Shadow of the Vampire

Shadow of the Vampire is a 2000 horror film written and directed by E. Elias Merhige and starring John Malkovich and Willem Dafoe. It imagines that the classic horror film Nosferatu was filmed using a real vampire.

F.W. Murnau

 * If it's not in frame, it doesn't exist.
 * [as Schreck dies] Death of centuries! Moonchaser! Blasphemer! Monkey! Vase of prehistory. Finally to Earth, and finally born.
 * [final line of the film] I think we have it.

Max Schreck

 * There was a time when I fed from golden chalices, but now... Don't look at me that way! Now I feed as an old man pees. Sometimes all at once, sometimes drop by drop.
 * Tell me how you would harm me - when even I don't know how I could harm myself.
 * Did I kill one of your people, Murnau? I can hardly remember.

Dialogue

 * F.W. Murnau: Why would you possibly want to be in a play when you could be in a film?
 * Greta Schroeder: An audience gives me life. [gestures to camera] This... thing only takes it from me.


 * [after Shreck attacks a cameraman]
 * F.W. Murnau: Why him, you monster?! Why not the script girl?
 * Max Shreck: Oh, the script girl. I'll eat her later.


 * Fritz Arno 'Fritzy' Wagner: Is the camera loaded?
 * Paul: Yes sir
 * Fritz Arno 'Fritzy' Wagner: Good, so am I...


 * Albin Grau: What is the most wondrous thing you ever saw?
 * Henrik Galeen: I once saw Greta Schroeder naked.
 * Albin Grau: That beats ectoplasm!


 * Max Schreck: [of the novel Dracula] It made me sad.
 * Albin Grau: Why sad?
 * Max Schreck: Because Dracula had no servants.
 * Albin Grau: I think you missed the point of the book, Count Orlock.
 * Max Schreck: Dracula hasn't had servants in 400 years and then a man comes to his ancestral home, and he must convince him that he... that he is like the man. He has to feed him, when he himself hasn't eaten food in centuries. Can he even remember how to buy bread? How to select cheese and wine? And then he remembers the rest of it. How to prepare a meal, how to make a bed. He remembers his first glory, his armies, his retainers, and what he is reduced to. The loneliest part of the book comes... when the man accidentally sees Dracula setting his table.
 * Albin Grau: Count Orlok, the theatre needs you!


 * F.W. Murnau: I will not allow you to destroy my picture!
 * Max Shreck: It is hardly your picture any longer.

Cast

 * John Malkovich - Frederich Wilhelm Murnau
 * Willem Dafoe - Max Schreck
 * Cary Elwes as Fritz Arno Wagner
 * John Aden Gillet - Henrik Galeen
 * Eddie Izzard - Gustav von Wangenheim
 * Udo Kier - Albin Grau
 * Catherine McCormack - Greta Schroeder
 * Ronan Vibert - Wolfgang Muller