Martin (John Amplas), a young man who looks around 20-years-old, boards a train in Indianapolis, Indiana for New York. At night, he breaks into a sleeping car and sedates a woman with a syringe full of narcotics. She struggles, but he tells her not to struggle or be upset because she wont feel pain. After a few minutes, the woman falls asleep, and Martin has sex with the unconscious woman. Afterwards, he slices her wrists with a razor blade so he can drink her blood. The woman bleeds to death in her sleep.
In the morning, the train stops in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Martin disembarks. He is met by Tata Cuda (Lincoln Maazel) an elderly and hostile old man who claims to be his cousin from the Old World. Together, they travel by another train to the town of Braddock, a dying industrial suburb. They walk to Cuda's large house where he shows Martin his living quarters. Cuda then accuses Martin of being an 84-year-old vampire from his old country. He has taken in Martin because he is family, but tells him, "First I will save your soul. Then I shall destroy you." Martin denies being a vampire and implies that Cuda is merely his uncle rather than his cousin. Cuda then puts up strings of garlic on the doors to his and his granddaughter's room, and then holds up a small cross when Martin approaches him. Martin takes away the cross, and even takes a bite of the garlic mocking these attempts by saying bitterly, "There's no real magic... ever". Cuda tells Martin that he can come and go as he pleases. But he also warns Martin that he will kill him if he kills anyone in Braddock. He also tells Martin to stay away from his granddaughter Christine (Christine Forrest), whom arrives home from her job that evening.
Cuda introduces Christine to Martin, but also warns her to stay away from him. But Christine instead strikes up a friendship with Martin who confides in her about his vampire heritage. When Cuda later confirms Martin's claims to be a vampire, Christine, not surprisingly, refuses to believe either one. She thinks that Cuda and the other members of her family have driven Martin to insanity by making him think that he is a vampire. It is never revealed if Martin really is a vampire, or just a shy and lonely youth with troubled issues. Christine is the only person that Martin gets the courage to talk to. When Christine's boyfriend Arthur (Tom Savini) arrives at the house for dinner, Martin stops talking and backs away despite Arthur's attempt at a conversation. Christine later confides in Martin that she hopes to leave Braddock someday with Arthur, even though Martin points out that Arthur treats her badly and is both verbally and physically abusive towards her.
When Christine sees that Martin won't talk to anyone else, she buys him a phone which he installs in his room. Martin begins to repeatingly call a radio talk show where he describes what it's like to be a vampire. He becomes known on the radio as "the Count" to all the listeners. But the patronizing host (Michael Gornick) thinks he's just crazy.
Martin gets a job at Cuda's grocery store of stocking shelves, hauling boxes around, and even gets to be a delivery boy for some of the customers. One of his customers is a certain Abby Santini (Elyane Nadeau), who becomes taken in with Martin. She is a very friendly young woman who is depressed when she tells Martin that her husband is unfaithful. But Martin still does not have the nerve to talk with her, so she is happy to have someone to confide in with her life problems. Martin phones the radio show host to describe his infatuation with the housewife and senses that she wants to have sex with him. When the radio show host asks Martin if it is a sexual problem that he has involving women criticizing him during sex, Martin replies that he has never had sex with a woman who was awake.
One day, Martin travels by train to outside Braddock to look for victims. At a supermarket, he follows a young woman (Sarah Venable) home to her posh suburban house. He sees the woman's husband (Richard Rubenstein) leave for a long business trip, and Martin decides this would be the right time for more feeding. Martin returns to the house after dark and breaks in through the garage door. But it is Martin who gets the surprise when he bursts into her bedroom to find her in bed with her adulterous lover Lewis (Al Levitsky). After a vicious struggle, Martin jabs both of them with hyprodermic needles with narcotics, and waits for the drugs to take affect. He drags the unconscious body of Lewis from the house to a clump of trees across the street where he kills him by shoving a broken tree branch into his neck and drinks his blood. Martin returns to the house where he has sex with the unconscious woman. But out of compassion and pity, he decides to let her live.
Martin begins to have romantic monochrome visions of his vampire past (real or imagined), where he drained blood from a young woman and was chased through the streets of a nameless European town by a torch-lit mob.
During one Sunday at church, Cuda brings home Father Howard (George A. Romero) who asks him about the possibility of exorcism and demon possession. Father Howard calls upon the elderly Father Zulemans (Clifford Forrest, Jr.) over at Cuda's request. Together, Cuda and Zulemans confront Martin his bedroom and attempt to perform an exorcism on him. At this point, Martin remembers (another real or imaginary flashback), in the Old Country of people trying to perform an exorcism on him, and he flees them. Martin then flees from Cuda and Zuelmas as well. A little later that night, Martin terrorizes Cuda in a children's playground when he puts on a Dracula cape and puts false fangs into his mouth to pretend that he really is a vampire.
One day, Martin finally musters the courage to talk with Mrs. Santini during a routine delivery to her house where he tells her that he's aware of her attempts to seduce him and wants now to have sex with her. After having sex for the first time, Mrs. Santini becomes more depressed for she tells Martin that her husband just left her because she discovered that she cannot bear children, and that her desires towards him are based on sex and nothing else. But Martin wants to stay with her and help her move on with her life. Martin tells the radio show host about his affair with the housewife and that he no longer has the urge to attack other women.
