Shadow Of The Vampire

If you need to escape Hype Sunday, or even if you don't, go see Shadow Of The Vampire.The odd and the slightly twisted will go nuts over this film by E. Elias Merhige. William Dafoe is astounding as the vampire Count Orlock, and John Malkovich is his wonderful icky and obsessive self as the director whose only moral value is getting his film made at any cost. Spoilage warning: plot is discussed, no endings. A brief and useful Nosferatu primer is included, free of charge.

Shadow Of The Vampire is, along with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, one of the must-see movies of the current crop.

Although it purportedly depicts the filming of the masterpiece Nosferatu, Shadow's real target is filmmaking itself. The movie offers the creepy yet convincing argument that our popular culture is full of figurative blood-sucking, and that it excuses any means to reach an end, even if the process ultimately consumes the artist, pollutes the art, and exploits the viewer. There's a truth there that hits home, especially in the corporatized entertainment world. The real vampire here, almost from the opening shot, is Hollywood. Shadow Of the Vampire is thus simultenously frightening and relevant, as well as very funny.

It may increase your enjoyment of this movie to spend a few minutes reading up on the film that inspired it. A very brief history:

Nosferatu, made by F.W. Murnau in German in l922, is the grandaddy of Gothic horror films, having spawned at least 30 movies, along with countless books, TV shows and fables. The movie, like all great movies, has been shrouded in its own mythology, the most enduring piece of which is that the leading actor in the silent movie -- Max Schreck -- loved to partake in some occasional hemoglobin himself. Schreck was definitely odd. He was only seen on the movie set at night and slept in a coffin.

The conceit in Shadow (I'm not giving anything away, as this point is clear from the get-go) is that Shreck wasn't merely portraying a vampire but actually was one, and had made a Faustian bargain with his director. At first, the cast and crew buy the cover that Schreck is an unusually meticulous Method Actor (like Malkovich himself), who drinks blood for authenticity.

Gradually, however, other horrific possibilities present themselves. Unlike the horrified cast, the celluloid Murnau isn't upset by this turn; he's delighted. In fact, he's been counting on it; it's going to make his movie authentic and enduring.

Admist a few seedy scenes depicting the squalor of Berlin between the wars, and the general air of horror and foreboding, Murnau is fending off neurotic actors, clueless extras, dumb reporters, budget-crazed producers and anxious financiers back in Berlin. It's a brilliant stroke to shroud this old chestnut in the context of the American studio system and the insanity of contemporary showbiz. Murnau cranks happily away at his 35mm movie camera, never once even briefly deterred as casualties start to mount, necessary "sacrifices," as Murnau puts it, for getting a movie in on time and under bizarre circumstances - Murnau has a lot of crew members to replace.

Beyond its re-working of cinematic mythology, Shadow Of The Vampire somewhat poignantly foreshadows the fate of classical art and the revolution in popular culture that movies would help spark, not to mention the Net and Web. Murnau warns that that the screen and its descendants will chase literature, poetry and other cultural forms into the shadows, like vampires themselves, reality and culture getting all mixed up. His leading lady (Catherine McCormack playing Greta Schroeder) laments that while a live theater audience gives her life as an actress, the camera seems to take it away.

The original Nosferatu (for more info about it, see Cory Gross's excellent Web site on the film) Nosferatu was called Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, and made its debut over passionate objections from the estate of Bram Stoker, who wrote the novel Dracula which launched the contemporary version of the vampire myth. Stoker's family refused Murnau permission to make the movie. Murnau took much of Stoker's story anyway -- there's old, twitchy Jonathan Harker riding in his carriage towards the spooky, ruined castle -- but changed the Count's name and set the story not in Transylvania but in different parts of Europe.

Murnau, who left Europe for Hollywood and died in a car accident in California at age 43, is credited with three movies generally considered masterpieces, including The Last Laugh; and Sunrise.

But Nosferatu is his best known, most influential movie. It clearly shaped many of the horror movies that followed and helped make the vampire story one of the most enduring of the Gothic myths.

Aside from the changed name and locale, Nosferatu remains faithful to the story Stoker was trying to tell. Even more than the novel, Murnau's monster is the ultimate renegade and outsider, only nobody would dare to dismiss or taunt him.

