Fresh Off a Box Office Hit, Robert Eggers Offers ‘Conjuring Nosferatu’ at Film at Lincoln Center

Scholars of Russian literature will need to weigh in on just how faithful Thorold Dickinson’s “The Queen of Spades” (1949) is to its source material, a short story of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. Sociologists should be sought out as well: Why was gambling at cards the obsession of choice amongst military men and the social elite in 19th-century Russia? Dostoevsky felt that his countrymen, being a people given to philosophical extremities, were congenitally attracted to risk.Pushkin was no stranger to betting the odds, his fatal duel with a man presumed to be his wife’s lover being no small indicator of the tendency. It goes to the credit of director Dickinson, along with screenwriters Rodney Ackland and Arthur Boys, that “The Queen of Spades” captures the drive and delirium of the convinced gambler. They were aided by the actor Anton Albrook, whose portrayal of Captain Herman Suvorin is a study in mania barely kept in check.“The Queen of Spades” is among a spate of movies featured in “Conjuring Nosferatu: Robert Eggers Presents” at Film at Lincoln Center. Mr. Eggers’s sumptuous reimagining of F.W. Murnau’s “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror” (1922) was, if not necessarily a favorite with the critics, then a solid hit at the box office. Not two weeks after its release, “Nosferatu” came in with returns that doubled its budget, making it the most profitable of the director’s four pictures. Green lights look to be in Mr. Eggers’s immediate future.At Lincoln Center, Mr. Eggers bids us welcome to “a world of Gothic Romance, fairy tales, and folklore, made by filmmakers with a passion to transport the audience to another time, another place, and another way of thinking and believing.” The eight movies he has chosen to accompany and elaborate upon “Nosferatu” are period pieces in which forces both inside and outside humankind’s dominion prove inescapable.Not every film will hit the sweet spot for those with a taste for cob-webbed corridors, twilight interiors, and mythical beasties. Mr. Eggers is as idiosyncratic as the next cineaste, and some of his choices, however dear, will try the patience of the most charitable soul. Deborah Kerr in ‘The Innocents’ (1961). Via Film at Lincoln CenterTake Đordje Kadijević’s “The She-Butterfly” (1973). Although it has the distinction of being based on a story that predates the publication of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula,” Milovan Glišić’s “After Ninety Years,” the movie is, as Mr. Eggers avers, “visually naive.” At a little more than 60 minutes, this clumsy amalgam of mittel-European slapstick, backwoods eroticism, and vampiric enticements could be called a specialist’s enthusiasm.Archie Mayo’s “Svengali” (1931) is a pre-code curiosity featuring John Barrymore as a music teacher whose powers of suggestion, particularly as they apply to attractive young women, are suspect. Then, though, Mr. Eggers scores three-for-three by including Jean Cocteau’s seminal “Beauty and the Beast” (1946), David Lean’s magisterial “Great Expectations” (1946), and Jack Clayton’s “The Innocents” (1961), the latter being among the silver screen’s finest adaptations of Henry James. Three masterpieces — not bad at all.Make that four. Although “The Queen of Spades” is highly regarded by contemporary filmmakers like Martin Scorsese and Wes Anderson, this British-based adaptation of a Russian mainstay will, I think, be new to a lot of people. Thanks, then, to Mr. Eggers for using his clout to highlight an exquisitely appointed exercise in cinema. It’s good enough to make the most jaundiced been-there-done-that cinephile sit up and take notice.There is a lot to extol in “The Queen of Spades.” The production values are considerable, the attention to detail daunting and the cinematography by Otto Heller moody, deep, and dramatic. Dickinson navigates the proceedings with a deft and sometimes daring hand, shaking up the story’s more lugubrious passages with sharp and quick cutting. A noblewoman near death’s door possesses the secret of the cards. What price might a venal soul pay for gaining access to that knowledge?Other than helming the original “Gaslight” (1940) and the first feature film made in Israel, “Hill 24 Doesn’t Answer” (1955), Dickinson’s oeuvre lies under the radar and is, for that matter, relatively small: “It’s terribly difficult to direct a film you don’t want to make. … That’s why I’ve made so few,” he said. Perhaps “Conjuring Nosferatu” will spur greater interest in those few that passed this gifted filmmaker’s muster.

Fresh Off a Box Office Hit, Robert Eggers Offers ‘Conjuring Nosferatu’ at Film at Lincoln Center

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