#schreck

source

Necesito que me apapachen.

From one Nosferatu reinvention into another! First of all, I promise NOT to fill this description up with Spider-Man jokes. Difficult as it will be, I will resist. XD Having said that, I should immediately state that I debated for a while whether or not I should include Willem Dafoe’s performance from the film “Shadow of the Vampire” on the Top 31 or not. This is because he doesn’t TECHNICALLY play Dracula in this movie. “Shadow of the Vampire” – produced by Nicolas Cage and directed by Marilyn Manson alumni E. Elias Merhige (dear God, the weirdness factors are going through the roof with this movie already) – is a film inspired by what at first seems like a humorous idea. Back when the classic silent feature “Nosferatu” came out, rumors and urban legends began to abound that actor Max Schreck, who played the Dracula character in the film, was actually a real vampire. This, of course, was not at all true: Max Schreck was actually a performer with a long career in movies, stretching all the way into the mid-1930s, and had a fine time onstage. Still, years later, learning of these rumors, some enterprising screenwriter came up with the idea of…what if the rumors HAD been true? What if the “actor” was, indeed, a real undead monster? While the premise of this movie at first sounds somewhat funny, and clearly quite bizarre, it’s actually relatively serious and dramatic in its execution. Dafoe plays Schreck, a vampire chosen by director F.W. Murnau to tackle the role of Count Orlok to bring some authenticity to the part. Naturally, as the movie goes on, Murnau finds it harder and harder to control Schreck and hide his true being from the rest of the cast and crew. He has to find a way to not only complete his picture, but escape from doing so alive. As a result, while there is definitely humor sprinkled throughout the movie, it mostly feels like a legitimate thriller and horror picture, and – much like Nosferatu – achieves being such in a subtle sort of way, being haunting and looming, rising in intensity then shifting into sudden violent moments that show the threat involved. Much like with “Dracula: Pages From a Virgin’s Diary” (ugh, that title will never NOT sound dumb, I swear), there’s a lot of ambiguity (to put it mildly) in terms of the morality in this story: on the one hand, Schreck is, by his own admission, a monster…but, in a more metaphorical way, so is the director, F.W. Murnau. Murnau is an artiste’s nightmare; he will sacrifice almost everyone and everything to save both himself and his art, and cares about almost nothing but the building of his own legacy. He’s the mad director to end all mad directors. As a result, while Schreck does terrible things, it’s hard to say he’s truly the villain…but you also can’t say he’s the hero. Neither of them are good: much like Dracula and Van Helsing in the aforementioned feature (which only came out two years after this movie, I should add), both Schreck and Murnau are two sides of the same scarred coin. Dafoe’s performance as Schreck earned him an Academy Award nomination, making him the single most academy-acclaimed vampire in cinematic history: other vampire movies (and Dracula-related movies, for that matter) have received nominations or even won awards, but it’s never actually been for the actor playing the main vampiric role. It’s hard to say he didn’t deserve it: I would argue this is Dafoe’s finest screen performance. Much like Klaus Kinski, the makeup/costume design and his overall performance do a brilliant job capturing the plague-rat-esque wickedness of the original 1922 demon, but the writing and direction also lends other layers, with each actor bringing something unique to the part. Dafoe, in my opinion, actually at times looks so close to identical with the real Max Schreck and his character from Nosferatu that it’s kind of disturbing. While he gets the mannerisms down, however, Dafoe really does make the role all his own. His Dracula – and I do consider him Dracula, for all intents and purposes, hence why I decided to include him here – has the same sympathetic qualities Kinski brought to the part back in 1979, focusing not on the vampire as a dark lover, but more on his isolation, loneliness, and ageless torment. He is a monster not by choice but by design, and this is a curse he must always live with. Dafoe, ironically, feels slightly more human than Kinski’s Dracula, while still managing to be INCREDIBLY unnerving and menacing in places where it is needed. Kinski’s Dracula feels like a tragic phantom; Dafoe’s Schreck is more bitter and depraved, almost like a vampire war veteran. On top of that, as you might expect with…EVERYTHING involved here, he can be legitimately funny, with many a snicker-worthy moment to his credit. At times it’s hard to tell whether the humor is intentional or not, but in this film’s case, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. The result is arguably the single most human “Dracula” we’ve ever gotten, and how bizarre is that with the way this character looks, as well as the way this story is set up? Bottom line: yeah, I know he’s not REALLY Dracula, in the truest sense of the definition…but this is just far too fascinating a depiction to leave off my list. Tomorrow, the countdown moves into the Top 10! Hint: He probably likes his victims shaken, not stirred.

Max Schreck dans "Nosferatu le Vampire" de Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1922), d'après l'œuvre de Bram Stoker (1897), dans “BiTS - Vampires” documentaire de Joseph Vasconi (2017), octobre 2018.

Immerhin war der Dienst dann, nachdem er angefangen hatte, ruhig. Aber klingeln tut es in meinen Ohren immernoch. Was für kleine Spastis.