Meanwhile, Arthur meets with Cuda and tells him that he wants Christine to leave town with him so they can get married and start a family. But Christine becomes angry at Cuda when he tells Arthur that insanity runs in their family and he shouldn't consider having children with her. Shortly afterwards, Christine packs up and leaves Braddock for New York with Arthur despite Martin telling her that Arthur is abusive towards her. But her mind is made up. Before leaving, Christine tells Martin that she really has no ill feelings towards him and just wants to make a fresh start with her life. She says goodbye to him and promises to write. But Martin knows that with an abusive and possessive man in Christine's life, she probably won't.
Depressed over losing his one true friend, Martin phones the radio show host and tells him that he's getting "shaky" and wants to go out looking for more victims. That night, Martin travels to a rough crime-ridden area of Pittsburgh and attacks two derelicts in a alley, injecting them with narcotics. He kills one of them by silting the bum's wrist and drinking his blood. Martin is about to kill the second one when a police car shows up and gives chase. Martin narrowly escapes during a long chase on foot which leads from the garbage strew streets and through a local store. Martin runs into an old warehouse where a drug deal is going down. A shootout between the two cops and the three thugs begins where all of them are killed, leaving Martin as the sole survivor who casually walks away from the carnage.
One day, Martin finds Mrs. Santini dead in her bathtub, after she had slit her writs with a razor blade. Martin anonymously calls the police to report the body and leaves. He phones the radio show host one final time to say that he really doesn't need friends or people to talk to for he is his own person. But when Cuda learns about Mrs. Santini's suicide, is mistakenly thinks Martin killed her and made it look like a suicide as he's done before. Cuda walks into Martin's room while he is asleep and kills him by hammering a wooden stake through Martin's heart.
Cuda buries Martin's body in his back garden, while over the closing credits various voices from people are heard talking to the radio show host asking the whereabouts of "the Count".
比想象中要好的观影体验，中段某个奥地利口音军官完全听不懂让人如坐针毡，茨威格的小说向来描写细腻不好影视化，本片做得倒是还不错。茨维格特有的那种小资产阶级知识分子的优越感和痛苦的人精神煎熬都表现得很好。
其实作为松竹100年的献礼片拍得不算、不够好，但还是被对电影的这份热情和爱给感动到了。后半段コロナ期间在电影中直接说出“save the cinema”才是更加强劲有力的，对电影的爱。
#2021金馬影展
剧情雷人，看完了才知道是永野芽郁和山田洋次的作品。很抱歉只能给2颗星，多1颗也不想给。
只为坚守职业操守。
抛开迷影情结不谈，キネマの神様完全掩盖了男主对妻子和女儿长期剥削的本质：妻子爱我不舍得和我离婚，所以我可以随便差遣，女儿用自己工资帮我还高利贷，我继续赌马喝酒，那是我的人生价值啊！而且结尾也看得我整个梗住，敢情女演员才是心之所向？北川景子的昭和造型在这部里特别美，相对来说回忆部分是比较出彩的。
应该拿这个电影给我爸看，你才50岁，可以成为任何你想成为的人。山田洋次yyds！北影节last one
男主人公描述《开罗紫玫瑰》的梗概，眼神里闪耀着光让我陷入他的想象中，他扬言要改变boy meets girl的恋爱电影、送杨氏女的家庭电影，与这种扭捏情感下守旧的日式情怀做出诀别。满怀期待着这部电影能在迷影中给我带来全新的突破，结果男主的自卑、大男子主义以及他吃软饭的样子都是那么的流俗。到老才迟来的成功，对电影的执念已经变成了对金钱的需求。抱怨电影行业不景气，缅怀志村健去世补拍了一段顺应时代的新冠鸡汤。看着电影迎接死亡不会因为你在电影院迟到、大声喧哗就变得浪漫。伍迪艾伦把虚幻和现实的界限抽离让我们走进了电影，后面来的人都是迷的伍迪艾伦罢了。
可能这次没发买山田洋次导演的帐。最出彩的永远是莉莉弗兰克。
松竹映画100周年纪念作品
《电影之神》9.26北京剧院 北影节
费解看完全剧，体会：钱多了压力大，管别人的也得搭上半条命；精英律师有吃有喝关有独立卫浴的大黑屋一整年都会疯；神经不正常后思维就超现实了，在精神病院里诵读着奥德赛，还说“唯精神坚不可摧”……
山田洋次导演作品
为保证客户资产密码，男主被纳粹禁锢、折磨，靠着一本棋谱熬过了战争，战后进了精神病院。另一条线即游轮上进行的象棋比赛，应为男主幻想出来的？
日本总能把这种电影温情合理化，本来以为是平俗的情节，不过就是根本上和电影元素没有太大关系了
在现实中揣摩虚构的角色，在脚本中创造真实的人物，电影人独享的幸福。
对一个人心智的摧残竟然会比身体上的折磨更让人痛苦。
整部片子有些割裂，但看到最后却还是被感动。
精神的折磨会挫败普通人，却会让牛逼人更加牛逼。
对我是非常治愈的一部电影。女明星开车送女主去找男主的那场夜戏，想起《女孩之城》里女主跟男主的夜戏，那种真正危急时刻的共担。以及一家人最终被电影拯救，虽梦幻，亦疗愈。
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