Dracula lovers will feel somewhat at home, despite the striking differences in the way the vampire is presented. There's the Count traveling to Europe (in this case Germany) on a doomed ship, the belief that crosses and stakes might kill him off. Only this monister is also a canny negotiator, acting as his own ruthless agent to wheel and deal for favorable terms from the over-eager Murnau.

Murnau's vampire is nothing like the poised, elegant, sometimes erotic vampires in American films, from Bela Lugosi to Tom Cruise. Count Orlock is the pre-sanitized version, a bitter, loathesome plague, a repulsive creature who's not superhuman but a half-dead thing you couldn't stand to be anywhere near, let alone have feast on you in the dead of night. Once powerful and rich, he's reduced to the occasional rodent and vial of delivered blood. His hunting days are over. He has pallid skin, talon-like fingernails, and a dessicated face. There is nothing erotic or charismatic about him.

For all that, The Shadow Of The Vampire never stops laughing at itself, or at us. There's a great scene where the movie's producer is flattering the creepy Shreck for his rabid attention to detail, when the Count grabs a bat out of the air and scarfs it down like a Milky Way bar. As he lumbers off, wiping his bloody mouth on his sleeve, the producer turns to another member of the crew: "What an actor!"

As primitive as Nosferatu is by contemporary standards, it gets into your head (So does Shadow... ). It somehow seems to capture what makes the vampire story the world's most haunting yarn: roots in Christian European folklore and superstition, blood rituals, the evil-against-science theme, the ultimate geek-from-hell against the world; the fear engendered by conjuring up things that might slip into people's rooms at night. Strange that with their relatively primitive, pre -digital special effects, Murnau's staff was able to invoke this creepiness more effectively than anyone before or since.

Film scholars have long pointed out the sexual premonitions and suggestions in the vampire myth, the warnings about sex and sexual liberation. Vampires are mostly portrayed as powerful men who steal past locked doors and barred windows to ravish helpless and beautiful women asleep in nightgowns in their beds. The Victorians were terrified of venereal disease in much the same way we fear AIDS.

But all that may overintellectualize the story; the vampire may be hypnotic simply because he's King of the Night, a lasting symbol for all-purpose unspeakable evil.

Comments

Two slight errors

[Anonymous Coward]

Jon wrote a good review, and the movie, from what I've seen from the trailer, looks to be worth a look.

However, Jon has a couple of slight errors in his review. First, Max Schreck may have been a meticulous actor in a manner that would later be called Method Acting, but he predates what Lee Strauss formalized in "The Book" by a number of years. Schreck wouldn't have been a Method actor, because those acting techniques hadn't been developed into a complete system yet.

Two, "roots in Christian European folklore": vampires predate Christianity by not years, but millenia. They were a part of Roman, Greek, Semitic, African and even Egyptian folklore. Practically every culture has had a vampire of some sort in their folklore. Hints of vampires can be found in Inca and Aztec folklore. The basis at least in part might come from the endemic amenia that our ancestors often suffered: serious amenia can make a person look damn near dead, and drinking blood (human or animal) is a good way to get a quick dose of iron.

Re:Two slight errors

[ethereal]

I had read somewhere that Shreck may have been a sort of PR trick for the original Nosferatu, because a last name of Shreck meant "terror" or something like that in German. This would be like seeing "Lolita Jugs" in the credits of a porn film - you would immediately assume that that wasn't their real name. So maybe there's yet another layer of indirection here - perhaps Murnau had to get someone to act the part of Shreck who was acting the part of the Count, as publicity for Nosferatu. After all, it's not like Shreck was really a vampire, regardless of his purported weirdness on the set, right? (Scully: "Because they don't exist?!")

Of course, I can't pin down where I read that now, but it's interesting to think about.

Re:No, sorry

[jbuhler]

> Also Christean European folklore doesn't
> pre-date the millenia at all, does it?

A lot of "Christian European" folklore has pre-Christian and occasionally non-European roots. On the subject of vampires, read the material on vampire legends of India at this URL:

http://www.zyworld.com/vampirelore/Gallery6.htm

and consider the fact that vampire legends in southeastern Europe were introduced with the Rómany migration in 1000-1300 AD. The ancestors of the Rómany migrated from India to Persia and thence to Asia Minor and Europe. They observed a number of traditional taboos relating specifically to blood and bodily fluids (e.g. not wearing bright red cloth).

