
From there, Eggers said, he assumed that it referred to “this complex Hungarian costume with very long sleeves, strange high-heeled shoes and a furry hat. It also means mustache. No matter what, there’s no way this guy can’t have a mustache. Try to find a person from Transylvania who is of age and can grow a mustache who doesn’t have a mustache. It’s part of the culture. If you don’t want to bother Googling, think Vlad the Impaler. Even Bram Stoker had the good sense to give Dracula a mustache in the book.”
So there you have it: it’s a culturally appropriate choice (as you can see, other characters in the film, including Willem Dafoe’s Professor Von Franz, also sport mustaches) and it’s a choice that Stoker himself took into consideration while working on the film. novel from 1897. that started it all.
Nosferatu It’s already in theaters.
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