Everybody has that movie that they will always champion, always recommend, always love unconditionally. For me, that movie is Shadow of the Vampire, which was released in theaters twenty-five years ago. This fictional account of the making of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu remains one of the most incisive, thought-provoking, and hilarious vampire films ever made, all […]
Everybody has that movie that they will always champion, always recommend, always love unconditionally. For me, that movie is Shadow of the Vampire, which was released in theaters twenty-five years ago.
This fictional account of the making of F.W. Murnau’s Nosferaturemains one of the most incisive, thought-provoking, and hilarious vampire films ever made, all while somehow maintaining the creeping, undeniable dread of the film it is revering and, to some extent, satirizing. It is a film about filmmaking, the “war of art,” and perhaps most compelling, a film about reality and artifice. So, what could a twenty-five-year-old movie about the making of a one-hundred-year-old movie possibly have to tell us about life in the year of our Lord 2025? As it turns out, quite a bit.
Throughout the film, F.W. Murnau, brilliantly played by John Malkovich, insists that he is intent on capturing reality. The film opens with the end of shooting on a set built on a stage where Greta Shroeder (Catherine McCormack) gleefully and tenderly dangles a bauble in front of a kitten until Murnau calls, “end.” At that moment, her expression transitions to one of disdain for everything she feels she has been reduced to by being forced to participate in the burgeoning motion picture industry. In other words, everything is fake. The buildings are facades, the people are actors, and even the cat has been drugged to make it more docile. Murnau’s cry of “at last an end to this artifice!” as the company will be heading out onto location the next day implies that he intends to capture reality and reality only. The rest of the film, however, proves otherwise.
When they arrive in Czechoslovakia, Murnau insists to his producer Albin Grau (Udo Kier) that the inhabitants of the village do not need to act; they only need to be. But when one of these villagers walks into a shot to protest that the crosses on the walls of her inn have been removed, he shouts, “Albin, a native has wandered into my frame!” Grau then assures the woman that the crosses would be returned, but that they “overwhelmed the composition.” These are early indications that reality may not actually be foremost on Murnau’s mind. Everything is artifice, everything is manipulation. Except for the one thing he cannot control: Max Schreck.
The great conceit at the center of Shadow of the Vampire is “what if Murnau was so insistent on reality that he hired an actual vampire to play the role?” Willem Dafoe, in his Oscar-nominated role as Schreck, gives one of his most unhinged performances, which is saying something considering his filmography. It is a performance that leaves room for the audience to believe that Schreck could either really be a vampire or be such a committed method actor that he believes himself to be one. In reality, the idea of vampirism goes far beyond this character, serving as a metaphor that extends to the very nature of filmmaking itself. In the opening scene, Greta laments that the live audience of the theatrical experience gives her life “while this thing,” referring to the camera, “takes it from me.” So, the camera itself is a vampire, a technological wonder whose mechanisms slowly drain the life, humanity, and will away from those it ensnares while simultaneously giving them the illusion of eternal life.
The film implies that the filmmaker can be a kind of vampire as well, or at least a Renfield-like servant to its bloodsucking master. Murnau may have the illusion of control, but as Schreck notes, as the shoot descends into chaos, “This is hardly your picture any longer.” Then who does the picture belong to? Is it Schreck? Or is it perhaps the all-consuming act of filmmaking itself, enabled by the mechanical beast that Murnau wields?
By the end, Murnau has become so consumed by his vision that he allows Schreck to kill Grau, Shroeder, and his cinematographer, Fritz Arno Wagner (Cary Elwes), before the vampire himself is destroyed by the sun. Even as Schreck is strangling Grau, Murnau tells his star, “Frankly, Count, I find this composition unworkable,” and tells him to return to his original mark. He then asks the dead Albin Grau to return the prop stake to the bed beside Greta. His reasoning—“if it’s not in frame, it doesn’t exist.” Or perhaps we could put this in modern parlance, “Pic, or it didn’t happen.”