Re:Sex and the Single Vampire

[Phaid]

er.

:% s/lucy/mina/w

Re:Sex and the Single Vampire

[Phaid]

So I don't know if I buy your analysis of Dracula. Perhaps the vampire was the embodiment of the dangerous *male* sexuality, rather than the awakening of the dangerous female sexuality

You really don't seem to have read the book carefully, if at all. The theme of the "fallen woman", who are bitten by Dracula and become sexually awakened, is a recurring one throughout the novel. And to the main protagonist (Harker), it is virtually an obsession. None of the male characters in the book are bitten by Dracula; none of them are transformed by events in the way that the women are when they become Dracula's prey. The female characters are the ones who are transformed from paragons of virtue to wanton wenches, and it is they who are destroyed -- not by Dracula himself, but by the Victorian men who are horrified by their transformation.

It is true that both men and women were sexually repressed by Victorian society. But as in all such repressive societies, the burden of repression fell mainly on women; when a transgression occurred, even though two people are necessarily involved, it was usually the woman who suffered for it. And Dracula the novel does a pretty good job of following that double standard.

Sex and the Single Vampire

[Phaid]

Film scholars have long pointed out the sexual premonitions and suggestions in the vampire myth, the warnings about sex and sexual liberation. Vampires are mostly portrayed as powerful men who steal past locked doors and barred windows to ravish helpless and beautiful women asleep in nightgowns in their beds. The Victorians were terrified of venereal disease in much the same way we fear AIDS.

Ah, Jon. So verbose, yet so factually incorrect.

The Victorians may have been terrified of venereal disease, but that's hardly the message in Bram Stoker's Dracula.

In Victorian England, female sexuality was considered extremely taboo. The notion was that women were there only to be desired and conquered, never to be sexual beings in their own right. There were all kinds of terrible medical and psychological horrors inflicted on girls who displayed sexual interest in any way.

No, the real terror that Dracula represents is the awakening of female sexuality. The women in Dracula's castle grab Harker and basically ravish him; he views them as intolerable monsters when in today's world most men wouldn't see much of a problem with the situation. And poor Mina is bitten and turns into a raging sexual predator, so of course the men have to destroy her. And likewise, Harker's great fear is not really that Dracula will kill Lucy, but that Lucy actually wants to go with Dracula now that she's seen what she is capable of being. The vampire's bite is just a metaphor for the awakening of sexuality, the vampire himself just an embodiment of the demon of sexuality which must be curtailed and destroyed.

By the way, what's a "sexual premonition" ?

Oh well. Vampires are neat because they dress in black, turn into bats, defy social conventions, and live forever. Throw in some heaving bosoms and ripped bodices and it doesn't matter what the movie is really trying to say, people will go see it because it's (huh huh) cool.

Re:Sex and the Single Vampire

[theonetruekeebler]

By the way, what's a "sexual premonition"?

If you're referring to Katz's passage that

Film scholars have long pointed out the sexual premonitions and suggestions in the vampire myth, the warnings about sex and sexual liberation. Vampires are mostly portrayed as powerful men who steal past locked doors and barred windows to ravish helpless and beautiful women asleep in nightgowns in their beds. The Victorians were terrified of venereal disease in much the same way we fear AIDS.

I think Katz was interpreting this passage from Roger Ebert's review of Nosferatu .

The Victorians feared venereal disease the way we fear AIDS, and vampirism may be a metaphor; the predator vampire lives without a mate, stalking his victims or seducing them with promises of bliss--like a rapist, or a pickup artist. The cure for vampirism is obviously not a stake through the heart, but nuclear families and bourgeois values.

The Victorians pretty much mastered the art of sexual repression, particularly in women. They even believed that syphilis was caused by sexual excess, not sexually transmitted infection. So yeah, Stoker probably sublimated the sex urge into a lust for blood. The analogy would have appealed to Victorians. So of course their Dracula is a hideous monster--the idea of a woman being attracted to this symbol of sexual urge was as unthinkable as a woman being attracted to a lobster. However, once a woman has been bitten (e.g. deflowered), she becomes full of blood lust (sexual urges), and can no longer see what the audience sees--that the source of her desires is a revolting, dangerous, socially unacceptable creature.

