Nadja (4K restoration rerelease)
After telling a man at a bar (Nic Ratner) that one cannot get food in Europe after 10 p.m., one of the reasons she finds New York City coming alive after midnight more exciting, the stunning Romanian woman makes a meal out of him in the back of a car. Just as he is about drained of blood, she looks up, startled, having just seen a mental image of her father succumbing to a stake through his heart. Count Dracula's daughter is "Nadja."
Laura's Review: B-
Writer/director Michael Almereyda's (2000's "Hamlet," "Tesla") 1994 take on "Dracula's Daughter" has received a stunning 4K director's cut restoration, the better to admire the visages of Romanian actress Elina Löwensohn ("The Wisdom of Crocodiles," "The Beast") and 'whatever-happened-to' Galaxy Craze ("Husbands and Wives"), this film's love interest Lucy as 50's butch biker chick by way of Brando's Terry Malloy. But while the film features an extraordinary cast of legends (Peter Fonda as Lucy's uncle, Dr. Van Helsing, producer David Lynch as a morgue security guard), up and comers of the time ('Mad Men's" Jared Harris in what would be the Caleb Landry Jones role of Nadja's twin brother Edgar today) and animal talent (Sean the tarantula as Bela the tarantula), its second half is far less intriguing than its first.
Right after Nadja receives her disturbing vision, Jim's (Martin Donovan, "Tenet," "The Apprentice") wife Lucy arrives at his boxing gym to tell him that his uncle has been arrested for murder. But Dr. Van Helsing (Peter Fonda, "Ulee's Gold") is freed and begins searching the city streets with his nephew for the undead he is sure will rise again. Meanwhile, Nadja and her 'best friend' and slave Renfield (Karl Geary, "Jimmy's Hall"), who wishes he were more, arrive at the city morgue asking for the body of her father with the same concerns, surprising the security guard (Lynch) with the knowledge that the corpse has a stake through its heart ('I'm a relative.'). She'll be toting a large urn containing his ashes through the rest of the film.
Left to her own devices while her husband and uncle are out all night, Lucy heads to a bar where she'll end up sitting with Nadja who tells her she was 'born by the Black Sea in the shadow of the Carpathian Mountains' and that she is anxious about visiting her brother in Brooklyn who she loves yet who wants to destroy her. The two head back to Lucy and Jim's apartment and fall into a drunken sexual embrace, Nadja feeding Lucy her own menstrual blood while taking possession of the beauty. She also tells Lucy that while her father was a monster, he 'was in love once, about two hundred years ago, to a simple peasant girl,' her mother having died in childbirth.
Cinematographer Jim Denault's ("The Believer") moody black and white 35mm photography recreates that moment, Dracula's Bride (Bernadette Jurkowski, Blockbuster clerk in 2000's "Hamlet") contemplative by the sea, cutaways of Bela Lugosi's hypnotic eyes edited in for maximum effect. But then the action moves to Brooklyn, where an ailing Edgar is being cared for by Cassandra (Suzy Amis, "The Ballad of Little Jo"), a nurse but also the woman he loves, and the film begins to lose momentum. The entire cast travels to Transylvania, production designer Kurt Ossenfort turning an abandoned NYC hospital into a gothic masterpiece as Dracula's Castle where Lucy will be saved and Nadja meet her demise - or does she?
Löwensohn, frequently clad in a dramatically hooded black cloak, is perfectly cast in the lead, a gothic dream, just as the planes of Craze's face beneath her short blond mop stun in black and white, the camera loving both. Fonda, his hair streaming past his shoulders, is the most energetic of the cast, having fun trying to identity the undead by their lack of reflection in his dark glasses. But "Nadja" is more a film of mood than narrative, Denault featuring lots of New York City street steam vent vapor, some sequences shot in pixelated video more a casualty than winner of the 4K upgrade.
Robin's Review: C+
Arbelos Films released a 4K restoration of "Nadja" in NY on 2/6/26, expanding in subsequent weeks. It will have a limited run at Cambridge, MA's Brattle Theater beginning on 3/27/26.
