CAST:
John Malkovich (Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau),
Willem Dafoe (Max Schreck), Cary Elwes (Fritz Arno Wagner), Udo Kier
(Albin Grau), Catherine McCormack (Greta Schroeder), Robert Aden Gillett
(Henrik Galeen), Eddie Izzard (Gustav von Waggenheim), Ronan Vibert
(Wolfgang Muller)
PRODUCTION:
Director – E. Elias Merhige, Screenplay –
Steven Katz, Producers – Nicolas Cage & Jeff Levine, Photography
(colour & b&w) – Lew Bogue, Music – Dan Jones, Digital
Effects/Titles – Cine Image, Special Effects Supervisor – Rick
Weissenhaan, Makeup – Pauline Fowler & Julian Meriya, Production
Design – Assheton Gordon. Production Company – Saturn Films/Long Shot
Films/BBC Films/Deluxe Productions/Shadow of the Vampire Ltd.
USA/UK/Luxembourg. 2000.
SYNOPSIS:
In 1921, the brilliant, highly acclaimed
German film director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau seeks to make the
greatest and most realistic vampire film of all time. He calls his film
‘Nosferatu’ after Bram Stoker’s widow refuses him permission to film
‘Dracula’. He takes his crew to the small town of Wismar. In the role of
the vampire, Murnau employs an actor called Max Schreck who is so much
of a character actor that he even appears in his own makeup. The
unnerved crew soon discover that Schreck is a real vampire and that
Murnau has promised him leading lady Greta Schroeder to feed upon at the
end of shooting.
COMMENTARY:
Shadow of the Vampire was announced immediately after the critical success of Gods and Monsters (1998), which was based on the life of the real-life genre director James Whale. Indeed, the initial pitch for Shadow of the Vampire had it sounding like it was a similar biopic of silent German director F.W. Murnau. Gods and Monsters was an honest attempt to speculate about true events surrounding Whale’s death. On the other hand, Shadow of the Vampire takes reality as a springboard for a What If story – in this case, what if F.W. Murnau shot Nosferatu (1922) using a real vampire?
The important difference between the two is to realize that Shadow of the Vampire
is a work of fiction, not of historical accuracy, even though it mimics
such. Max Schreck, although the character has attained a certain creepy
mythology, was a real flesh and blood actor and did not die in 1921 as
is stated here but went on to make some twenty other films over the next
decade up until his death in Munich in 1936 of a much more mundane
heart-attack. Nor were screenwriter Henrik Galeen and cinematographer
Fritz Arno Wagner killed as depicted in the film – Henrik Galeen went
onto write other fantastic classics such as Waxworks (1924), became a director with the remakes of The Student of Prague (1926) and Alraune
(1928) and died in 1949 after emigrating to the US to flee the Nazis,
while Fritz Arno Wagner filmed more than 100 films including such Fritz
Lang classics as Spies (1928), M (1931), The Testament of Dr Mabuse (1933) and did not die until 1958.
There are a few other inaccuracies – the
film makes the claim that F.W. Murnau wanted to make the “most realistic
vampire film of all time” – but as there had been no other vampire
films made before Nosferatu, it seems difficult to make such a qualitative statement. Shadow of the Vampire
also calls F.W. Murnau the greatest filmmaker of the German silent era
(which is probably true) but most of Murnau’s reputation came as a
result of Nosferatu and with later films such as The Last Laugh (1924), Faust (1926) and particularly Sunrise
(1927). The film’s characterization of Murnau as a reckless tyrant
obsessed with his art to the extent he is prepared to sacrifice human
life also verges on the libellous. However, as long as one can get the
proper perspective, one can enjoy Shadow of the Vampire for exactly what it is – a work of historical fiction, not of accuracy.
As such, Shadow of the Vampire
is rather enjoyable. The sense of verisimilitude achieved is strikingly
well done. Most impressive is the haunting and beautiful credits
sequence all in a stylised three-dimensional recreation of 1920s art
deco frescoes. Director E. Elias Merhige’s recreations of the camera
set-ups of the original Nosferatu are striking in their exacting precision. There is almost a sense of watching the original Nosferatu
and being able to stop the film you have just seen and walk around the
edges of the frame to watch the filmmakers at work. Merhige is only too
aware of the effect of this and starts to play into and against audience
expectations – when it comes to the scene where Orlock picks up the
locket with the photo of Johannes’s wife and Willem Dafoe playing Orlock
picks it up and looks at the photo of Greta Schroeder who has been
promised to him by Murnau, the expected line “What a beautiful throat”
rather wittily comes out as “What a beautiful bosom.” The classic death
scene with Ellen luring Orlock to her bed and keeping him until dawn is
revealed in reality as being conducted by an actress who is too
drug-addled to be able to wield the stake through the heart that was
originally intended to be Orlock’s form of dispatch, while the film’s
wonderfully cinematic death scene where Orlock is killed by the dawn’s
rays is revealed as being Schreck’s death caused by the accidental
opening of the set doors.
Steven Katz’s script pays exceptional
attention to characters and E. Elias Merhige has an excellent cast on
hand. Even the smaller parts in the film are filled with excellent,
wonderfully nuanced characterizations – especially notable being Cary
Elwes’s fine performance as the handsome, gung ho cameraman. Of course,
the performance that had everyone talking and received a number of award
nominations (the Golden Globes and the LA Film Critics Awards) is
Willem Dafoe’s Max Schreck. It is a part where Willem Dafoe completely
submerges himself in the role and is totally unrecognisble on screen.
His performance has a creepy fascination, although is one that is very
different to Max Schreck’s. This is a vampire cast as a pathetic and
aged figure that has lost all former glory and lacks anything in the way
of classic vampire movie magnetism, evil or dark sexuality. It is a
performance considerably abetted by the extraordinary character
soliloquies that Steven Katz provides – most haunting of all being the
one where he tells how the saddest part of Dracula
(1897) is the scene where we see Dracula forced to act as his own
servant, a scene where we see the touching sense of an aristocrat (not
Dracula, but Schreck) having been reduced to squalor.
Director E. Elias Merhige had previously made the extremely weird art film Begotten
(1991) concerning a day in the life of God, who disembowels himself,
and Mother Earth. Subsequently, Merhige went onto make the serial killer
thriller Suspect Zero (2004). Screenwriter Steven Katz went onto write the ghost story Wind Chill (2007).
REVIEW:HERE
IMAGES: Marcus Brooks
No comments:
Post a Comment
WE ENCOURAGE YOUR COMMENTS AND OPINIONS ABOUT OUR POSTS. FEEL FREE TO LEAVE A COMMENT.