Tag Archives: Nosferatu

The Modern Prometheus doesn’t fear your Second Amendment. He fears fire.

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By HE I mean Dr. Frankenstein’s penultimate scientific industrial creature, Capitalism. Everything I know about bringing down the system I learned from horror movies. Maybe. Mary Shelley and Bram Stoker knew not only the evils to be feared, but which fears paralyze evil. For Frankenstein is was fire. For Dracula, daylight. Pretty damn spot on.

The Second Amendment sidearm may protect you from troops quartering in your house and raping your maidens, but guns don’t have the stopping power to bring down man-made monsters. Capitalism is preoccupied about being immolated however. Maybe that’s why people can easily get a license to concealed carry, but will serve years in prison for possession of incindiaries. Molotov cocktails have stopped heavy tanks. Whether or not fire brought down the WTC, the state definitely doesn’t want you to have it. Mankind’s first tool. DIY.

Frankenstein the Modern Prometheus was undeterred by bullets. Like every undead monster since, Frankenstein was held off by fire.

Dracula was likewise impervious to human might. His bloodsucking immortal reign was vulnerable to daylight. By outward appearance, vampires represent our most jaded celebrities, thought their immortality and superhuman power more closely resembles our corporate trusts, or the sociopath olygarchs They too cannot be shot down or beaten, so long as no one believe they exist Exposed to light vampires are reduced to ashes. As moviegoers know, that takes some clever thinking, on top of the laborious coming around to believing vampires for the evil they are. Dragged into the light of day, Nosferatu is history.

Shadow of a snuff film

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Here’s what I thought of SHADOW OF A VAMPIRE, a film that offered itself as candy for film history buffs but tasted more like a poisoned apple.

Willem Dafoe pulled off a reluctant Hannibal Lector. His Nosferatu, aka Dracula, was more like a blind mole rat than Schreck’s unblinking menace. I know! He was Yoda with an appetite! A fine performance for trick-or-treating.

But above all I can’t excuse this plot’s two main suggestions: that Murnau intended a snuff film with his two unsuspecting stars, or that he decayed into lunacy years before his greatest films!

I found Murnau’s voice-overs about the potential of the film medium to be compelling, but I was turned off at the conjecture that as an artist he would repudiate the creative act. Here Murnau’s character dismissed rehearsal and script and acting in exchange for a live freak upon which he needed to add no makeup. What a lame idea for a story! Here’s an idea: Murnau rises from the grave as a zombie and slays everyone who is dumbing-down his medium. The players in this movie all have the financial means and talent to say something meaningful!

If Murnau’s character had been a Hollywood hack, it might have worked as a self condemnation: no faith in the invocation of art, live voyeurist spectacle is all that’s needed to entertain. But Murnau’s Nosferatu was a technical tour-de-force. This film borrowed his footage without giving the credit, then dismissed the real talent that it took in the first place. If Murnau doesn’t want to rise from the grave, I will!