Ronan Vibert, Vibertology, Shadow of the Vampire, Izzard, Malkovitch

Ronan Vibert, Vibertology, Shadow of the Vampire, Izzard, Malkovitch


	*n. Shadow of the Vampire* *Movie (US) 2000: Ronan content: approx 24% ( 91mins )* *Character: Wolfgang Muller, top cameraman & vampire snack* Cast: John Malkovitch FW Murnau Willem Dafoe Max Shcreck, Cary Elwes Fritz Arno Wagner, Eddie Izzard Gustav von Wagenheim, Udo Kier Albin Grau, Ronan Vibert Wolfgang Muller, Aden Gillet Henrik Galeen, Catherine McCormack Greta Schroder Dir: E. Elias Merhige Producer: Nicolas Cage (Lion's Gate) Availablity: NTSC and PAL DVD/VHS (more features on PAL DVD)


	Plot/Comments: It is 1921 and autocratic director FW Murnau is filming his masterpiece: an unuathorised, Weimar-Republic take on Dracula. Unknown to cast and crew, the somewhat eccentric Murnau hires real vampire Schreck (in the guise of a method actor) to play the lead role of Nosferatu: his deal being that Schreck can feast on the blood of diva Greta Scroder as the film wraps its final take. However, bored with the blood of bats and chickens, the isolated, lonely Schreck gets peckish during the early days of filming and starts an early course of cameraman Wolfgang (Vibert), and one by one, crew members fall sick and die...


	Mehrige's ingenious film is at once a dedicated homage to the look and feel of the original silent Nosferatu, a classy drama-horror, and a black comedy on the excesses of, and sacrifices for, Art. The scenes are cleverly shot, with colour 'backstage/real life' footage merging into the sepia-toned, closed-filter stagey-ness of the silent movie scenes. Some critics found the obviously fictional premise of Schreck being a vampire and Murnau being a snuff-movie dictator and morphine addict slanderous and offensive. However, the film is shot with such warmth for the subject that it is hard to take these accusations seriously. The film is clearly not a documentary.


	*Peculiarly, even though Schreck is supposed to be bumping off cast and crew at a rapid rate, we only ever see him attack 2 crew members: Wolfgang (who he repeatedly visits) and a camera assistant (who he throws from the boat set after biting him once). The film was shot on an incredibly tight budget and a 35 day schedule, and according to interviews with Mehrige, he began to realise that he was rapidly running out of money and time about halfway through the production, having to throw out pages of script. This would explain why we get plenty of development of Vibert's character slipping into anemia-induced fear and death, but characters such as Izzard's von Wagenheim, and the make-up assistant (whose traitorous affections slip easily from Vibert's deceased cameraman to the replacement Elwes) simply disappear from the plot. Shadow* is a short-feeling 91minutes. Dafoe makes a consistently entertaining, vile rather Steptoe-like Nosferatu, and the *ensemble acting is flawless* (albeit with purposefully dodgy German accents), with each character being more than just vampire-fodder two-dimensional ciphers. The mix of horror and black comedy is tipped more in the direction of the latter, and as much as I genuinely like the film, and as funny as it is, it's possible that it would have been a more meaty production if it had leaned more to the horror end of the scale.


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	Typical Ronan Character Quotes: Henrik on Murnau:"perhaps he has a woman" Wolfgang: "...or a man" Murnau on Wolf to Shreck: "How dare you destroy our photographer!"


	*CONTINUE TO SECOND PART OF REVIEW* *AND RONAN CONTENT*