--

Re:Bad photography and/or printing (maybe both)

[alumshubby]

I wonder if the cineplex where you saw it was running the projector bulb at a lower wattage to try to get more life out of it. According to Ebert it's unnecessary as well as unhelpful, but that's the way it is. As for the graininess, maybe that's a deliberate, atmospheric effect. ISTR that The Elephant Man, in a addition to being shot in B&W, had that same sort of visual texture. JonKatz, glad to see we can expect regular reviews from you. You're an interesting foil to Ebert et al. You go, guy.

Well, you have to admit...

[JonKatz]

..that's a useful guide. But if you can do better, here's your spot.

Opening Sequence..

[JonKatz]

I agree about Dafoe and the Oscar. I loved the opening sequence though..thought it was haunting and spooky...beautiful too.. I wonder what it depicted? Actually there's not much of a plot to give away..I mean it is a vampire movie..

Reviewed Snatch here..

[JonKatz]

Yes I did see Snatch and liked it a lot..found it very entertaining (the review was last week) but not in the same league as these other two.
thought there was lots of cinematic technique and laughs but they sort of forgot to throw in the movie..

What a great post, but..

[JonKatz]

I don't think they are targeting the geek audience at all, though I'd love to see what other people think. I think the connection between the vampire and the geek, if any, is in the sense of outsiderness, but the vampire is a lot more powerful of an outsider than the geek, don't you think?
I couldn't agree with you more about the vampire being a metaphor for all outsiders. But the movie isn't being marketed that way so far as I can see. Really terrific post though, if you don't mind some unofficial moderation.
But also is the vampire sexually impotent? Nosferatu is, but the other film versions aren't and Stoker's sure wasn't..wives all over the place.

Nother very great post, IMHO

[JonKatz]

I guess this is the real point of the movie, and the reason why I liked it so much, apart from the fact that I'm a Nosferatu and vampire hobbyist/freak ..Murnau was definitely an artist, but he seemed to making deals left and right for his art..financiers, producers vampires..Now that kind of marketing and deal-making is endemic in Hollywood s the movie becomes the vampire. I think many movies offer more than cheap thrills, but most are infected by this marketing problem and big money, no?

Good question..

[JonKatz]

Is nobody here afraid of AIDS? That would be too bad..If I must be gay, then I am, right?

I will die..

[JonKatz]

..I promise...

Your welcome...

[JonKatz]

Personally, I always related to vampires, especially in the context of outsiders...

The player is great..

[JonKatz]

Buy what do you have against pseudo-intellectual undergrad film students?

No, sorry

[JonKatz]

The Russians practiced Method Acting as well As Lee (I don't think it was Strauss, but maybe). Shreck studied it in Moscow. Also Christean European folklore doesn't pre-date the millenia at all, does it? Stoker drew heavily from it..

But...

[JonKatz]

...did you like it?

Where do you get male hormones?

[JonKatz]

If they would help me enjoy the Super Bowl, I would...Now the Yankees..that's worth watching. As to leaving you alone, why are you here?

Steven and me..

[JonKatz]

Alas, no..I have no living Katz relatives, many of you will be relieved to know..I wonder what else he's done though..this was a pretty neat movie. Does anybody know?

Here is a screenwriter...

[JonKatz]

...go for it, dude..

Eeeekk!!!!

[JonKatz]

No, no...this IS bad news..But don't worry, it will pass..Probably tomorrow..Fortunately I have never experienced broad agreement..wonder what it would be like..

Good point..question

[JonKatz]

I'm not sure what you mean by surrealism here..Could explain here or e-mail me? Intersesting thought..I thought Orlock's negotiating skills were meant to make him the Ovitz from Hell..would like to hear more from you about that, if you have the time..Thanks for the neat post.

I thank you for this..

[JonKatz]

You actually couldn't say anything to me that I would take as a greater compliment than that I'm anti-mainstream. Maybe you ought to stick to CNN, which is inherently mainstream.
I'm actually quite a boring, mainstream guy..drive a mini-van, live in Jersey, pretty dull stuff.. I don't like corporatism much, but I might watch the Super Bowl..good ads..And after all, I am crazy about the Yankees..doesn't get much more mainstream than that, no?
But I hope you realize what you're writing here. It's a sort of fascist notion, hating ideas and people you disagree with. Not really healthy. If you don't like my work, just don't read it, or set your prefs. The fact that you're here suggests something else is going on, since you may have noticed that there are people who want to have conversations that aren't hostile, and they have rights as well.
But if the charge against me is that I am not a mainstream person, and if that is a crime in your view, I'm sure guilty.

