1 Jonathan Romney, “Jim Jarmusch: how the film world’s maverick stayed true to his roots”, The Observer, 22 February 2014, <http://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/feb/22/jim-jarmusch-only-lovers-left-alive> Accessed 09 June 2015.

2 Jarmusch previously made excursions into other genres with Dead Man (1995) and Ghost Dog – The Way of the Samurai (1999).

3 Nick Pinkerton, “The Interview: Jim Jarmusch”, Sight & Sound – The International Film Magazine, March 2014, Vol. 24, Issue 3, p. 55.

4 One could argue that with the “humanization” or “domestication” of its characters, Only Lovers Left Alive follows a recent shift in the evolution of the genre in which the image of the vampire as evil, demonic bloodsucker is replaced with the more romanticized picture of the vampire as a sympathetic and heroic figure. See Tim Kane, The Changing Vampire of Film and Television: A Critical Study of the Growth of a Genre, Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2006, pp. 88-89; Milly Williamson, The Lure of the Vampire. Gender, Fiction and Fandom from Bram Stoker to Buff the Vampire Slayer, London/New York: Wallflower Press, 2005, p. 30.

5 Debra M. Lucas, “Clocks, Biological”, Encyclopedia of Time. Science, Philosophy, Theology, and Culture, Vol. I, H. James Birx (ed.), Los Angeles [et al.]: Sange, 2009, pp. 196-197; Urs Albrecht (ed.) The Circadian Clock (New York [et al.]: Springer, 2010).

6 For further reading, see Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka (ed.), The Elemental Dialectic of Light and Darkness. The Passions of the Soul in the Onto-Poiesis of Life. [Analecta Husserliana. The Yearbook of Phenomenological Research, Vol. XXXVIII]. Dordrecht/ Boston/London: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992.

7 David Macauley, “Night and Shadows: The Space and Place of Darkness”, Environment, Space, Place, Vol. 1, Fall 2009, p. 54.

8 Ibid., p. 59. Elisabeth Bronfen agrees when she writes: “The wager of all creation stories, after all, is that the horror of a primordial night can be overcome by virtue of the night.” Elisabeth Bronfen, Night Passages. Philosophy, Literature, and Film, New York: Columbia University Press, 2008, p. 1.

9 It is not the place here to elaborate on these various and dynamic notions of the night motif whose meanings have been altered and shifted so many times through history; and it would be another project to trace these notions back to Greek mythology and the Holy Bible, opening a debate that allows for a spectrum of thought wide enough to encompass, e.g., the philosophy of Enlightenment and Romantic poetry, or famous writings on the night like Kant’s Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime (transl. John T. Goldthwait, Berkeley [et al.]: University of California Press, 2003; first edition 1961) and Bachelard’s The Poetics of Reverie (transl. Daniel Russell, Boston: Beacon Press, 1971). An overview of these various notions in philosophy, science, religion, and art can be found in David Macauley, Elemental Philosophy: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water as Environmental Ideas (New York: State University of New York Press, 2010), esp. 283ff.; and Bronfen, Night Passages.

10 Obviously, the use of dark and light metaphors with their affective potent imagery is an effective rhetorical strategy to assign negative or positive values to someone or something. However, like any binary distinction, it also tends to oversimplify complex matters: “When light and dark images are used together in speech, they indicate and perpetuate the simplistic, two-valued, black-white attitudes which rhetoricians and their audiences seem so often to prefer.” Michael Osborn, “Archetypal Metaphor in Rhetoric: The Light-Dark Family”, Quarterly Journal of Speech, Vol. 53, Issue 2, 1967, p. 117.

11 Matthew Beaumont, Nightwalking: A Nocturnal History of London, New York [et al.]: Verso, 2015.

12 Looking at the development in the use of the motif through time, it is important to note that there is one particular incisive shift with regard to its meaning. While the night was primarily associated with negative experiences (unknown danger, illegal ventures, malicious practices), the invention of the electric light which enabled the outdoor illumination of nightly streets and boulevards promoted a more positive attitude towards nightly activities and practices that helped to balance negative with positive connotations of the night. “The luxuriation in half-light, the nocturnal stroll, and the contemplative melancholy, have objectified night as otium, beyond the hiatus of sleep. […] Night is promoted, in fact, to a fertile condition of ambiguity”. Chris Fitter, “The Poetic Nocturne: From Ancient Motif to Renaissance Genre”, Early Modern Literary Studies: A Journal of Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century English Literature, Vol. 3, No. 2, September 1997. <http://purl.oclc.org/emls/03-2/fittnoct.html> Accessed 15 June 2015. Yet, perhaps in part due to the powerful imagery of the day/night-dichotomy, negative connotations associated with the night prevail to this day.

