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Shadow of the Vampire
Starts January 26th, 2001
The Cedar Lee Theatre in Cleveland Heights.
In the Golden Age of German cinema in the 1920s, the legendary director F.W. Murnau towered above his colleagues as a tireless innovator who created breathtakingly beautiful and potent screen images. Murnau’s aim was clear: To give cinema its own distinctive and immortal language. Nowhere was this more evident than in his greatest film, Nosferatu, his uncredited adaptation of Bram Stoker’s “Dracula.”
Presented to great acclaim at this year’s Cannes Film Festival, Shadow of the Vampire is a fictional meditation about Murnau (Malkovich) and the making of Nosferatu, based on the conceit that the director was so determined to make the most authentic movie ever, that he employed a real vampire, Max Schreck (Dafoe), to play Nosferatu. Attributing Schreck’s weird behavior and ghastly appearance to “method” acting, Murnau indulges his leading man’s every exigency, shooting only at night and only on the remote locations the “actor” calls home. He even offers Schreck his beautiful leading lady, Greta (McCormack,) as a prize to be awarded upon completion of photography. But, Schreck cannot wait that long to taste human blood and, as cast and crew fall ill at a terrifying rate, Murnau races to finish his film before Schreck finishes him!
The first film produced by Academy Award-winning actor Nicolas Cage, Shadow of the Vampire is an original, haunting fantasia that revels in the glories of German Expressionist style and silent film technique. It is also an exceedingly witty exploration of creation in which the ultimate in demanding artist and demanding star—the genius and the monster—reveal their uncontrollable, potentially destructive, but unusually seductive compulsions.
For more information about this movie, please call the Cedar Lee Theatre or visit the Cedar Lee web site for additional details. |
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