What we(the viewer) sees of the vampire dying(?) is him looking at the light and vaporizing but it is the film that vaporizes. Even though this is a ficticious movie about a real vampire, he is not actually seen as dying. Is there a way to interpret the ending correctly or is the audience left to wonder?
shareWe assume that Max Shreck does die, he disintigrates, I think you missed that. The most important event in the last scene of the films is how the director keeps on filming during the violent rampage and says "I think we have it", which suggests that John Malkovich's character the director is the real villain. Which I thought was an excellent ending to a well made film. I hope that this is a sufficient explanation.
shareThe camera was the vampire. The audience (we) was (were) the vampire.
Shreck was a passionate, fallible creature. And to Murnau all that meant nothing, only what was in his frame mattered. The camera did not give life to its actors, it drained it from them. I believe this is the central point of the film and is illustrated in the ending. It does not matter if Shreck himself died. He was not real, he was the sum of what we were shown of him, distant and imagined. When the film of him burns up, it is to show that what died on screen was only the perception of the creature Murnau gave us.
Exactly - well written boo. Murnau is clearly the "villain" in this film if we want to reduce it to its components. A great film about film making!
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For me, 'cause I saw it when I was 10. The ending was very disturbing.
then the chosen one learned a valuable lesson about Iron Claws,THEY HURT LIKE CRAP MAN!!!
I read "The Oval Portrait" and it is very similar to this story. Good call.
For the rest of you,
It's about a very good artist who cared for his artwork very much. He also had a very beautiful young wife. He decides to paint his wife, and with each brushstroke that gave the picture life, his wife was dying more and more. By the time the painting was done, his wife was dead. The canvas drained his wife of her life because he cared about his artwork so much that he forgot about his wife completely.
Even though I'm reading your message more than 2 1/2 years after you wrote it, it is nonetheless exceptionally valuable because it remains a timeless and beautifully-written statement of the significance of the ending of this movie - and it really makes me want to get the movie right away, which is the whole point of these boards, right? Not having seen the movie, but having read the descriptions of the ending, your explanation is amazingly insightful and demonstrates a great deal of ingenuity. It has tremendous impact and is skillfully written. To say the very least, you have quite a way with words!
"No generalization is worth a damn, including this one." - Oliver Wendell Holmes
I honestly hated the movie.
I like vampire movies, but this movie was simply creepy and just rather boring.
It didn't move quickly enough.
Happy Valentine's Day!
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