Re:I thank you for this..

[theonetruekeebler]

Maybe you ought to stick to CNN, which is inherently mainstream.

Oh, I dunno. Paul Tatara seems to have pretty free reign with his movie reviews. He's been a source of many good leads, and has amused the hell out of me with his advice on what movies to avoid.

--

Me and verbiage..

[JonKatz]

Thanks Mart, I appreciate your post and the growing number of smart movie posters and posts. This thing is going to work, and I'll be doing reviews every Sunday. Please keep coming and posting.
Obviously, if these people really disliked my work in a rational way, they'd skip it. The fact that they don't (this isn't confined to me, but to just about anybody who writes on slashdot) suggests it isn't really about my work at all.
As somebody who is a paid critic and commentator, I will always get a certain measure of hostility, which has always been the case in a decade of writing online. Unfortunately the hate-writers tend to drown out the very smart messages..this discussion is the best one we've had yet.
I feel I have the best job on the Web writing for Slashdot, and plan to be around a long time. I've made a ton of friends in this community, and have a zillion friends here, online and off.
If people have trouble reading me, Rob has given them to tools to block me out. Or they can just skip it. If they don't, then they have other motives, and it's their problem. I don't have a strong need to be popular, and never have really. I'm very happy writing here, though and am quite comfortable with the people I work for and with the great feedback I get, pro and con. The haters will get sorted out in time.

P.S. Oh, verbiage..

[JonKatz]

Yes, I think I need to write shorter..But it's hard for me, especially as one trained as a magazine and book writer.
I also feel there needs to be someplace for pieces with some depth...But I hear you and will try and trim it down. Stay on me.

No geek crusade..

[JonKatz]

I think I was definitely on a geek crusade when I started writing for the site three years ago but that's not the case in this review..
Nosferatu was a geek (not in the computer sense) but in the original sense..a freak, a totaly outsider..I think people might be taking the term too literally here...It's definitely a geek movie, but computer geeks aren't the only kinds.
Thanks for the other words. I get healthy doses of praise and criticism here, and I appreciate both. The trolls...eh..can't say I spend much energy thinking about people with that much empty time on their hands..

Every week..

[JonKatz]

I'll be here every week posting reviews no matter what the response (and btw, the page hits on the reviews have been very high, I'm told). Please send me your ideas. Some of the posts here about the movie are great..This is definitely going to work..Don't worry..anybody who thinks a few teen flamers are going to discourage me or shut me up is really on strange stuff..I live for feedback of all kinds..If they ignored me..well, that would kill me..

We've got to publish some of these posts..

[JonKatz]

Some of these posts..this one, for sure..are great, and we ought to try and find a way to get them published online especially.
I was mulling the credits over and over, and couldn't quite get what they were doing..I think you nailed it, especially with the suspension of disbelief..thanks..

Thanks..not so brief yourself

[JonKatz]

But I don't think it's that simple. The Victorians invented the whole idea of pornography, which didn't exist until archeologists from the British Museum dug up stuff from Pompeii with all sorts of sexually explicit material on it..
I'm not sure about the sexual liberation vs. repression stuff, but the notion that women had to be protected from sexual imagery was invented by the Victorians. The Romans and Greeks had dirty pictures all over the house.
The "sexual preminition" foresees the very liberation you're referring to (economically, of course)

Katz Bashing..

[JonKatz]

First off, you can see from the posts that some people agree with my POV, and some don't. You really think that's bad? That you should only read posts that agree with you, critics that feel the same way you do?
Only one or two people really know how people view me on /., or how many people read me or not..I'm sure they're not sharing that with trolls. Obviously enuf people read me and like me for me to be here ,and to get paid to be here.
The trolls are not discriminate in their hostility. You don't have to do anything to be a target except exist, as any /. writer knows.
But I ought to make something clear, since the topic was opened. I really am not interested in being popular. Never have been popular, and have gotten stuff for my writing from the get-go, beginning with when I wrote a piece in Rolling Stone saying the Net was important..Took a lot of shit for that.
Also when I wrote for Hotwired. The cypherpunks were a lot more hostile than the trolls, and much more literate.
I hate to break the news, but I don't write to be popular. It just isn't important to me. People who hate people because they don't like their ideas are inherently creepy, and I'd prefer that they dislike me.
Every writer or other person I admire in the world was despised at one point or another. I'm not running for mayor, and I get more than enough praise.
In fact, I get through the night quite comfortably. Most of the criticism I get in e-mail is very polite and thoughtful..and useful. I really pay attention to it. But this kind of unreasoned hostility isn't about me one way or the other. The feedback that scares me isn't from teen jerks acting out, but from people who actually know what they are talking about. They can really rip you one...

