Just when you think no one is listening

Er, reading, a little response pops up and I feel like I can get all Sally Fields.

Which wouldn't be totally unusal for me today because I've got whatever the latest flu is and the slightest things are making me weepy. (Yay fever!)

I'm sure I would have felt like poop anyway, but I believe the fact that I insisted on going to an 8 p.m. showing of "Nosferatu" at the Wilton Town Hall Theater with live musical accompianyment by Devil Music Ensemble didn't help any sinus and muscular aches that I'm experiencing today.

I'm not a huge movie buff. I do enjoy watching what ever is showing on the IFC when I get a chance, and I spliced together the movies that would show in the Student Union Center at UNH for awhile. (Too bad it didn't secure my career as a theater/movie critic with that journalism degree.)

But anyway.

One of the regular movies that film professor Peter Mascuch would show to his students was "M" by Fritz Lang. (I had to look it up on the Web to be sure I had the right film.) I haven't watched this film since my days as the projectionist, but every semester when Peter would show it I would sit in the booth, lights out, my face in the window so I could watch this film. I somewhat reminded me of a Clive Barker story where the killer has a little girl in his room, dead but made up to perfection and sitting at a table as if she's ready for dinner with a napkin across her lap. When the detective (or whoever, it's this next part that has always stuck in my head) removes the napkin from the girl's lap the meat has been carved out of her thigh, like from a turkey. It's then that the detective realizes the thin pieces of meat on the dish in front of the girl have come from her own body.

Chilling.

M wasn't quite so graphic that I can recall, but neither M nor Nosferatu (It's Italian!) needed to be. I couldn't really get lost in Nosferatau last night. There were some corny bits that made the whole theater snicker, and the Devil Music Ensemble, while very good, was a bit loud for the space inside the theater. But those first steps off the play stage to behind the camera were never graceful. Over exaggerated facial expressions and shows of emotion are comical to today's audience. However, the use of light and dark and shadows (as has been discussed in EVERY FILM CLASS EVER) were truly ingenious. That technique would have been difficult to portray on stage. So, to each medium its own.

My friend had never really seen the film, yet she was the one who asked me to go. Her one concern was Nosferatu's teeth, like little rat teeth sticking out of his upper lip. There were other rat references in the film, obviously his legion travelled across the ocean as rats. So that could make sense. I think it is also likely that the film quality wasn't strong enough to be able to accurately show fangs in the common incisor position. The actor would have had to open his mouth at inopportune times for a less than chilling effect, and the chance that the audience would have known he was doing anything other than yawning was slim. So, rat teeth it was!

And then, of course, there's all the rumor surrounding Max Schreck which begot the movie "Shadow of the Vampire." I liked that as well.

For all I know, the WTT could do this every year. But I couldn't resist the chance to go last night, just incase it's awhile before they do it again. So all the aches and pains are worth it.

(Not much of a movie buff, who am I kidding?)