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".
2021/12/4香港
他将停止幻想，他将开始生活，他将找到内心的力量
拍出了巴黎浮世绘般的的光鲜和繁华，但是在叙事上却显得过于繁杂，以至于让整个故事显得过于冗长，好在精炼的旁白多少弥补了这种观感，当然这并不是编剧的功劳，因为旁白是巴尔扎克的手笔
纸醉金迷，追名逐利，高坛跌落的故事，这样的故事又数不胜数。圈子里的人卷在其中，你方唱罢我登场。吕西安获贵妇青睐，但想平步挤入巴黎上流圈也只是痴人说梦。影片进展了半小时，至此变得有趣，节奏也快了起来。侯爵夫人、小报主编、剧场唱衰者、造星演员、市侩出版商，逐渐登场，几方势力你来我往，搅动着城市的风云。小报盛行的年代，报纸不再开明，而是煽动意见，记者们成了语言的零售商。几句旁白，鞭辟入里。轮转印刷机使发行量倍增，广告商业蒸蒸日上，向读者们兜售他们本不需要的东西，几个镜头足以表现当时的风潮。影片侧写了媒体初兴，野蛮拉拢的时代，却又仿佛直指当下。片尾字幕，幻灭之后，寻找内在力量。
波旁复辟；Au 19e, le principe de publicité va être dévoyé au sens où les propriétaires de journaux vont vouloir faire de l’argent donc faire de la publicité de tout et n’importe quoi ,et pas seulement des idées politiques；Un art devient bourgeois : le théâtre.
好好看…把原著中的巴黎线摘出来，看出来巴尔扎克即使对法国人来说也是不堪重负了，当然简化、浓缩、转接之后节奏也更快餐了。男主太帅了，这才是迷倒整个巴黎的吕西安：/
流量的密码，资本的角逐，阶级的鸿沟，人生的幻灭。所以做人，如果没有强大的背景，是不能既要，又要，还要的……
还是比较精彩的故事，像一本书不像电影，旁白很多，但对于一个一心想跻身上流社会的人来说，巴黎是残酷的，新闻的真谛片中也有涉及，保皇党和自由派的斗争，人性的黑暗都在此中一览无余。有空要把巴尔扎克的原著看一遍
法国那个年代也是乱糟糟的，新旧制度的交替，年轻人的梦想天堂
过长了，挺法国的（就是说有一些没必要的nudity😅），感觉套路还挺明显的全程都能预料到人生下一步
UGC发邮件邀请的神秘首映，去看之前连是哪部片都不晓得。印象中很少看这种法国古装电影。
西方音乐史刚刚讲完浪漫主义末期的歌剧，没想到看到这样的作品，仿佛现身说法了。我喜欢这种文学化的叙事，几乎全是巴洛克或古典以及浪漫派的配乐，油画般的舞美，整个观影过程非常享受，正合我意。
少不经事的诗人既想要地位，又想要金钱，纸醉金迷中遭遇背叛，失魂落魄中返乡。贵族、记者，巴黎、外省，诗歌与享乐，声名与吵闹，无闻与排挤，人们推搡着向幻觉朝圣，然而不论历尽几番辛苦，最终都不得不忠于自己的内心，就像身无分文的Lucien，和故事的讲述者Nathan.
在电影院两个半小时对训练专注力还是很有效的。依然是上午第一场，和一位老先生五位老太太一起看的。
法国那个年代也是乱糟糟的，新旧制度的交替，年轻人的梦想天堂
三星半吧，开头穷小子和贵族妇人的情史仿佛在看伍迪艾伦，就有种“好了好了我们都知道了你可以move on去搞事业吗”的不耐烦，到了巴黎加入报社后群魔乱舞借的众生群像笑得我拍大腿，这不就是今天某乎某博上带V的节奏大师+红包影评人吗，哪怕是涉水而来的耶稣，到了杠精嘴里也是轻飘飘的一句“你看他都不会游泳”，眼看着他高楼起眼看着他楼塌了。对于巴尔扎克浩瀚如海的原著，电影做减法做得太狠，关键部分却只能靠连篇累牍的原文朗读交代信息，仿佛在电影院看有声书，疲惫不堪。有佳句无佳章吧，导演尽力了，下次不要改编名著了。
凡所有相，皆是虚妄，浮华的巴黎勾起的欲念如同海市蜃楼，终会幻灭。喜欢简单通俗易懂的叙事方式
名著改编保障了剧情。在这种时候看到这样的电影，不得不感慨前人的敏锐与深刻。放下幻想，认真生活。找到自己内在力量。
★★★★ 乡下文学小青年到巴黎大都市的体验生活来了，来时雄心壮志，去时看透炎凉，巴黎虽大，终不是自己的家。
★★★★ 乡下文学小青年到巴黎大都市的体验生活来了，来时雄心壮志，去时看透炎凉，巴黎虽大，终不是自己的家。
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