Re:Katz Bashing..

[babbage]

:)

The thing is, you write as if your audience were readers of, say, Salon or Atlantic Monthly, when actually it's more like the audience of some weird hybrid between a Unix system administrator's journal and, say, Mad Magazine. You keep writing all this leisurely high level analysis of the subculture as you see it, and the readers either don't get it or don't agree.

It's not that you're wrong in your anthropological analysis, or that the typical Slashdot reader isn't interested in that sort of thing (e.g. consider what a manifesto "The Cathedral & the Bazaar" has been), but that readers either don't see things enough that way that they would want to want to read about it all the time, or they don't look at things in such a high level way and it's annoying to hear some member-of-the-staff-no-less pundit babbling about it all the time.

But to hell with those readers, right?

Having an in-house essayist isn't such a bad thing. It's a nice tradition to be a part of -- we could do a whole lot worse than to have a Thomas Paine around, right? As long as there isn't too much "mountains out of molehills" stuff in your essays, there (hopefully) won't be so much "tempest in a teapot" reactionism to what you have to say.

Fact is, I've been annoyed by some of your rants myself, but now that I think about it, I think you have the job pretty much any Slashdot regular would love to have -- Ranter-In-Chief. After all, isn't that what Slashdot is all about?

Incidently, it was nice to hear you on The Connection last week. I was hoping the show would have been linked to Slashdot, but oh well. I think this audience could do for some exposure to that kind of reasoned discussion forum...

Good advice..

[JonKatz]

If you can get to see Nosferatu, I'd highly recommend it...It will make this excellent movie twice as enjoyable..

Note about the director...

[FigWig]

He was 'discovered' when Nicholos Cage's wife rented an old underground art film of his from a video store in Santa Monica (CA, USA). Nick Cage saw the film, and decided he had to have the director work on his production company's next film. Kind of a cool story I think - which comes from a reliable source.

Nosferatu: A Study in Copyright

[Royster]

Nosferatu is clearly the same story as Bram Stoker's Dracula. Replace Dracula with Orlok and Renfield with Knock and story is the same.

The story is here.

A new identity for geeks in the post columbine era

[Shoeboy]

Murnau's monster is the ultimate renegade and outsider, only nobody would dare to dismiss or taunt him.

Fuck, that's what I did wrong in high school. I joined the debate team instead of drinking the blood of the innocent.
I never really thought of Vampires as being geeks before.

a bitter, loathesome plague, a repulsive creature who's not superhuman but a half-dead thing you couldn't stand to be anywhere near, let alone have feast on you in the dead of night. Once powerful and rich, he's reduced to the occasional rodent and vial of delivered blood. His hunting days are over. He has pallid skin, talon-like fingernails, and a dessicated face. There is nothing erotic or charismatic about him.

Wow, this really does sound like the average geek. Especially after the dotcom collapse left so many unemployed and desperate.
After you
s/dessicated/bloated/;
and
s/blood/pizza/;
it becomes a perfect description.

Thank you Jon Katz, I never would have discovered the parallels between geeks and vampires without your help.

--Shoeboy

I saw this a few months ago, it was excellent

[RJ11]

I saw this in the fall at the film festival here, and it was absolutely excellent. I highly recommend it, Willem Dafoe was almost unrecognizable, and John Malkovich did an superb job. However, it does pay to have seen the original Nosferatu beforehand. I believe it's currently available on DVD.

Re:But please..add your own reviews..

[RJ11]

I actually thought it was an excellent movie, and a pretty good review of it. ;)

Schreck == Alfred Abel?

[drox]

I had read somewhere that Shreck may have been a sort of PR trick for the original Nosferatu, because a last name of Shreck meant "terror" or something like that in German.

