I rewatch Polanski’s Dance of the Vampires. It’s paper snow and spray-on cobwebs, you never lose sight of the stage, but these are glowing, picture book storyboards of folklore and fireside ghost tales, with details from someone who grew up in a land where wolves still prowled, before the smoke and dust of war consumed everything. And under the tavern and camp comedy is a dreamlike terror, how would you cope, driving home the stake? Scattered about the film are touches of greatness. An indoor snowfall from an off-screen skylight precedes the Count’s first appearance, his intended entranced. When the innkeeper is brought home dead, bitten and iced through, Polanski has him strike the pose of a man running, or sneaking about, frozen in motion. He gets the best actors, best score, best script, does all the hard work of a competent director and then adds something more. Write your line, and just when the reader reels at the close, lay on a deeper meaning, evoke a memory mislaid.
