Shadow of the Vampire

Estate summary

Roger Ebert enjoys Shadow of the Vampire as both a dark comedy about filmmaking and a vampire story of its own. E. Elias Merhige’s film imagines that Max Schreck, the star of Murnau’s Nosferatu, really was a vampire, and that the director accepted the danger in pursuit of his artistic vision. Ebert praises Willem Dafoe’s transformation into this fictional Schreck and John Malkovich’s portrayal of Murnau as a director whose ambition overrides concern for other people. Their relationship turns familiar conflicts between a demanding star and an obsessive filmmaker into macabre jokes. The review also admires the recreation of the silent film’s visual atmosphere and the mixture of absurdity and genuine unease. It is important to retain the distinction between that invented backstage story and the history of the 1922 production: the premise is a fiction, not evidence that Schreck or Murnau behaved as the film depicts.

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