The foggy and rainy London has seen much in its two thousand years of existence since the Roman Empire. War and betrayal, murder for power, for glory, for love. More than once or two filmmakers chose him as the setting of their films, somewhere leaving him as the background, and somewhere making him another character, silent and all-seeing. On its streets, the characters of British detectives hunted for criminals, the heroes of Jerome K. Jerome planned to go on an adventurous journey along the Thames - you can list almost indefinitely. And already towards the end of the 20th century, another drama unfolded in the capital of Britain.
What makes her different? Is it only in the mystical component that the screenwriters were inspired by one of the works of Edgar Allan Poe? If you remove it, what will remain in the dry residue? “There is no story sadder than the story of Romeo and Juliet.” Modern Juliet works in the library, wears clothes a couple of sizes larger and calls her Anna, it is not too likely that she loves more the life of her mysterious Romeo, who is not even a person, and only an unusual resemblance to the lost a hundred years ago beloved woman makes him believe for a while that there is justice in this world. But the harsh reality in the face of his rival Edgar quickly indicates that the fate for the undead can only be one and there is no point in fighting for something else, one must go with the flow, as it was and as it should be, a third is not given.
Lonely and unsociable vampires are the same as sparse streets, gray and gloomy slums that do not correspond to the stereotyped image of London with crowds of residents and an endless flow of cars at any time of the day. Very rare episodes when several people appear next to each other, but they are not the main characters - and not even two immortals and one mortal, as it may seem. The city itself came to the fore. If the plot took place in some sunny Miami or snowy Reykjavik, would it be possible to create that hopeless atmosphere, to show and prove that there can be no happy ending and only the pain of loss and no hints of a happy future? The gray rain knocking on the old paving stones, the gray walls of the same type of houses hanging over the streets - only they could tell the whole truth about who tried to pretend to be a person, who, having lost his love long ago and met it again, could not and did not want to change his essence. His fantasies merge with reality and it is impossible to understand where the present and where the fictional, where the memories of the past, and where the premonition of the future.
Vampire films have been filmed endlessly since the advent of cinema - from the legendary Nosferatu, bringing primal horror, to tearful melodramas for impressionable schoolgirls. In some bloodsuckers are the embodiments of human vices sent for punishment for sins, in some monsters, worthy only of destruction, in some ideal of maiden fantasies, but even with all the apparent dissimilarity in the genre, a certain set of stereotypes was formed, which more or less followed the entire screen undead. And the more surprising that in the “Legend of the Vampire” they are little like their countless on-screen counterparts – the fact that it is impossible to kill them in principle in no way makes it clear that the writers went their own way, not looking back at what was invented earlier, but also leaving no legacy for the future. A kind of curl-Arabesque on the twisting path of the genre, lonely and broken, as the hope broke in the heart of Alex.
Long and long ago, so that the years hid in the distance, on the sea shore lived a girl Annabel Lee. Watching the stars from the sky, they could tell how Annabel Lee disappears into the dark forest. The waves hit the cliff and the ship is already broke, and howled, spinning, lost dog about the most beautiful Annabel Lee. There, in the depths of the sea, where the ships are sunk, on a distant, cold, unattainable day, my Annabel Lee is waiting for me, the voiceover says in the finale, and the night city continues to live its special life. Tomorrow will be a new day, millions of residents will not know about the tragedy that happened next door, the newspapers will get off with a brief line in the obituary, and what will become of the vampire? This question cannot be answered even by himself, for whom the millions do not exist, and for whom the desire to exist has been suppressed. Again.
P.S. Dedicated to my friend Andrey Deass for the saved author's translation of this film