Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Writers: Sheridan Le Fanu, Christen Jul, Carl Theodor Dreyer
Photography: Rudolph Mate, Louis Nee
Music: Wolfgang Zeller
Editor: Tonka Taldy
Cast: Julian West, Sybille Schmitz, Maurice Schutz, Jan Hieronimko, Henriette Gerard, Albert Bras, N. Babanini, Jane Mora
Danish director and cowriter Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Ordet) based his vampire story on the Irish horror writer Sheridan Le Fanu’s essential 1872 collection, In a Glass Darkly, which includes “Carmilla,” the famous lesbian vampire story. It’s an important point of distinction from the more popular vampire source of the time, which, of course, was Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published 25 years later in 1897. Stoker’s epistolary novel was responsible informally (later settled legally) for F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu and then, in 1931, for the kickoff of the Universal horror franchise, Dracula. In fact, Vampyr was required to wait for its release until after Dracula and then Frankenstein. These are all notably slow and very quiet dream movies, perhaps Vampyr more than any of them, which moves like thawing syrup. It often reminded me of Eraserhead, which makes me wonder how much influence it might have had on David Lynch.
The star, Julian West as Allan Grey, was the primary source of funding for the picture in exchange for the role. His real name was Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, a French-born member of Russian nobility. In that way Vampyr is a kind of vanity project—in a way perhaps even more so for Dreyer than the baron. Pursuits into horror literature have traditionally not often won respect and admiration. Dreyer may have been taking a kind of calculated risk with his career, moving from Saint Joan of Arc only four years earlier to these creatures of the night.
Danish director and cowriter Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc, Ordet) based his vampire story on the Irish horror writer Sheridan Le Fanu’s essential 1872 collection, In a Glass Darkly, which includes “Carmilla,” the famous lesbian vampire story. It’s an important point of distinction from the more popular vampire source of the time, which, of course, was Bram Stoker’s Dracula, published 25 years later in 1897. Stoker’s epistolary novel was responsible informally (later settled legally) for F.W. Murnau’s 1922 Nosferatu and then, in 1931, for the kickoff of the Universal horror franchise, Dracula. In fact, Vampyr was required to wait for its release until after Dracula and then Frankenstein. These are all notably slow and very quiet dream movies, perhaps Vampyr more than any of them, which moves like thawing syrup. It often reminded me of Eraserhead, which makes me wonder how much influence it might have had on David Lynch.
The star, Julian West as Allan Grey, was the primary source of funding for the picture in exchange for the role. His real name was Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, a French-born member of Russian nobility. In that way Vampyr is a kind of vanity project—in a way perhaps even more so for Dreyer than the baron. Pursuits into horror literature have traditionally not often won respect and admiration. Dreyer may have been taking a kind of calculated risk with his career, moving from Saint Joan of Arc only four years earlier to these creatures of the night.
At the same time, in 1932, the technology forced Dreyer to deal with sound. Vampyr thus has elements of an experimental picture too. Dreyer’s immediate solution was to shoot in three languages but keep the dialogue to a bare minimum. The lack of speech and the strange imagery are together transporting. There is a whole interesting restoration story as well about how it was considered a lost film at one point and the discovery of prints etc. Vampyr was considered a low point of Dreyer’s career for some time, its disrepute possibly contributing to its MIA status. But it looks better now, and seems to keep looking better all the time.
The sets are mostly cloying interiors, with a parade of distracting wallpaper in rooms that enclose from all sides. Doorways and apertures may have expressionistic flourishes. Dreyer was Danish but seems to be working here self-consciously in German cinematic traditions. Some of these shots and images are unforgettable, notably the shadow of a man digging. But the film is actually running backward. The shadow is catching scoops of dirt with his shovel rather than casting them off. Allan Grey is a student of the occult, as any man of independent means would be, staying at a mysterious inn. At night people enter his room but he’s not sure he isn’t dreaming. People entering my room at an inn in the middle of the night would alarm me too.
Grey tries to get to the bottom of it, sneaky-peeting about the place entering the rooms of others himself. Finally an important piece of exposition shows up in a locked volume that is read by different characters at different times and helpfully explains a lot of things, e.g., “Once the vampire has gained complete control over its victim, it seeks to drive the victim to suicide, thus delivering that soul to the Evil One. For he who takes his own life is lost for all eternity.”
