Standing
beside the camera in a white lab coat and goggles, director F. W. Murnau (John
Malkovich) has a plan. Denied the rights
to Bram Stoker’s Dracula by his
widow, Murnau has gone ahead with the film under changed character names and a
new title: Nosferatu. As he finishes his last studio scene, he
screams to the heavens, “Thank God, an end to this artifice!” He is about to embark upon a bold experiment
in on-location filmmaking in Czechoslovakia, most boldly in employing a
mysterious character actor named Max Schreck to play Count Orlok.
According
to Murnau’s limited information, Schreck will only appear to the cast and crew
in character, in full makeup, and at night, and he went to Czechoslovakia weeks
prior. None of the crew, including
producer Albin Grau (Udo Kier), the writer, or the lead actors (Eddie Izzard
and Catherine McCormack) have heard of him, some hearing he’s a follower of
Stanislawski’s school and comes from the Reinhart company. However, none of these things are true. Only Murnau knows who Schreck really is, and
this secret, revealed early in the film, is what drives the story of this
utterly fascinating speculative fictionalization of the making of one of the
greatest horror films of all time.
What
Murnau knows, and tries desperately to hide, is that Schreck (Willem Dafoe) is
actually a vampire. Murnau found him in
Czechoslovakia, and roped him into playing Orlok on the condition that he
doesn’t harm the cast and crew, and that, once filming is completed, he will
have the neck of the lead actress, Greta Schröder (Catherine McCormack). Keeping the vampire in check, and convincing
his people that he actually is a character actor, is a constant battle of
wills, one that the filmmakers take surprisingly seriously.
The
idea that Schreck was a real vampire has its roots in real-life rumor, which
spread upon the film’s release due to Schreck’s barely known personal
information and incredibly chilling performance. A combination of frightening talent, striking
make-up, Murnau’s deft atmospheric touch, and the dream-like, evocative quality
of silent filmmaking itself, the character of Count Orlok is one of the most
memorable and haunting presences of horror cinema. Orlok is also unique among Draculas in his
demeanor. In most Western vampire
literature, the vampire is an ex-human, maintaining an outer image of life
while desperately sating its animalistic hunger for human blood. If the line between human and animal is
straddled, most Western vampires are on the human end, such as most depictions
of Dracula. However, Orlok is clearly on
the animal end of the spectrum, though hardly a living one. Through incredible make-up and costume work,
Orlok could be described as an enormous rat, bound upright in a black
straightjacket, painfully attempting to pass as human. His rodent-like teeth, extremely long
fingernails, alarming gaze and stiff movement make him a far cry from your
average Bela Lugosi.
Part
of the genius of Shadow of the Vampire is
the unbelievable performance by Willem Dafoe, who here shows himself as one of
our greatest living character actors.
Dafoe understands the animalistic and desperate tendencies of the
character and turns Schreck into a shifty, embittered, pathetic and deeply
frightening figure. His speech is slow
and tortured, each word resonating a bottomless hunger for sustenance and
escape. He peers around each room,
regarding the cast and crew with a predatorial gaze and a certain amount of
confusion at his acting task. His
movement is stiff and awkward, each gesture dramatic and separated by pregnant
pauses. And he is no actor. Each filming session with Orlok is an unusual
ordeal, where the cast and crew are mystified by Schreck’s apparent lack of acting
talent and Murnau’s uncanny habit of looking the other way, even when Schreck
attacks the cinematographer on set during a brief power outage. These scenes result in a good deal of
unexpected humor (much of it drawn from Schreck’s inability to act), such as
when Schreck-as-Orlok looks at the pendant of Greta Schröder worn by the Hutter
character (Eddie Izzard) and loudly exclaims, “She has a beautiful bosom!” He has little respect for his side of the
bargain, and eventually members of the crew start vanishing in the night,
eventually working his way towards the film’s climax.
