Could it be that the restless spirit of Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau is watching over his artistic legacy, quietly sabotaging the designs of any filmmaker who would dare to comment on his work, especially his classic horror film, NOSFERATU(1922)?
If you've seen Herzog's NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE, you know it is mostly a pallid affair. Now, unfortunately, with E. Elias Merhige's SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE, we get more of the same. This time we are treated to a kind of docudrama purporting to show us how, perhaps, NOSFERATU came into being. Yet we gain no insight into Murnau's life or his artistic accomplishments leading up to NOSFERATU.
SHADOW opens hurriedly, showing Murnau and company enroute to a foreign shooting location. With perfunctory exposition the film attempts to establish Murnau's reputation as a controlling artistic force, but there is very little of dramatic import here. Similarly, the mystery of Max Shreck- who he was, where he came from, what drew Murnau to him, et cetera, is never dealt with in cinematic terms. Merhige tries to offset the emptiness of the script by suggesting that Shreck was an actual vampire, promised his pick of the film crew by Murnau just to get the movie completed. But this idea has very limited success.
On the other hand, Willem Dafoe's Shreck/Orlock is another in a series of arresting takes on the actor and the character. Less demonic than Shreck, not as guilt-ridden as Kinski's version, Dafoe is like a cranky old veteran, impatient with the endless preamble of life. He just wants his meal(!) and his solitude. He's creepy, to be sure, and rather pathetic. John Malkovich as Murnau chews through the scenery like a petulant brat.
The strange opening title sequence of the film is its most interesting asset: a mysterious line drawing of an entranceway, highly baroque in design, unfolding and changing as you are drawn closer, into an hypnotic and sinister multiplicity of shapes, figures, and patterns. Regrettably, the rest of the film isn't this detailed and seductive.
If you've seen Herzog's NOSFERATU THE VAMPYRE, you know it is mostly a pallid affair. Now, unfortunately, with E. Elias Merhige's SHADOW OF THE VAMPIRE, we get more of the same. This time we are treated to a kind of docudrama purporting to show us how, perhaps, NOSFERATU came into being. Yet we gain no insight into Murnau's life or his artistic accomplishments leading up to NOSFERATU.
SHADOW opens hurriedly, showing Murnau and company enroute to a foreign shooting location. With perfunctory exposition the film attempts to establish Murnau's reputation as a controlling artistic force, but there is very little of dramatic import here. Similarly, the mystery of Max Shreck- who he was, where he came from, what drew Murnau to him, et cetera, is never dealt with in cinematic terms. Merhige tries to offset the emptiness of the script by suggesting that Shreck was an actual vampire, promised his pick of the film crew by Murnau just to get the movie completed. But this idea has very limited success.
On the other hand, Willem Dafoe's Shreck/Orlock is another in a series of arresting takes on the actor and the character. Less demonic than Shreck, not as guilt-ridden as Kinski's version, Dafoe is like a cranky old veteran, impatient with the endless preamble of life. He just wants his meal(!) and his solitude. He's creepy, to be sure, and rather pathetic. John Malkovich as Murnau chews through the scenery like a petulant brat.
The strange opening title sequence of the film is its most interesting asset: a mysterious line drawing of an entranceway, highly baroque in design, unfolding and changing as you are drawn closer, into an hypnotic and sinister multiplicity of shapes, figures, and patterns. Regrettably, the rest of the film isn't this detailed and seductive.