Yup. "Max Schreck" is certainly a pseudonym. And, apparently, a pseudonym used only for that one film. The question remains, though, who was the real actor behind the name? One book I looked into (while working on a paper about another great silent film, "Metropolis") suggested that "Max Schreck" was probably Alfred Abel in prosthetics and makeup. Alfred Abel was the gaunt, stern-looking actor who protrayed Joh Fredersen, absolute monarch of Metropolis.

DaFoe and Malkovitch: (Give DaFoe the Oscar)

[DoorFrame]

I actually saw this in Boston about a year ago with the director on hand. It was a pretty entertaining experience (with the exception of an extraordinarily slow openning credit sequence which I suppose could have been altered before it was released to the general public, I don't know).

Anyway, just let it be known that DaFoe most asssuredly deserves the Academy Award for best supporting actor and if he doesn't win it it's only because enough people didn't see this movie. He's an absolutely tremendous vampire and all aspiring vampires should look to imitate him.

Malkovitch, also wonderful, was a slightly more confusing charachter. But that's fine, I won't talk about it because it gives away the plot, but he's great as well. But hell, he always is.

That is all.

Nosferatu in Real Media format

[cyberroach]

I know of at least one place to watch Nosferatu online, although the quality is pretty bad. Since this film is in the public domain, I'm sure there must be others.

Bad photography and/or printing (maybe both)

[Apotsy]

I don't know about most other folks who saw it, but the print I saw of this movie (Shadow of the Vampire that is, not the original Nosferatu) looked horrible. It was unbelievably grainy, much more so than most movies made in the Super-35 format (which often ends up looking somewhat grainy, but not this bad). There was almost zero shadow detail. It may have been due to bad lab work in making the release prints, but it almost looked like all the photography in the movie was severly underexposed for some reason. This may have been done on purpose, but I can't imagine why the filmmakers would do that, since they already had a seperate way of simulating the "old" style of movie making with the grainy, "iris in" look that always showed up when Malkovich and his team were shooting. It looked like the "real" parts of this movie were meant to be done in that grand glowing, golden style that you see in most historical fiction. I wonder why it turned out looking as bad as did?

Re:Broadband Nosferatu

[Wag]

Nosferatu broadband

Knock yourselves out.

I'll let dad know!

[bad-badtz-maru]

=
...William Dafoe is astounding as the vampire Count Orlock
=

Unlike the actor, whose name is Willem, William Dafoe is my father.

badtz-maru

Re:What's with the Katz bashing?

[f5426]

> Could it be that Katz is not in line with the general /. readership?

I'd say that jonkatz is not in line with the *vocal* /. readership, which definitely is not the majority.

While you post to say "I don't like the movies jonkatz likes", I didn't planned to post saying "I liked Shadow of the Vampire".

Cheers,

--fred

Re:Nope!

[sethgecko]

perhaps you mean Carrie Fisher?

But you knew that, right?

Disease (Re:AIDS)

[AgentOBorg]

AIDS is still much more common in gay men, but straight people can get it. Last I heard it was rising fastest in straight women, though that could have a relative increase, thus inflated by the that more men have it already.

BTW: "Nosferatu" does not literally mean "vampire" (at least not originally), but is derived from a word for "disease carrier," and was a title vampires shared with others -- though it was not specifically aimed at sexual diseases. Evil spirits and the walking dead make great explanations for plagues (think of the mideveal black death). Note also that garlic has some antivirulent properties, and also wards off vampires (coincidence, maybe, but maybe a part of the myths development).

Re:Jon Jon Jon....

[mvdwege]

Come come,

This is just about the first JK feature in ages where Jon doesn't draw a parallel with geekdom. Hell, he even stated that much in a comment a little earlier. Give the guy a little credit, and don't put words in his mouth.

Mart

What's with the Katz bashing?

[mvdwege]

I've just read through the discussion here and it really astonishes me, the amount of anti-Katz trolling. There's everything from calling him gay, to people deliberately misconstruing this piece.

What's wrong with you people? If you don't like Katz, don't read him! Or are you just jealous that he appears to be making a living at something you guys can't: express yourself in an entertaining manner?

For the record: I rather like the Katz pieces, the only niggle I have is that Jon doesn't seem to know how to cut down on unnecessary verbiage, but once you are aware of that it becomes easy to filter out.

