Shadow of the Vampire

Shadow of the Vampire is a 2000 independent period vampire mystery film directed by E. Elias Merhige and written by Steven Katz. The film stars John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe. It is a fictionalized account of the making of the classic vampire film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens, directed by F. W. Murnau, during which the film crew begin to have disturbing suspicions about their lead actor. The film borrows the techniques of silent films, including the use of intertitles to explain elided action, and iris lenses. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Makeup, losing to How the Grinch Stole Christmas. For his performance, Dafoe was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Plot In 1921, German director F. W. Murnau is shooting Nosferatu, an unauthorized version of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. Murnau keeps his team in the dark about their schedule and the actor playing the vampire Count Orlok. It is left to the film's other main actor, Gustav von Wangenheim, to explain that the lead is an obscure German theater performer named Max Schreck, who is a character actor. To involve himself fully in his role, Schreck will only appear amongst the cast and crew in makeup, will only be filmed at night, and will never break character. After filming scenes in a studio with leading actress Greta Schröder, Murnau takes his cast and crew to a remote inn in Czechoslovakia to film on-location. The landlady becomes distressed at Murnau removing crucifixes around the inn, and the cameraman, Wolfgang Muller, falls into a strange, hypnotic state. Gustav discovers a bottle of blood amongst the team's food supplies, and someone delivers a caged ferret in the night to a not yet fully revealed Schreck.