Chilling, effective language, but I’m pretty sure it’s Dreyer or cowriter Christen Jul because I’m pretty sure it’s not Le Fanu. Le Fanu is rightly considered one of the masters of horror literature but his tone was different, more allusive about “the Evil One” and such. Whoever wrote it, it works well here if you don’t mind sitting a spell and reading while you’re watching the picture. The subtitles in the version I saw on the Criterion Channel could stand to be toned up a little, as they sometimes fight with the screen’s use of language.
More than anything Vampyr is worth a look for its hypnotic spell. You have to gear down for it, open up to it. The reading exercises work that way for me—understanding it’s all based on necessities of 1932 technology—as places to stop and open to information. Yes, they are clumsy dumps, but there’s something about the directness that appeals. Here, it says. Read this: “Accounts from many ages and lands tell of terrible demons called vampires. These are the bodies and souls of the dead whose terrible deeds in life deny them repose in the grave. Under the bright lights of the full moon ... “ It tells us vampires can only be destroyed with an iron stake through their hearts, in their grave at dawn. I often object to such interjections of explanatory language but appreciate that Dreyer was necessarily experimenting with it in the context of sound. He had earlier shown, in the Joan of Arc picture, that he liked drawing on the language found in actual historical documents. It all provides a certain sober tone of veracity.
The images of Vampyr are always intriguing here too, a dream world to inhabit, like our world but not our world. The special effects are primitive, such as double exposures, but they often work. They are done with intent and precision and they often land, skidding us off to another place. And as the picture swirls with the scarves and silk of dreams and waking life and uncanny event—the vampires are real—a kind of delicious delirium of fantasy sets in. The intensity of the disorienting imagery steps up. And it ends on a great climax. Classic vampire story.
The sets are mostly cloying interiors, with a parade of distracting wallpaper in rooms that enclose from all sides. Doorways and apertures may have expressionistic flourishes. Dreyer was Danish but seems to be working here self-consciously in German cinematic traditions. Some of these shots and images are unforgettable, notably the shadow of a man digging. But the film is actually running backward. The shadow is catching scoops of dirt with his shovel rather than casting them off. Allan Grey is a student of the occult, as any man of independent means would be, staying at a mysterious inn. At night people enter his room but he’s not sure he isn’t dreaming. People entering my room at an inn in the middle of the night would alarm me too.
Grey tries to get to the bottom of it, sneaky-peeting about the place entering the rooms of others himself. Finally an important piece of exposition shows up in a locked volume that is read by different characters at different times and helpfully explains a lot of things, e.g., “Once the vampire has gained complete control over its victim, it seeks to drive the victim to suicide, thus delivering that soul to the Evil One. For he who takes his own life is lost for all eternity.”
Chilling, effective language, but I’m pretty sure it’s Dreyer or cowriter Christen Jul because I’m pretty sure it’s not Le Fanu. Le Fanu is rightly considered one of the masters of horror literature but his tone was different, more allusive about “the Evil One” and such. Whoever wrote it, it works well here if you don’t mind sitting a spell and reading while you’re watching the picture. The subtitles in the version I saw on the Criterion Channel could stand to be toned up a little, as they sometimes fight with the screen’s use of language.
More than anything Vampyr is worth a look for its hypnotic spell. You have to gear down for it, open up to it. The reading exercises work that way for me—understanding it’s all based on necessities of 1932 technology—as places to stop and open to information. Yes, they are clumsy dumps, but there’s something about the directness that appeals. Here, it says. Read this: “Accounts from many ages and lands tell of terrible demons called vampires. These are the bodies and souls of the dead whose terrible deeds in life deny them repose in the grave. Under the bright lights of the full moon ... “ It tells us vampires can only be destroyed with an iron stake through their hearts, in their grave at dawn. I often object to such interjections of explanatory language but appreciate that Dreyer was necessarily experimenting with it in the context of sound. He had earlier shown, in the Joan of Arc picture, that he liked drawing on the language found in actual historical documents. It all provides a certain sober tone of veracity.
The images of Vampyr are always intriguing here too, a dream world to inhabit, like our world but not our world. The special effects are primitive, such as double exposures, but they often work. They are done with intent and precision and they often land, skidding us off to another place. And as the picture swirls with the scarves and silk of dreams and waking life and uncanny event—the vampires are real—a kind of delicious delirium of fantasy sets in. The intensity of the disorienting imagery steps up. And it ends on a great climax. Classic vampire story.
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