SUBMITTED BY Sarah

February 1, 2001 — Hoberman Premised on the notion that F.W. Murnau's silent horror classic Nosferatu was actually a documentary, Shadow of the Vampire manages to turn a highly dubious concept into a subtle and deliciously mordant comedy. The movie, directed by E. Elias Merhige from Steven Katz's script, joins Jim Shepard's 1998 novel, Nosferatu, as the second recent fiction to feature the German filmmaker as a tormented protagonist. But, unlike Shepard, Katz has only a casual interest in the historical Murnau. His protagonist has been reinvented for the movie as an overbearing Herr Doktor. Of course, this, as well as numerous other liberties, anachronisms, and historical inaccuracies (Sergei Eisenstein invoked as a "master" of the medium three years before he made his first film), is minor compared to the movie's insistence that Max Schreck, the Reinhardt actor who played the indelibly feral Count Orlock, was actually a centuries-old Carpathian vampire typecast by a filmmaker driven to go beyond "artifice." Shot largely on location, Murnau's Nosferatu was an experiment in "open-air" expressionism. That Shadow of the Vampire is itself so predicated on artifice is part of the joke; that the 1922 Nosferatu was an authorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula is only the movie's first instance of blood-sucking. Murnau's leading lady, Greta Schroeder (played by Catherine McCormack as a far greater vamp than the potato dumpling who appears in Murnau's film), complains to Herr Doctor that she prefers the theater?the audience gives her life while the camera takes it from her. The creepy suggestion, eventually to be literalized, that the cinema is an inherently vampiric medium is hilariously self-serving in a movie as parasitic as this one. As played by John Malkovich, Murnau is most impassioned as an apostle of the moving picture: "We are scientists engaged in the creation of memory that will neither blur nor fade." Perhaps taking this to heart, Merhige?directing his first feature since his own poetic horror film, 1989's remarkable Begotten?has created a near perfect replica of Murnau's original footage Merhige's simulacrum is all the more amazing in the scenes of the filmmaker at work. He revels in the crazy logistics of nighttime shoots, which are necessary for the mysterious Max (Willem Dafoe), Murnau's latest discovery, who, so the cast is informed, will remain in character throughout the production. Dafoe is the most uncanny aspect of Merhige's pastiche. On one hand, the filmmaker goes in and out of Nosferatu?boldly re-creating Murnau's original sequence to introduce Max or showing Murnau cleverly setting up the scene in which the Count's spooked visitor inadvertently cuts his hand with a bread knife. On the other, he plays with the backstage notion of the vampire's secret vanity and on-screen "innocence." During a break in the production, the hissing star holds forth on Bram Stoker's Dracula, offering poignant insight into the feelings of a lonely vampire compelled to plan and prepare dinner for a human guest when he himself hasn't eaten food in centuries. Grau and screenwriter Henrick Galeen (Aden Gillet) are astonished by the dedication the actor brings to his role, particularly after he snatches a bat out of the air and devours it. "Max?the German theater needs you," the writer exclaims in admiration. Ultimately, the movie becomes the battle of the vampires. "You and I are not too different," Max tells Murnau, as they struggle for possession of the project. In fact, Shadow of the Vampire belongs to Dafoe. Where the real Max Schreck gave a remarkably focused expressionist performance, Dafoe's is pure Wooster Group. Its rigorous precision is part of its underlying humor. Sniffing and snorting, sucking on his fangs and nervously clicking his claws, Dafoe treats Malkovich as his straight man. There's a wonderful buildup for the last scene. Annoyed Greta can't quite take her slavering costar seriously?is he a crazed fan or what?