As any marker that was once at his final resting place gradually disappeared, so did most of what the world knew about the real Max Schreck. At the same time, his iconic film performance became more vivid and fascinating.

The mystique around the real and the fantastic in that silent film has served as inspiration for other filmmakers, including Robert Eggers director of the witch and the lighthouse, whose new adaptation of Nosferatu It’s coming in December. His version of the story, starring the actor Pennywise. Bill Skarsgard-from He films, such as Count Orlok, feature a significantly expanded plot and a different appearance of the monster, but it all started with his fascination with Schreck’s performance.

As a child in the early 1990s, Eggers watched the 1922 film on a low-quality VHS tape that didn’t even include a musical score, and became obsessed with Murnau’s film and Schreck’s performance. Compared to the high-definition versions available to stream now, this transfer seemed like a relic of a bygone era. “I think that’s part of the puzzle for me,” Eggers says. Vanity Fair. “When you look at the restored versions, you can see all the details and the grease paint and the bald spots and the fake, fake, fake stuff. And in this version which was made from a 16 millimeter weathered print, you couldn’t see any of that. There were certain frames where Max Schreck’s eyes looked like cat eyes. It is the version that gave rise to the legends that Max Schreck was actually a vampire.”

The 2000 film shadow of the vampire He played with this fanciful notion, with John Malkovich portraying a careless Murnau who chooses a real bloodsucking monster as the protagonist. Willem Dafoe He received an Oscar nomination for supporting actor for his diabolical portrayal of Schreck, who endangers the production of the silent film by devouring members of the crew. (Nearly a quarter-century later, Dafoe plays an old vampire hunter in Eggers’ remake of Nosferatu.)

Obviously it was a complete fantasy. “shadow of the vampire I had a good starting point, that’s all,” says Giesen. “In this film almost nothing was correct in terms of historical details. However, the costumes and film technology of the time were well researched.” Murnau really was in a mad scramble to complete the film, but that was because funding was tight, not because its star was an undead predator. Sunlight does not kill vampires in Stoker’s novel; The notion was invented by Nosferatu, he added hastily because Murnau was left without resources to film the murder scene he intended.

shadow of the vampire screenwriter Steven Katz I always knew it was absurd to believe Schreck was a real monster, but I also thought Schreck’s haunting presence made the viewer’s imagination run wild. “There is not one iota of his performance in that film that evokes the underlying humanity at all,” Katz he told me in 2001. “You feel like you’re looking at something you shouldn’t be looking at.”

Dafoe saw his performance as a playful tribute to a fellow actor, but felt bittersweet for a man who was so remarkable in his signature role that he was completely overshadowed by it. “It always gives me chills” he said after receiving his long overdue Oscar nomination. “There is a brotherhood of actors and in some ways I feel sorry for the guy. It’s like it’s sad.”

An undated photo of actor Max Schreck as a young man, years before he was hidden under the horrible Nosferatu make up.

From Alamy.

Max Schreck’s life seems to have been truly happy. He was born on 6 September 1879, second son of Pauline and Gustav, a surveyor. The family resided in Berlin’s Tiergarten district, adjacent to the immense park in the city center, which could have explained Max’s love of nature. In recent years, the digitization of old documents has shed more light on the actor. Baptismal records from St. Matthaus Church confirm that “Max Schreck” was indeed his real name. “The name ‘Schreck’ naturally fits perfectly into a horror film,” says Giesen. “This was also observed in Germany: nomen est omen.”

“He took acting lessons secretly. But only after the death of his father, who would have liked him to be a businessman, did he go to Maria Seebach acting school, with the financial support of his mother,” says Giesen. When Schreck began his acting career in 1901, he began in small-town theaters and touring companies that sent him around Germany before returning to major metropolitan stages. There is no record available of what he did during World War I, but as he was almost 35 when it began, he was probably drafted for some type of military service.