13 Bryan D. Palmer, Cultures of Darkness: Night Travels in the Histories of Transgression, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2000, pp. 16-17.

14 Roman Mauer, Jim Jarmusch. Filme zum anderen Amerika, Mainz: Bender Verlag, 2006, p. 160.

15 A slowed-down version of Wanda Jackson’s “Funnel of Love” (1961).

16 This idea is repeated several times in the film, e.g. when the vampires take their long night drives (see “Movement: the cinematic exploration of the night”).

17 It is unclear if the depicted movement is slow or fast (it may take seconds, hours or even centuries), just as it is uncertain if we, the viewers, are looking through the eyes of a character spinning around, or if it is the night sky itself that is somehow drifting past us.

18 In Amelie Hastie’s interpretation of the opening sequence, the vampires share a connection over space and time which is already visually highlighted in these few intro shots: “Both [Adam and Eve, MK] seem out of time […]. The camera spins over them, and the turntable returns, its needle cutting across the images of their bodies, first one and then the other, so that they are conjoined in the space of the screen’s image.” Amelie Hastie, “The Vulnerable Spectator. Blood and Photons: The Fundamental Particles of Only Lovers Left Alive”, Film Quarterly, Vol. 68, No. 1, Fall 2014, p. 64.

19 A few examples: Adam’s collection of antique instruments and old technical gadgets; Eve’s ability to date objects with a simple touch of her hand; the pictures on Adam’s wall that show world-historical personalities he knew or was even friends with; or Eve’s friendship with the British poet Christopher Marlowe ( “Kit”). The dialogues between Adam and Eve also illustrate their perception of time, when a meeting with Franz Schubert or Mary Wollstonecraft is talked about as if it happened a few weeks ago.

20 Rodrigo Perez, “Jim Jarmusch Talks the Vampiric Charms of ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’ & proposing to muse Tilda Swinton”, Indiewire, 10 April 2014, <http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/interview-jim-jarmusch-talks-the-vampiric-charms-of-only-lovers-left-alive-proposing-to-muse-tilda-swinton-20140409> Accessed 15 June 2015.

21 Here, the film detaches itself from those popular vampire-narratives in which the vampiric existence is stigmatized as defect or possession, i.e. the result of an unwelcome metamorphosis in which the later predator turns out to be the initial victim. Hence, the vampire state-of-being in Only Lovers Left Alive is not coercively seen as a vegetative, painful existence but as a state that allows an infinite discovering, learning and enjoying of life, as Eve points out to Adam: “This self-obsession is a waste of living. It could be spent on surviving things, appreciating nature, nurturing kindness and friendship, and dancing!”

22 Amelie Hastie remarks: “Ultimately, what this story about vampires enables is the idea that with the luxury of time (hundreds of years) and apparently endless twenty-dollar bills (or euros or dirhams or credit cards), one has the possibility of pursuing endless knowledge and experience.” Amelie Hastie, “The Vulnerable Spectator. Blood and Photons: The Fundamental Particles of Only Lovers Left Alive”, op. cit., pp. 66-67.

23 The vampire as bohemian (a cultivated and intellectual outsider) is a common topos in the genre. See Elizabeth Wilson, Bohemians: The Glamorous Outcasts, London: Tauris, 2000, p. 55; Ken Gelder, Reading the Vampire, London: Routledge, 1994, p. 119.

24 The notion of humans as “zombies” whose blood is too contaminated to drink for vampires is particularly interesting because the film indirectly seems to ask the question: Who is the monster now?