This
isn’t to say, of course, that the other performances aren’t also gold. The film relies on its performers in order to
stay afloat, and John Malkovich as the obsessed and megalomaniacal Murnau
couldn’t be better. Malkovich has always
possessed a talent for making seemingly innocuous phrases seem electrifying and
hilarious simply through his arch delivery, and this is perfectly suited to
Murnau (e.g., when he screams “Albin, a Native has wandered into my
frame!”). He cares little for the safety
of his people, except for the purpose of finishing his picture, mixes contempt
with morbid fascination in dealing with Schreck. The screenwriter, Steven Katz, exploits the
director-actor relationship to real satirical depth; even though Schreck isn’t
human, he still has self-absorbed quarrels with the director, such as refusing
to ride the sail ship to Heligoland, forcing Murnau to build a full-sized
replica at Schreck’s castle.
As for the
supporting cast, we are given a dynamic grab-bag. Udo Kier as the producer is delightfully
Kier-esque, employing little facial movement but using his voice and weirdly
compelling gaze to hypnotic effect. (If Dr. Mabuse is ever reincarnated, I know
just the man for the job.) Eddie Izzard
as Gustav von Wangenhein, the actor
playing Hutter, is inspired by prima donnas before him and creates a preening,
spoiled hack-job, and in a DVD extra admits he was inspired by the real-life
Gustav’s mediocre talent. Catherine
McCormack is devilish and rightly hateful as Greta, a narcissistic theater
debutante whose first question upon reaching the German village of Wismar is
where she can find a cabaret. About
halfway into the film a quirky and robustly uncouth Cary Elwes replaces the
cinematographer, swooping in on a bi-plane with his face covered in soot. When referred to as Dr. Fritz Wagner, he
replies, “Well, I’m not a doctor, but I have dabbled in pharmaceuticals.” His first action as photographer is to fire a
gun to startle the extras.
What makes this film work so well is how it takes its
subject matter very seriously. In his
review of the film, Roger Ebert remarked that what makes Nosferatu such a compelling film is that the filmmakers seem to
really believe in vampires; this effect is literally reproduced here, with
Murnau both repulsed by, and fascinated with, his vampire. And, in the tradition of Dracula, the film paints the vampire as a deeply pathetic, tortured
creature, unable to die a natural death and forced to contend an endless time
with his fading memories. (At one point
Murnau approaches him as he recites Tennyson’s “Tithonus”, a poem about a
mythical being who is immortal but continues to age.) One of the most heartbreaking scenes of the
film is when Schreck joins Albin and the writer in some late-night drinking and
reveals his feelings on Dracula. The book made him sad, because it depicted a
man who had forgotten how to be human but was forced to pretend, and simple
human tasks such as preparing meals had to be painfully relearned. There is nothing glamorous or attractive in
being a vampire, only desperation and regret.
(This scene also includes the funniest moment in the film, in which
Schreck grabs a bat out of the sky and ravenously devours it.)
Working from Katz’s inspired screenplay, this film is E.
Elias Merighe’s first foray into mainstream filmmaking. Merighe is a daring and intriguing filmmaker,
whose first feature, Begotten (1991),
was an uncompromising, experimental plunge into a unique world of myth and
horror. Lacking dialogue, character
definitions, straightforward plot, and music, each scene was photographed and
then re-photographed to create a striking and surreal effect, sometimes making
it difficult to make out what is happening.
The film moves as if submersed in a peat bog (and looks just as much),
depicting a psychological tale of death and rebirth more like a vivid nightmare
than a fashioned story. Void of normal
entertainment value, the film is instead fascinating in a more haunting and
cerebral fashion, and will remain a staple of experimental filmmaking for a
long time to come.
Although this film is far more mainstream than Begotten, Merighe isn’t devoid of
inspiration in its execution. The events
of the film are often set up by title-cards, throwing the film into silent-film
territory with great ease. Before the
crew departs for Czechoslovakia Murnau visits a kinky sex-club in Berlin, and
this brief glimpse into surreal Weimar decadence is capped by a shot from above
seemingly looking through frosted glass.
This is actually just a deliberately artificial frame, giving the action
a deeply strange touch of old-world atmosphere (this is accompanied by distant
and distorted sound). I can’t tell you
of the effect that he uses in the film’s climactic scene on Heligoland, but I
can tell you of the opening credits. The
camera moves through an imagined castle, or rather what appears to be a screen
painted to depict rooms. These images
are very flat, almost like blueprints, and the images are clashes of medieval
architecture and frightening, symbolic faces, battle scenes, and Escher-like
deconstructions of beings. The camera
pans very slowly, allowing the viewer to really soak in the haunting beauty and
eerie power of these images.