I'd say that Jon might not need any defense, especially not mine, but regardless: Hang in there Jon, some of us like what you do (but do try to be a little more concise please).

Mart

Re:What's with the Katz bashing?

[mvdwege]

Ok, I'll bite:

• I said 'some' of us like Katz. We may be a minority, true, but among us you'll find quite probably the /. editors, otherwise Katz wouldn't be posting his stuff here anymore.
• I tend to view Katz as a columnist. His job is not to conform to some public standard, he writes on what he thinks is important. Like all good columnists this will mean that you can agree not to like his stuff, as long as it makes you think. Katz does seem to be able to do that for me, and from what I've seen I am not the only one.
• Finally, my gripe is not with people like you that legitimately attack Katz based on the content of his articles, but people that lower themselves to factually incorrect statements and ad hominem attacks. That IMO constitutes trolling

Thanks for a civil reply nonetheless,

Mart

free web content

[perdida]

How much free web content, technical, cultural and otehrwise, is available just by reading slashdot...? so many people bitch about this site but it is quoted everywhere.

Jon: stop by #trolls on irc.slash.net and we shall give you some 31337 trolling tips. Or maybe you already know cause YOU are Anne Marie!

*duck*

-perdida

Clearly, they are

[Chuck Flynn]

I hate to disagree with such a fine mind as yours, but you fail to realize the true depths of geek-centricity of the vampire meme.

Vampires, throughout history, have not been so much a metaphor for that which is outside but for that which is inside but reviled. In particular, the homoerotic nature of the male-vampire/male-victim interplay presents perhaps the first example of Eastern Europe's peoples' hopes to confront their inner-sexual turmoil. Rather than doing so, they chose to segregate it and deride it as the work of demons.

The geek, in the cultural pantheon of post-columbine era, is the modern homosexual. Columbine itself was an attempt to purge the nation of geeks, just as Eastern Europe attempted to do with vampires and homosexuals in the imported version of the Inquisition.

SotV engages with geeks

[Chuck Flynn]

Shadow of the Vampire is the latest movie to appeal directly to the geek demographic, as I see it. Katz alludes to this here:

Murnau's vampire is nothing like the poised, elegant, sometimes erotic vampires in American films, from Bela Lugosi to Tom Cruise. Count Orlock is the pre-sanitized version, a bitter, loathesome plague, a repulsive creature who's not superhuman but a half-dead thing you couldn't stand to be anywhere near, let alone have feast on you in the dead of night. Once powerful and rich, he's reduced to the occasional rodent and vial of delivered blood. His hunting days are over. He has pallid skin, talon-like fingernails, and a dessicated face. There is nothing erotic or charismatic about him.

The vampire is a metaphor for the geek, lost in a sea of sexually potent others, his sexual impotence imprinted on his face like the mark of Cain. Rodentlike, he scurries from printspool to printspool, only partaking of carnal desires voyeuristically through his mouth (consuming the red blood of wizened pizzas), with all fleeing from his presence.

This movie will make a bundle precisely because it knows how to target its audience: geeks who will never get laid in their life, and who like to pretend they have super powers (hence the comic-books and magic-the-gathering obsessions) but who will die alone and unloved.

Are Hollywood films an Artform anymore?

[Urban Existentialist]

It is well known that Hollwood is not what it used to be. At one time, it was a centre of innovation and produced many films of astounding artistic depth and quality. Now, however, many films emerging from Hollywood do not, IMO, qualify as Art. I say this because they are made according to a robust procedure, every last detail id predtermined. The average flick that emerges from Hollywood has been made by a committee of marketing directors according to a formula. They decide on the demographics that will be interested and do their best to produce a formulaic film that will appease the average 21st century corporate drone's simple and unchallenging appetite.

For this reason, I would say that the average Hollywood film no longer qualifies as an Artform - there is no personal input, no striving for beauty or challenging thought. It is all about cynically appealling to a certain target audience and bringing in the money.

True Art is omething that gives the Artist, the maker, pain and which stretches the boundaries of thought and emotion in the viewer to places that they have never been before. Modern Hollywood films merely offer cheap thrills. I think it would benefit Hollywood if it were to go bust, and be rebuilt by a community of Artists. The Artist and his Art is at the centre of film. Hollywood seems to have forgotten that.

You know exactly what to do-
Your kiss, your fingers on my thigh-