25 In Mystery Train, we see the same train running over a bridge near the hotel, all three stories feature snippets of the trivia dialogue between the hotel’s night clerk and the bellboy, the morning radio plays the same song – “Blue Moon” by Elvis –, and of course, there is the sudden gunshot heard by all protagonists. In Night on Earth, every episode begins with a shot of five clocks, each showing the local time in five capital cities around the globe (Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome and Helsinki), and with the start of each new story, the camera zooms in on one of the clocks that represents the place where the next story is about to happen, while all the clocks start turning backwards, setting the time back to the initial starting point.

26 The threatening danger of sunlight is only implied in the film’s narrative but is highlighted in a scene that was cut from the final film (but can be found in the bonus material on the DVD): In this scene, Adam oversleeps dawn and is painfully awakened by a sunray shining through his curtains that deeply burns the flesh on his hand.

27 The veil as well as the sunglasses seem to be a matter of precaution, but they also indicate the temporarily tamed nature of the vampires. When they run out of blood, their animalistic side reemerges – and camouflaging becomes obsolete.

28 Further insights are to be found in Léa Rinaldi’s documentary Travelling at Night with Jim Jarmusch (2014) which follows the making of Only Lovers Left Alive.

29 It should also be mentioned that Only Lovers Left Alive is Jarmusch’s first digital film.

30 Sight & Sound, March 2014, p. 54.

31 As stated by the film’s set designer Marco Bittner Rosser. See Laura Blum, “Designing Jim Jarmusch’s ‘Only Lovers Left Alive’”, Thalo Artist Community, 23 April 2014. < http://www.thalo.com/articles/view/921/designing_jim_jarmuschs_only_lovers_left_alive> Accessed 15 June 2015.

32 Ibid.

33 Panel discussion with Jim Jarmusch and Tilda Swinton at the 51st New York Film Festival [NNFF51], Film Society of Lincoln Center, 16 Oct 2013, <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFECJ5fY73E> Accessed 15 June 2015.

34 Significantly, the airline is called Air Lumière.

35 The film plays dialogically with the different pseudonyms that Adam uses. His name tag says Dr. Faust, while the corrupt hospital doctor is called Dr. Watson. Occasionally, Watson addresses Adam as Dr. Strangelove and Dr. Caligari.

36 B. Ruby Rich, “Outrages and Obsessions: A Report on Festival Season”, Film Quarterly, Vol. 67, No. 1, 2014, p. 71.

37 As when the increasingly desperate vampires hear the performance of Lebanese singer Yasmine Hamdan.

38 The nocturnal tunes accompanying this visual exploration of the night sky’s tremendous expanse again creates a pronounced feeling of mystery, reverence and wonder, which Eve puts into words in wistful thought: “Did you know that there’s a diamond out there of the size of a planet? It’s a white dwarf of compressed heart of a star. And it’s not only a radiant diamond but also it makes the music of a gigantic gong.”

39 They hide their faces behind sunglasses and always wear gloves when they are outside. From time to time, Eve wraps her head into a silk scarf, while Adam puts on a surgical mask.

40 Also indicated by the name of the café Mille et une Nuits where Eve gets her blood supply.

41 Jarmusch has pointed out that he always wanted to keep the balance between the cultivated and the animalistic side of Adam and Eve. Therefore, Tilda Swinton and Tom Hiddleston are wearing wigs that are partly made of animal fur, and their heartbeats that can be heard in some scenes are the slowed-down heartbeats of a wolf. “They’ve got little animalistic things in them genetically, it happened in the crossover,” says Jarmusch. Nick Pinkerton, Sight & Sound, op. cit., p. 56.

42 Roman Mauer, Jim Jarmusch, op. cit., p. 7.

43 Nick Pinkerton, Sight & Sound, op. cit., p. 50.

44 The blood of humans being contaminated, their careless exploitation of nature ( “Have the water wars started yet, or is it still about the oil?” asks Eve), the ruins of culture (represented by the Detroit Michigan Theatre) and the underrating of scientific achievements, as Adam laments: “The scientists? Look what they’ve done to them. Pythagoras? Slaughtered. Galileo? Imprisoned. Copernicus? Ridiculed. Poor old Newton pushed into secrecy and alchemy. Tesla: destroyed. And his beautiful possibilities completely ignored. And they are still bitching about Newton. Still. So much for the scientists. And now they’ve succeeded in contaminating their own fucking blood, never mind their water.”