Shadow of the Vampire Quotes

The filming of Nosferatu (1922) is hampered by the fact that its star Max Schreck is taking the role of a vampire far more seriously than seems humanly possible.

F.W. Murnau: Our battle, our struggle, is to create art. Our weapon is the moving picture. Because we have the moving picture, our paintings will grow and recede; our poetry will be shadows that lengthen and conceal; our light will play across living faces that laugh and agonize; and our music will linger and finally overwhelm, because it will have a context as certain as the grave. We are scientists engaged in the creation of memory... but our memory will neither blur nor fade.

[Asked what he thought of the book, Dracula]
Max Schreck: It made me sad.
Albin: Why sad?
Max Schreck: Because Dracula had no servants.
Albin: 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.

F.W. Murnau: Why him, you monster? Why not the... script girl?
Max Schreck: Oh. The script girl. I'll eat her later.

F.W. Murnau: If it's not in frame, it doesn't exist!

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

Max Schreck: Did I kill one of your people, Murnau? I can't remember.

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

F.W. Murnau: Ladies and gentlemen, this is Max Schreck, who will be portraying our vampire, Count Orlock. As you no doubt have heard, Max's methods are somewhat... unconventional, but... I am sure you will come to respect his artistry in this matter.

Murnau: They don't need to act. They need to *be*.

F.W. Murnau: Albin, collect the wooden stake and return it to its rightful place; it is necessary for the final frame, to remind us of the inadequacies of our plans, our contingencies, every missed train and failed picnic, every lie to a child.

Max Schreck: Tell me how you would harm me - when even I don't know how I could harm myself.

[last lines]
F.W. Murnau: I think we have it.

F.W. Murnau: Death of centuries! Moonchaser! Blasphemer! Monkey! Vase of prehistory. Finally to Earth, and finally born.

Max Schreck: I would like some makeup.
F.W. Murnau: Well, you don't get any.

F.W. Murnau: Go ahead! Eat the writer! That will leave you explaining how your character gets to Bremen!

F.W. Murnau: Time will no longer be a dark spot on our lungs. They will no longer say 'you had to have been there', because the fact is, Albin, we were.

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

Gustav: [fighting Schreck] Jesus Christus! Get this Scheißkopf off me!

Greta Schroder: Hey, who died?

Max Schreck: Go to hell, Murnau!

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. This... thing only takes it from me.

Max Schreck: I told you, I feed erratically, and often enormously.

Max Schreck: There was a time... when I... fed from golden chalices. But now... Don't look at me that way!

Max Schreck: I don't think we need the writer any longer.

Max Schreck: I feed like an old man pees - sometimes all at once, sometimes drop by drop.

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