I must confess: although I am a great admirer of Mr. Rosenbaum’s work, his review of Shadow of the Vampire [January 26] must be one of the dumbest things I’ve ever read. Then again, I’m not sure how seriously I’m supposed to take it, seeing as it appears alongside a review calling the utterly reprehensible The Wedding Planner “worth seeing.”
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But anyway. Rosenbaum’s main problem with the film is the way it “libels” F.W. Murnau and deprecates film history all in the name of contemporary “kitsch.” This, I must say, puzzles me, in light of his earlier “must-see” review of Quills [December 15], a film that showed absolutely no regard for the historical Marquis de Sade by reinventing him as a glib buffoon and rode roughshod over historical reality so as to make a few facile points about censorship and freedom of speech. In his Quills review, Rosenbaum said that “no serious challenge to Sade’s moral position is even contemplated, much less explored,” echoing his statement in the Shadow review that it has “[nothing] meaningful to say about Nosferatu.”
Josh Martin