How like a vampire film our lives have become. Or at least the life we curate for others to see. How much of what we post on Instagram is real, and how much is just beyond the frame? Shadow of the Vampire came along before social media took over our online landscape. Within a few years, YouTube and MySpace would begin their journey to immortality, only to be taken over by Facebook and Twitter and the expansive, Hulkified, Googleized version of YouTube we now have. Our online selves can give us immortality, but at what cost? Like Schreck, do we even know who we are anymore?
In the film, Schreck cannot remember how he became a vampire. He can’t remember where he came from or who he was before. Now he is too old even to create more vampire companions. In one of the film’s many memorable sequences, Schreck discusses the novel Dracula with Grau and writer Henrik Galeen (Aden Gillett) and how it made him sad that Dracula had no servants. The two men puzzle at this point, noting that they believe Schreck has missed the point of Stoker’s book. But Schreck tells them that when Harker arrives at Castle Dracula, the Count would have been without servants for hundreds of years, but would have to put on the airs of humanity for his guest, despite not remembering what it was like to be human. “He has to feed him when he himself hasn’t eaten food in centuries. Can he even remember how to buy bread? How to select cheese and wine?” He notes that Dracula remembers the glories of his armies but not the simple acts of humanity, even the most basic personal interactions.
This all makes me wonder, are we giving ourselves over to a vampire? Are we allowing the technology of our day to suck us dry of our humanity? It’s always a challenge to navigate a new technology. It’s a constant theme throughout history. What was intended to draw humans together so often drives them apart. This has been true from the automobile and the telephone to the motion picture and television to the internet and the smartphone. None of these things is made with nefarious intent, but we as humans have a knack for twisting good things into new problems to grapple with.
Lately, these things seem to be coming at us with a rapidity that we as the human race are not equipped to deal with thoroughly before being overtaken by them. Forty years ago, it was home computers that rapidly spread to every aspect of life, then it was the internet, then social media, then smartphones, and now the sudden pervasiveness of Artificial Intelligence. Like the spinning mechanisms of Murnau’s camera in Shadow of the Vampire, these are simultaneously enticing, beneficial, and dangerous.
It has always been the case that we live in a world overwhelmed by vampires, be they human, technological, or some combination of both. The human spirit, however, is strikingly resilient. We have tamed our monsters before, and we surely will again. The question is how much damage will these vampires of our own making do before we are able to expose them to the sun? Perhaps I am too much of an optimist, but I believe that light can overcome darkness. The road is long, and the progress is slow, but I believe that the better angels of our nature will prevail. By naming our vampires and identifying them for what they are, we begin to see through them and break the Faustian bargains we have made with them.
This isn’t to say that we should just abandon our innovations, but if horror movies and genre cinema have taught us anything, from Frankenstein to The Terminator to Jurassic Park, to Shadow of the Vampire and beyond, it’s that we must be responsible for our innovations and not allow them to overtake us and destroy our humanity. All these stories ask the vital question: Just because we can, does it mean we should? The answers to that question can be complex. There will always be benefits, but there will also always be consequences.
Pandora’s Box is already open, and there’s no turning back, but there are ways to proceed forward. To do so intelligently, we must go beyond our knowledge to guide us and explore something that I fear has been lacking in much of our contemporary age—wisdom. What that will look like remains to be seen.
It is striking how every time I return to Shadow of the Vampire, which is fairly often, I find more depths to mine and insights to uncover. This article is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the discussion of this film. I have barely touched on its insights into the filmmaking process, the nature of silent filmmaking, life in the Weimar republic and the shadow of authoritarianism to come, its examinations of art as a “battle and struggle,” the nature of memory, the roots of method acting, pervasive drug use and addiction, and only barely mentioned the biting humor throughout the film. And these are just its themes and ideas. There is even more to say about the film’s craft in front of and behind the camera, from its superb cast of actors, its brilliant writing, and its excellent direction from E. Elias Merhige, a truly fascinating filmmaker.
I really don’t like to throw this word around, but I believe that Shadow of the Vampire is a masterpiece that will only continue to have relevance to our current obsessions, challenges, and triumphs.
