Review of Shadow of the Vampire (2000) by Edith N — 11 Feb 2009

It all started with a rumour, you see. I cannot say who started it, when it was started, [i]why[/i] it was started. But whatever its origins, They Said that Max Schreck was really a vampire. It's true! He only made one film, after all, and he played himself! Well, no. Leaving aside the "no such thing as vampires" bit, there are quite a few pieces of evidence that it wasn't actually true. While it is true that Schreck had only appeared in a couple of films before [i]Nosferatu[/i] (though that's still more than none!), he made a total of 34 before his death in 1936. In 1922, when [i]Nosferatu[/i] was filmed, Schreck has long since been a member of the Max Reinhardt stage company--and he'd been married for twelve years. I don't know how documented his birth was, but he was born in Berlin in 1879. So not a hundreds-of-years-old vampire at all.

F. W. Murnau (John Malkovich) is making a film that is Totally Not [i]Dracula[/i]. Florence Stoker wasn't going to allow Murnau the rights. So Murnau made a Totally Different Movie. He and his producer, Grau (Udo Kier) and his photographer, Galeen (Aden Gillett--at least, I think I've got the right character), along with stars Gustav (Eddie Izzard) and Greta (Catherine McCormack), are going to make Totally Not [i]Dracula[/i] along with the mysterious Max Schreck. What Murnau knows, and the cast does not, is that "Max Schreck" is an alias for a real, undead vampire. He has made a devil's bargain with Murnau--we never really find out either's reasons, though suggestions are made--and will appear in Murnau's picture in exchange for what he seems to desire most.

"Schreck" is really a tragic figure. He does not remember how old he is. He does know that he is very old, and his eternal "unlife" is not the same as eternal youth. He is very lonely. He does not have his former strength and power. Perhaps that is part of why he agrees to make the picture. He will be remembered. He will have something to preserve his own memory. And if he keeps aging, wouldn't it be nice to preserve a younger state where he can find it again? True, he's also truly malicious, genuinely evil, but it is curious to speculate how much came before and how much came after the forces that shaped him over the untold years.

And, of course, Murnau is not an altogether sane man himself, as the end of the picture makes most clear of all. He says at one point that he is preserving Schreck on film for the sake of science, that a true image of a vampire be preserved at all, but it seems insufficient for his willingness to share guilt for those Schreck kills. Murnau must know Schreck's nature, and if he didn't at first, he does after (probably) Galeen is killed. (The flamboyant Wagner, played by Cary Elwes, comes in to replace him and finish the picture.) As shown in the trailer, his demand is not why Schreck kills, but why he kills the cameraman and not the script girl, who is far less important and far easier to replace. He becomes obsessed with the picture and his star, and even though the real Murnau went on to make ten more films before he was killed in a road accident in 1931, this Murnau may not have that chance.

Famously, Willem Dafoe was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Schreck, losing out to Benicio Del Toro for [i]Traffic[/i]. The makeup lost to [i]Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas[/i], admittedly a makeup-intense movie--but a bad one. The Academy, as we know, does not like awarding comedic performances, but I think Dafoe gives one of the most nuanced performances of his career. To be sure, Dafoe doesn't always do "nuance," but I think the subtlety of the acting here can convince people that, even if he doesn't always do it, he [i]can[/i] do it. What's more, I think the actual filming is well done. Murnau's own style is copied by director E. Elias Merhige, and I think that gets ignored in favour of the admittedly silly nature of the plot.