Anybody who is familiar with the Twilight series of films is aware that these movies are the some sort of cinematic cat nip to lovelorn teenaged girls and lonely MILFs everywhere. This generally is because of the fact that today’s incarnation of vampires are suave, charming, deep, empathic and occasionally shirtless. They have become symbols of sensitivity and eternal romance. This is not where the movie vampire started out though. They have gone through the sort of micro-evolution that reduced the mighty wolf to a wiener dog. In the case of vampires, they seem to have changed from fearsome creatures of the night into Alan Alda.
For the purposes of this commentary, we will be staying with film vampires, not those in literature. An argument can be made that the only true bloodsuckers in Hollywood are filmmakers who stick their fangs into Bram Stoker’s masterpiece, extract bits from the story, and call it their own. For example, the “Day Walker” notion that is popular in contemporary films is not a new concept. The vampires from Mr. Stoker’s book were merely annoyed by sunlight, not destroyed by it. So it is probably safe to say that most vampire films, regardless of their era, have borrowed heavily from Mr. Stoker’s original vision.
A popular part of the vampire myth is that they cannot see their own reflection in a mirror. Ironically, vampires in film have often been an excellent reflection of society of and the mores that the film industry perceived to be in the mainstream. During the infancy of the cinema, film makers and the general populace were as close to being on the same page as they would ever be. Those early, silent, vampire films reflected this alignment.
There is often fierce debate over what the first vampire film actually was. While most accept “Vampire of the Coast” (1909) as the first film in the genre, there are many who consider the 1896 short, “The House of the Devil” as the vampires first step into the realm of moving pictures. In “The House of the Devil” a satanic looking character appears as a bat that turns into a demon. After performing some parlor tricks with a cauldron that involve conjuring an elderly man with some books and a beautiful woman, a knight appears and drives the vampire/demon away with the power of the cross. “The Vampire of the Coast”, “The Vampires Trail,” and 1913’s “The Vampire” involve similar story-lines where vampiric femme fatales lure weak men into lives of moral turpitude. In the end the victim in usually pulled from the brink by a loving wife or girlfriend before the damage becomes irreparable, and the vampire is punished for their evil deeds. In short, these early vampire films are morality plays.
1922 was the ground breaking year for vampires in film. It was in that year that F. W. Murnau brought his vision of the vampire to the screen in the film “Nosferatu.” The vampire was played to perfection by Max Schreck, a man that no teen girls, middle aged cougars, or even Mrs. Schreck would be enthusiastic about seeing without a shirt on. He was not sexy or charming. Count Orlock (as the vampire is referred to in the film) was a monster. In the end he was killed by the heroine, Ellen, who sacrificed her life by allowing him to feed off of her blood until the sun came up. Count Orlock had lost track of time while he fed, and was killed by the sunlight.
In just about all of the silent films, though the story-lines differ, there is always a clear and consistent view that the vampire is a monster. Some came to murder, other came to lure people away from life on the straight and narrow, but for the audience of the day (an audience some would call “unsophisticated”) there was a black and white morality where the vampire was squarely on the dark side of the equation.
As society changed, so did the depictions of Vampires. The evil Count Orlock evolved into the self-loathing Louis de Pointe du Lac (played by Brad Pitt) in the film “Interview with a Vampire.” Nosferatu is also the bedrock that today’s morally neutral vampiric anti-heroes is built upon. Ellen, who sacrificed her life to destroy a vampire has become “Bella,” a protagonist who yearns to become one with the vampires. So there has definitely been an evolution of the characters. In the next article we will take a look at the Golden era of film, vampires, and how they reflected the society of the day.
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