Change Your Image
tm-22
Reviews
Shadow of the Vampire (2000)
Homage
This is a fun film for people who are interested in the history of movies. It does a good job of capturing the innovation and artistry that the director-pioneers of the silent film era employed to create their masterpieces.
John Malkovich plays the silent film director Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau, an important figure in the development of movies, as we know them today. Malkovich's Murnau is a meticulous man, often seeing to details himself in order to protect his project. Who were these early men who developed this new art form? The movie does a good job of illustrating the obsessive attention to detail, the dedication to art and the clear focus on the end product that is required to break new ground. Murnau is excited about shooting on location, leaving behind what he calls the studio artifice.
Willem Dafoe's Max Schreck is hilarious and hideous. Schreck may be hundreds of years old, but he is still vain and still hopes to get the pretty girl. Dafoe does a great job of balancing the human and the inherent monster.
This is a very strong cast. Versatile Cary Elwes turns in a great performance as cinematographer Fritz Wagner. Wagner himself is another legend. He worked as the cinematographer on over 100 films, beginning his career in 1919 and working on three films the year he died (1953). In Shadow, Wagner is the second cinematographer and he introduces another element to the location -- a cornucopia of opiates.
The drugs and the decadent atmosphere of pre-World War II Germany (Nosferatu was made in1922) add to the probability of the movie's conclusion. The movie raises the unanswerable questions, what sacrifices are demanded to create art? How do you balance the business of show business with the ability to complete a project? Shadow of the Vampire offers its answers with humor, a historic (albeit revisionist) perspective, and by paying homage to a great filmmaker.
Pasqualino Settebellezze (1975)
It's one matter not being innocent -- it's another being a whore
Seven Beauties is a masterpiece that holds up as well now as it did 20 years ago. Pasqualino is a character whose life is shaped by a shallow, macho, code of honor. He continually swears to live his life by this code and to force the family to live up to this standard. He is broken hearted when he must abandon his "man of honor" image in order to escape hanging.
Without his standards, miserable as they were, Pasqualino survives by instinct alone. His character contrasts with the people that he meets when he is interred in a concentration camp. Most of the time he is so consumed by a his desire to live that he can't focus on or misunderstands the important things they try to tell him.
Although this sounds like a very dour movie, it is saved by the way Lina Wertmuller constructs the story. It is a non-linear narrative, with a word or phrase triggering a flash back for Pasqualino.
The music is extraordinary. The concentration camp scenes are horrifying (with Wagner opera as the musical theme) and the scenes set in Naples are sunny and beautiful but not overblown. You see the frayed edges of a poor town, although they're bathed in the mediteranean sunshine.
Pasqualino sums it up best when he says, "A rotten comedy, a lousy farce . .. called living." Lina Wertmueller made a wonderful comedy, a masterful farce . . . called Pasqualino Settebellezze.