SHADOW
OF THE VAMPIRE
by
Jim Beaver
Shadow
of the Vampire is a fictionalization of a true event, taking off
from a brilliant conceit, that the director of a vampire film would
hire a real vampire to play the leading role. E. Elias Merhige's riff
on F.W. Murnau's silent classic Nosferatu is a very mixed bag.
It contains one of the best, most human, yet outrageously bizarre performances
you're likely to see in many a moon, by Willem Dafoe. It provides one
of the most believable and fascinating looks at the process of silent
filmmaking ever seen in a mainstream movie. And it has wonderful costuming,
cinematography, music, and production design.
With
all that, it also has the most incoherent construction of anything I've
seen in years that didn't involve a college film department. This film
is choppier than any movie in recent memory. It appears that entire
scenes have been lopped out, willy-nilly, and the parts of other scenes
which would have given those scenes some reason for being seem to have
fallen out of the film during transport of the print. At first, I thought
there was an avant-garde approach going on, but by the end of the picture,
I was convinced that someone had run out of money or that someone had
inflicted an arbitrary maximum running time on the film, chopping out
bits to make it fit. The last third of the film is an utter mess.
Nevertheless
I recommend it highly to my film buff friends, on two counts. The performance
of Willem Dafoe, as the vampire that Murnau hires to play an actor playing
a vampire in his movie, is just astonishing. Over-the-top in ways hard
to imagine beforehand, Dafoe creates a marvelous duality of humanity
and grotesquery in the character of Max Shreck. And he is wonderfully,
unforgettably funny. In addition, the filmmaking scenes (which comprise
most of the movie) are done with great attention to detail, and scenes
from the real Nosferatu are seamlessly integrated into the picture
in brilliant, innovative ways.
John
Malkovich, as Murnau, gives one of his "How did this guy get to be a
movie star?" performances. (You know, the ones he alternates with "This
guy is the best actor in the business" performances.) He's shrill and
unconvincing much of the time, yet it is very difficult to lay much
blame at his feet, for he suffers most by the film's awkward editing
and/or script.
I was fascinated throughout the film, but by the last third I had lost
any hope that it would make sense. The final few scenes seem incomprehensible
for the most part, though clearly not intentionally so. I enjoyed the
overall experience, but had it not been for Dafoe and the filmmaking
milieu, I would have hated it. Strange evening, indeed. It's short,
so you don't risk much of your life by seeing it, and it would be a
shame to miss Dafoe. Just don't expect it to live up to its wonderful
premise.
CineScene, 2000
