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

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.

Good advice..

[JonKatz]

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

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

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-