Each aspect of the film’s production is gorgeous and
compelling. Of particular note is the
genius make-up design by Ann Buchanan and Pauline Fowler; when we see the
vampire, we don’t think about make-up – all we see is a vampire, miraculously
captured on film. Caroline de Vivaise’s
costumes are brooding and ominous, edging towards cloaks and long coats and
steeped in rich darkness. (Schreck’s
outfit actually restricted Dafoe’s movement greatly, adding to the stiff and
pained effect of his acting.) Lou Bogue’s
cinematography and Assheton Gorton’s production design brilliantly capture the
crudely organic landscape of Schreck’s realm, finding looming shadows in ruins
and making sure any civilization present removed from the modernity of Murnau’s
production, dirty and left to nature’s devices.
A large wooden cross seen in a Czech village seems to have erupted out
of the ground centuries earlier, so darkly woody it appears burned. And composer Dan Jones has opted towards an
elegiac post-romantic language, and with that mindset created one of the most
haunting film scores of the 2000’s. His
main motive is an icy fiddle tune, both folk-like and removed from folk
tradition, that is so distant it seems to be coming from across a mountain
valley.
Another compelling aspect of the film is the role of Nicolas
Cage as producer. Shadow of the Vampire was the first production of Cage’s Saturn
Films, which he founded in order to explore new avenues of acting. He was the one who originally paired
Malkovich and Dafoe, who come from two very different theatrical aesthetics
and, when combined, made a richly engrossing film experience. Unfortunately, Cage hasn’t maintained his
vision for the company, and has been using it primarily to fund his starring
roles. It would be nice to see him
return to form and find another project as fruitful as this one.
Shadow of
the Vampire was released by Universal Pictures
and Lion’s Gate Pictures to a small audience and a warm critical
reception. Though it was never intended
to be as widely seen as their flagship titles, I’m not sure that it will be
remembered as time passes. One reason is
the inherently small target audience, as the film will most likely appeal to
fans of Nosferatu and those
interested in film art. And I’m not sure
the film is flawless, either. The Wismar
sequence pulls the pacing to a crawl, and the presence of drugs and Weimar
culture in Nosferatu’s production and
the character’s lives is an undeveloped detail that irritates me more and more
each time I watch the film. But despite
these minor errors, the film is still an engrossing, perceptive, and haunting
experience. I don’t think it really
counts as a horror film, but it is certainly one of the best vampire films ever
made, and one of the best films about filmmaking I’ve seen.
The most compelling feat it accomplishes is the way in which
it examines the same themes as Dracula with
almost as much depth as the original, even though they are separated by more
than 100 years. The greatness of Dracula’s narrative came not only from
its examination of the vampire, but also from its depiction of a society where
an exciting and fast-approaching future is clashing with a mysterious and
superstitious past. The Victorian era
looking upon ancient Transylvanian myth is a clash of progress and tradition,
enlightened sensibilities and rural fears.
When Murnau was making Nosferatu,
Dracula wasn’t more than 30 years
old; when he went to the Bohemian countryside to film, people still lived in a
timeless village existence, and for many vampires were as real then as they
were a generation prior. Murnau was
working from a fascination with the supernatural past as personal to him as it
was to Stoker. It is enthralling to see
Merighe and Katz work from that same fascination, and it is even more
enthralling to witness the vampire taken up in those same feelings. Some of the best moments in the film are
rooted in Schreck’s first encounters with modern film technology, as well as the
aforementioned scene where he discusses Dracula.
What may be the most revealing and beautiful moment in the
film is when Schreck is left alone on the set and comes across a projector
loaded with Murnau’s nature photography.
As he hand-cranks the camera, the flickering image of a cloudy sky
appears on the wall opposite him. He
sticks his hand into the frame, in awe of his shadow interrupting the
scene. Eventually, he ducks down to face
the camera dead-on, and as he cranks the sky is projected directly onto his
face, and a sight that he has been denied for hundreds of years is now
intoxicating him, letting him drift into abandon.
~PNK
