Directed by E. Elias Merhige
John Malkovich, Willem Dafoe
F.W. Murnau: Go ahead! Eat the writer! That will leave you explaining how your character gets to Bremen!
Before Bela Lugosi put his indelible stamp on the character of Dracula in Tod Browning’s 1931 film, there was F.W. Murnau’s silent classic Nosferatu, starring a German actor named Max Shrek. In Shadow of the Vampire, Murnau, intent on realism, has cast an actual vampire, a malevolent, insectoid creature who is explained to the rest of the crew as a performer so committed to his craft he never breaks character. Not surprisingly, people begin disappearing from the shoot, and Murnau struggles to maintain control over his film. “How dare you! How dare you destroy my cinematographer!” he shouts at one point. “Why him, you monster? Why not the script girl?” Willem Dafoe is at times funny, at times terrifying, and at times pathetic as a nightmare of a leading man determined to take over a picture, and Malkovich is brilliant as the relentlessly single-minded Murnau.
CinemaLit Films
