#148: Shadow of the Vampire
A darkly hilarious “behind the scenes” of one of the silent film era’s most beloved horror movies
This review was originally posted to Twitter on July 31st, 2019.
Initial release: December 29, 2000
Director: E. Elias Merhige
Filmmaking is a tough business; maybe the toughest part is the human element. What do you do when your star actor is unruly? How far will a visionary director go for his art? What if Nosferatu star Max Schreck was a real vampire?
E. Elias Merhige (pronounced like “marriage”,) who prior to this film created the cult arthouse mindbender Begotten as well as a couple of music videos for Marilyn Manson, is perhaps an outside-the-box choice for a film like this — and yet, he’s perfect. He brings an understanding of the beauty of silent film. Aside from a few shot-for-shot remakes of real scenes from the movie, as seen by a transition into grainy black and white, there’s also the occasional use of intertitles between acts. We are given the opportunity to see, at least to some fictionalized extent, how a silent film would have been made back in the day.
Shadow of the Vampire is at once multiple things. It’s a heavily fictionalized dramatization of the making of a horror masterpiece, a metacommentary on the difficulties of filmmaking itself, and a love letter to silent cinema. It’s also really fucking funny.
I can’t think of a film that’s made better casting choices. John Malkovich is F. W. Murnau, a driven visionary with dictatorial control over his set and a willingness to do anything for the perfect shot. Willem Dafoe is Max Schreck… except there is no Max Schreck. See, here’s the thing: for the sake of authenticity, Murnau has tracked down and hired a real undead vampire for the title role of his unlicensed Dracula knockoff. He just so happens to have found the oldest, creepiest motherfucker in Romania: Max Schreck, or, at least, the thing going by that name. Murnau must balance his moody, weird star actor’s bloodlust against the need to finish the film. Willem Dafoe is absolutely brilliant as Schreck; he’s always chewed the scenery but this might honestly be his best role ever. He’s clearly having the time of his life in this role and it shows. And while his weird, poorly-socialized rat thing of a Max Schreck is often funny, and once or twice, surprisingly human, he’s still sinister as all get out, and Dafoe delights in being as menacing as possible all while Murnau keeps the camera rolling.
Of course, if you know the real story of the film you’d know that this is pretty ahistorical. Aside from the obvious fact that Schreck was not a vampire (just a very good method actor who tended to be a bit solitary on top of that anyway,) Murnau was quite the sensitive director. But therein lies another layer of this film: it’s indirectly a dramatization of the filming of the 1979 remake of Nosferatu, directed by notorious artiste Werner Herzog, who famously painted rats grey to get the look he wanted, and certified nutter Klaus Kinski. This is reflected in the contentious working relationship between Murnau and the vampire; they have frequent arguments, usually over Schreck’s misbehavior. These are some of the funniest scenes in the movie.
At the end of the day, though, what this movie really is about isn’t vampires, or the making of Nosferatu. What it’s about is the nature of filmmaking as an art itself — its difficulties, its triumphs, and the isolation that is being behind a camera. I did not go in expecting much of this movie. The premise, based on a long-standing urban myth, is silly on its face, though I do love a good old-fashioned “secret history” where Beethoven was an alien spy or whatever. But this movie is sharp, biting genius.
Merhige, despite the rather short resume, has made a film that skirts being B-movie schlock to bring us a funny, frightening and thoughtful take on a venerable masterpiece of early horror cinema.
