Shadow of the Vampire

After seeing Nosferatu, I thought I'd take a look at E. Elias Merhige's satire, Shadow of the Vampire, which has the great idea of making the actor who played Dracula, Max Schreck, an actual vampire. Although it appears to be a horror film, it is really a satire of the artist as megalomaniac, and depicts director F.W. Murnau as doing literally anything to realize his vision.

John Malkovich is Murnau. He has just finished scenes of the film in Berlin, with his performers (Eddie Izzard and Catherine McCormack). The cast and crew pack up to go to Czechoslovakia to shoot on location. The producer, writer, and photographer are somewhat bemused by the whole thing, especially when they see the creepy castle that Malkovich is using. No one has met Schreck, whom Malkovich says is such a method actor that he constantly stays in character. When Izzard, playing the Harker character, first meet him, it's being filmed.

Schreck, according to the film, is an actual vampire that Murnau finds and makes a deal: play the vampire in the film, and he will get the actress, who has stayed behind in Berlin. But Schreck, played with brio by Willem Dafoe, can't help himself. He feeds on the photographer. "Why couldn't you have eaten the script girl?" Malkovich screams at him. "Eh, the script girl," Dafoe scoffs. "I will eat her later."

Malkovich then tries to keep his crew alive while finishing the movie. The crew don't realize the truth until much too late, even though they watch Dafoe pluck a bat out of the air and sucks his blood. Later they will go to an island where the finale is filmed. Malkovich plans to kill Dafoe with sunlight, but Dafoe foils the plot and kills many of the crew, all while Malkovich rolls the camera.

Shadow of the Vampire is almost all fiction, but it's fun for film buffs anyway. Schreck and his descendants may not like being depicted as a vampire (he was an actor), and Murnau has been turned into the kind of cliche of silent movie directors of wearing jodhpurs and berets and barking orders. McCormack plays Greta Schroeder as a vain drug addict (Murnau is also depicted as a dope fiend). Apparently none of this is true, but who's counting?

Dafoe was nominated for an Oscar, and he looks great, but interestingly he doesn't really like the vampire in the original film.

For people into silent films, Shadow of the Vampire is a lot of fun.