Date Night: Shadow of the Vampire

In which I review a randomly-selected movie from Netflix with Becky.

It's hard to believe that nearly a month has come and gone since the last Date Night.  But with this installment complete and a second one already waiting in the wings, don't expect such gaps to become the norm.

I have always found silent films to be especially entrancing.  There's a zen simplicity in silence - meaning found solely in the visuals - especially since thunderous explosions and snappy dialog come cheaply these days.  You can't multitask through a silent film: can't tweet or update statuses or surf the net.  It's an unforgiving aesthetic that forces you to either pay absolute attention or become hopelessly lost in the narrative.

Perhaps this is why I was so intrigued by Shadow of the Vampire, a film depicting the creation of one of the greatest silent films ever produced: F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror.  Having been unable to secure the film rights to Bram Stoker's Dracula, the production was troubled before it ever truly began.  Deciding to simply change a few superficial details, Murnau pushed ahead with his film regardless.  But it was Max Schreck - the actor chosen to play the iconic Count Orlok - that proved to be film's greatest obstacle.

Max Schreck was a method actor before the practice gained public notoriety.  As I have mentioned before, method actors are a peculiar breed of thespians that entrench themselves in the psychology of their character both on and off the set - supplanting themselves for that of the fiction that they portray on screen.  When filming, there was never a Max Schreck: only Orlok - only the vampire.  He "play[ed] the part of an actor playing the part of a vampire," only appearing in front of the cast and crew in full costume and makeup, only at night, never breaking character during the film's entire production and was only to be addressed by as Orlok.  Understandably, rumors surged on set that Max Schreck actually was a vampire.

Shadow of the Vampire takes those rumors and runs with them, positing that Schreck was, in fact, a vampire that Murnau scouted out for his film's antagonist.  He is never shown eating, only drinking from a decanter of blood, a bottle of schnapps and a decapitated bat.  Although Murnau lists the various companies and productions that Schreck was a part of when introducing him to the rest of the cast, that cover is soon thoroughly disproved.  When Murnau's crew demands to know what he promised Schreck in exchange for appearing in the role, he answers Greta Schroeder, the film's lead actress.  In addition to ripping out his co-star's throat, over the course of filming Schreck hospitalizes one crew member and kills two others.  While filming Nosferatu's climax, Murnau orders the set's shutters to be lifted, using the sunlight to kill Schreck on camera.

Max Schreck was the role that Willem Dafoe was born to play.  He was always an unsettling-looking actor, with a wide Grinch-like grin, massive teeth with prominent canines, buggy eyes, dark lips and a sloping leathery face; combined with Schreck's own exaggerated makeup - ashen flesh, pointed ears, elongated incisors, bald head with wisps of white around his ears, overlong fingers with claw-like nails - it creates a character of unparalleled unease.  Additionally, Dafoe is able to fully embody the stiff, lumbering and altogether unnatural posture and movements of German Expressionism: the film aesthetic that informed Nosferatu's production.

The resulting film is neither a biography of an eccentric actor nor a historical drama depicting an especially troubled production.  Shadow of the Vampire is neither Hitchcock nor Lost in La Mancha.  It is something altogether darker: a revelation in one man's desperate obsession for authenticity and perfection, regardless of the cost that must be paid for it.  It's caught somewhere between John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns and Christopher Nolan's The Prestige: self-destruction as a willful act of creation.

I don't know what exactly I was expecting to see when I sat down to watch Shadow of the Vampire, but this is certainly not it.  It was a mesmerizingly horrific experience, blurring the lines between biography and fiction until the two became hopelessly intermixed.  It is a film that any fan of horror and the early film industry should experience.  Overall, I give the film a 7.5 out of 10 and Becky gives it a 7.

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