MOVIES and MANIA ranking:
Shadow of the Vampire is a 2000 comedic horror movie directed by E. Elias Merhige (Begotten) from a screenplay written by Steven Katz. It was produced by Nicolas Cage, Richard Johns and Jeff Levine.
The film stars John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe and Udo Kier.
The movie is a fictionalised account of the making of the basic vampire movie Nosferatu: A Symphony of Terror, directed by F. W. Murnau in 1921, through which the movie crew start to have disturbing suspicions about their lead actor. The movie borrows the methods of silent movies, together with using intertitles to clarify elided motion and iris lenses.
Our assessment:
In the event that they gave away Oscars for Finest Concept for a Movement Image, absolutely the frontrunner for the yr 2000 must be Shadow of the Vampire. As for execution, properly it’s a case of chacun à son goût.
The yr is 1921, and sensible, eccentric German director F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich) is decided to convey most verisimilitude to his newest work, the primary silver-screen adaptation of Dracula.
Frederich Wilhelm Murnau is hailed as the reply to the genius of D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein (an error in Steve Katz’ script; Eisenstein would have been barely identified on the time), and the film firm indulges letting Murnau taking his solid and crew to the Slovakian peasant hinterlands, the place Murnau informs his crew that Max Schreck, the actor he discovered to play the vampiric “Depend Orlock” is a disciple of Stanislavsky and “Methodology” performing. Thus, Schreck (Willem Dafoe) will solely seem on the set for Murnau’s digital camera after the solar goes down. And Schreck will already be in full make-up and won’t socialise with different actors.
The delirious conceit is that ‘Schreck’ isn’t any pretentious thespian however the actual factor; Murnau has discovered an actual vampire and struck a pact with the creature to star in Nosferatu. Therefore, a secret scheme to make use of a vampire pretending to be an actor pretending to be a vampire.
Sounds just like the comedy plot of Victor/Victoria (or its lesser scene forerunner earlier than Blake Edwards made a musical of it, Viktor und Victoria. Certainly there are moments of nice graveyard humour. Schreck’s take care of Murnau requires common provides of victims, and the fiend bargains with Murnau over which non-essential film personnel are non-essential sufficient to be sacrificed – the scriptwriter being one probably candidate.
Thankfully, such moments are saved to a tasty minimal, lest this materials begins to appear to be full, post-modern ironic horror burlesque (like Wes Craven’s Scream motion pictures, not in a great way). Admittedly, the casting of Udo Kier, from Blood for Dracula, as Murnau’s agent is a intelligent contact. And sublimely intelligent was Merhige, in a position to receive F.W. Murnau’s very personal mechanical film digital camera, courtesy of a museum archive. Sure, that’s the precise instrument used within the authentic Nosferatu that Malkovich is cranking away at.
Viewers aware of the fairly small oeuvre of director E. Elias Merhige likely know of his sense-stunning 1989 characteristic debut, Begotten, a black-and-white, high-grain, dialogue-free, very practically plot-free creation-myth-by-way-of-Lynchian-nightmare-hallucination. It has hard-to-forget primal imagery of dying/beginning, mutilation, physique fluids, torment…
These considering that Shadow of the Vampire could be an equally robust glass of tea should dial down expectations considerably. Far tamer, for probably the most half, Shadow of the Vampire chooses to be much less underground/experimental movie (or crimson-stained Hammer gothic) and extra devoted to the aesthetic of early industrial cinema, the place issues tended to be stagy and lumpen, talky and mannered. Merhige’s pacing is considerably haphazard, and – whereas he’s capturing in color, I might have carried out with extra scenes that didn’t register as underlit murk.
The true Max Schreck, a German actor fairly unrecognisable with out his ghastly Depend Orlock getup, was no vampire (and died in 1936). Different actors (particularly Klaus Kinski) have tried to recreate Schreck’s macabre make-up and gestures; my minority opinion is that the most effective was a non-speaking Reggie Nalder because the hideous grasp vampire Barlow in Tobe Hooper’s TV-movie adaptation of Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. In distinction to suave continental sorts portrayed by Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee (let’s not even go close to Twilight, okay?), these rat-faced horrors appear to be ghouls condemned to feast in cemeteries for eternity.
In a goblin face and claw-like fingernails, Dafoe strives for a similar unearthly, barely-human vibe, and invests the vampire with sure pathos (Merhige utilized a barely-perceptible backstory to the character, like a medieval nobleman and maybe a Templar Knight earlier than his conversion to accursed bloodsucker).
When the plot line comes right down to a conflict of wills between Murnau and Schreck, filmmaker and vampire – who’re each, by nature,e egocentric, parasitic creatures whose medium is darkness, who’re every obsessive about immortality and permanence in any respect prices – that’s when Shadow of the Vampire is at its greatest. No gotcha! shocks.
By the way, viewers of Begotten might discover a credit score itemizing thanking a sure “Fred Schreck.” That’s no Goon Present-type inside joke, in keeping with Merhige, who instructed a reporter that Fred Schreck was a vibrant outdated technician who mentored the nascent filmmaker in archaic, hand-processing of celluloid.
Charles Cassady Jr., MOVIES and MANIA
Solid and characters:
John Malkovich … Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau
Willem Dafoe … Max Schreck
Udo Kier … Albin Grau
Cary Elwes … Fritz Arno Wagner
Catherine McCormack … Greta Schröder
Eddie Izzard … Gustav von Wangenheim
Aden Gillett … Henrik Galeen
Nicholas Elliott … Paul
Ronan Vibert … Wolfgang Müller
Sophie Langevin … Elke
Myriam Muller … Maria
Milos Hlavac … Innkeeper
Marja-Leena Junker … Innkeeper’s Spouse
Derek Kueter … First Reporter
Norman Golightly … Second Reporter
Technical specs:
1 hour 32 minutes
Audio: SDDS | Dolby Digital
Black and white | Color
Facet ratio: 2.35: 1
Movie information:
The working title was Burned to Mild
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