Shadow of the Vampire (2000)

John Malkovich: Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau

Photos 

Quotes 

• 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.

• 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 : Don't think I can't harm you.

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

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

• [last lines] 

  F.W. Murnau : I think we have it.

• 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.

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

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

• 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.

• Max Schreck : I would like some makeup.

  F.W. Murnau : Well, you don't get any.

• 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.

• 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.

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