Shadow Of The Vampire

10 April 2012

How and why some films get financed (never mind made) continues to baffle me. And whom some films are made for is an even deeper mystery.

Unless you've already seen the silent German classic Nosferatu, directed in 1921 by FW Murnau, the events depicted in E Elias Merhige's fanciful "reconstruction" of its making will mean next to nothing to you.

Even for those who know their Nosferatu, the manic goings-on in this movie-about-the-movie may be hard to follow, they're so inbred, incoherent and often virtually indecipherable.

Let me shed some sunlight on the darkness of the grave that shrouds each and every scene. The new film has the conceit to suggest that the real-life German actor Max Schreck, who made a dozen films between 1921 and his death in 1936, but is best known for playing the rodent-like Count Orlock in Murnau's plagiarised version of Bram Stoker's Dracula, was an actual vampire who had agreed to do his part before the camera in return for first bite at Greta, his leading lady (Catherine McCormack).

In Merhige's film, he also lets his bloodlust take its serial toll of the film crew until the director at last has to say, reluctantly: "I do think the scriptwriter is important." Murnau is played by John Malkovich and Schreck by Willem Dafoe.

One's a hysterical travesty of the real Murnau, the other a hammy caricature of the cinematic Schreck. You would never guess either man deserved his place in movie history from the amateurish reproduction of scenes from the 1921 work, which for some reason, no doubt connected with ignorance, are given the look of a film that's already suffered the wear and tear of 80-odd years on the go around the cinematheque circuits.

Instead of promoting the loony notion that Schreck was one of the Undead who wanted to extract blood as well as money out of his acting stint, the film would have done better - perhaps not much, though - to emphasise the black comedy of an obsessive director resisting the ego of an incorrigible star who wants to take over the show: that's much more in the bloodline of moviemaking then and now.

Shadow of the Vampire was shot in Luxembourg. According to the production notes, this was because the Grand Duchy "claims to have more castle (sic) per square inch than any other country". But since many scenes look like they could have been shot in a broom cupboard, the ruins don't get much of a look in. However, since Luxembourg also offers more tax advantage per square inch than any other country, this may have been the bigger draw for producer Nicolas Cage.

The other investors include, strangely enough, our own BBC Films. I cannot think it is appropriate for a public corporation that raises a compulsory annual levy from British licence holders to put an undisclosed amount of it into a production showcasing American talents and a script (by New York writer Steven Katz) whose crude inventions manage to demean a masterwork of European silent cinema.

BBC Films is about to embark on a programme of big-budget moviemaking. I hope it won't repeat the Lottery-financed debacle. It is something worth keeping an eye on.

Shadow Of The Vampire
Cert: cert15

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