Vampyr

With its fragmented plot, eerie imagery, and air of undefined menace this film more nearly realises the dream state than any other film I've seen.

The story, which follows a young man's discovery of vampiric doings while on a trip to the country, is secondary to the fascinatingly uncanny mood generated by the cinematography and effective use of sound and silence.

Yes, yes, it's old and unconventional, and requires either some extra concentration or complete surrender to its unique world, but the effort is worth it.

Vampyr should especially appeal to fans of cinefantastique, cinema history and maybe even the arthouse crowd.

It is understandable that many take issue with Vampyr due to an absence of conventional moviemaking factors that make an average film watchable. However, I believe that this is more a problem of the viewer than one with the filmmaker, and it all begins with whether or not one watches expecting to be frightened in a generic horror flick manner. This is not a scary movie; it is one that fundamentally blurs the lines between dreams and reality. It is not a silent film or a talkie, but something in between, and that fits in perfectly with the idea of it being an experience much like a bad dream. There are few professional actors (two, in fact, and neither would be considered the leading actors), and long takes that would drive a Hollywood film editor to distraction. They are selected more for their appearance and natural manner than for any exceptional gift as an actor/actress, and it is my belief that that adds more than detracts from the experience. The reactions of the characters are far more visceral and simple than in most films of this depth, and it helps create the mesmerizing, hypnotic effect few movies can create. It is designed, I believe, to be seen in a dark room, preferably alone and late at night, just prior to going to bed. If the viewer is a little sleepy, so much the better: for the true power of the film will only be revealed as you dwell on it afterwards while you struggle to go to sleep. Then,and only then, will the full might of Carl Theodore Dreyer's vision be revealed.

For a movie made in 1932, this is very, very impressive. Confusing plot aside, the emphasis in this Victorian nightmare is placed on the cinematic aspects. "Vampyr" is plodding, very dark and eerie, filled with such haunting atmosphere and brooding visuals full of unseen, but lurking terror - very effecting. It works on a subconscious and emotional level more than any other way. I think it's worth a look.

The major figure of Carl Theodor Dreyer is one of a select group of directors deemed 'transcendental' along with the likes of Ozu and Bresson. Paul Schrader and other critics identify them as those filmmakers who habitually suggest spiritual intensity by ordinary means. Characteristically austere, often using non-professional talent in their films, they find universal truths through a gradual un-dramatic revelation of interior life. All this means in this context is that one would think such directors far away from the flashy supernaturalism and ghastly melodrama normally making up so much of the traditional horror film, a genre where its the extraordinary providing the revelation for the audience, not the mundane. But then one remembers that both Dreyer and Bresson made memorable versions of Joan of Arc, where their representing of terrifying events showed how disturbing an emotionally stark and restrained approach could prove. And, in 1932, about as the first great Universal horror cycle was getting into its stride in Hollywood, Dreyer made his Vampyr.

It is interesting to compare Dreyer's great work with that of Murnau, the only other great director who made a broadly comparable title. Both the German director and the Dane took their inspiration from literary horror classics. Murnau based his Nosferatu (1922) on Dracula while, for his inspiration, Dreyer too turned to an English author: Sheridan le Fanu and his novel Carmilla. But the evil thrill of Nosferatu is that it takes place in a concrete 'reality' of sorts, ghostly special effects notwithstanding. By contrast Vampyr is a strange, dreamlike film, one virtually silent or subdued, despite its soundtrack. Moreover it mainly exists in variable prints, the poor state of which merely adds to the strange dislocatedness of unfolding events portrayed. Dreyer's terror lies in a world of shadows, surreality amplified by some remarkable cinematography, the roots of nightmare ever subtle, where camera movement can excite as much dread and anticipation as any vampire out clawing at a victim.

Vampyr's story, such as it is, tells of Allan Grey (Julian West), a man studious of vampires. In a small French town, he takes a room at an inn. His sleep is interrupted when a strange man (Maurice Shutz) comes into his room speaking disturbingly about death, then leaves a small package with instructions that it should be opened upon his death. Allen gets out of bed, and prowls around the inn and its spooky surroundings in search of an explanation. Eventually he wanders onto a nearby estate where he finds the mysterious man living with his two daughters. A vampire has bitten one of his daughters, and the house is shrouded in death...

Once seen and felt, the peculiarly eerie atmosphere that characterises Dreyer's work is never forgotten. Indeed, Vampyr's influence arguably began at once, for a similar tone of silent mystery pervades some scenes in White Zombie, incidentally one of Bela Lugosi's best, made just the same year - another film which made in sound which often plays like a silent. Like Vampyr, White Zombie includes several wordless sequences which are startlingly eerie and atmospheric. (Both this and present film are much better than Tod Browning's famous version of Dracula also made at about the same time, which these days seem positively wooden by comparison.) And, years later, Ken Russell was to mimic the premature burial sequence of Vampyr, glass windowed coffin and all, in his uneven Mahler while arguably a similar, dreamlike, touch can be found in the work of the French horror auteur Jean Rollin, who in the 1970s made of soft tinted vampirism almost a genre of its own.

Of his original film Dreyer said, "I wanted to create the daydream on film… to show that horror is not a part of the things around us, but of our own subconscious mind." To help achieve this, he and his cameraman Rudolph Mate shot much very early in the morning and frequently through fine gauze - a creative decision increasing the sense of mystery surrounding events. The resultant shimmer and softness which fell over scenes suggests the supernatural confusion felt by the hero, and add a spooky disconnectedness to events. Allied to this, as already noted, this is a work where one is acutely aware of camera placement and movement, of shadow and light. Dreyer's sensitive direction means that the lens becomes a lurking accompaniment to Grey's, and therefore our, unease.

Main actor Julian West, who also financed a lot of the picture, makes a suitable impression; part of the mood in what is his only significant film. Forty years later he again appeared again on screen, but with less impact. In retrospect nothing could compare to his appearance here, his pale, Lovecraftian features perfectly in tune with the gloomy goings on. His anonymous freshness as an actor makes of him an everyman, a dramatic unknown fitting in exactly with the director's preferred casting with the undemonstrative and normal. And unlike Nosferatu's celebrated settings of castles, doom laden ships and spectral carriages, Vampyr's unease is primarily set amidst the domestic: an inn, a to-do private home or in common place out-buildings.

Dismayed by distracting subtitles, often faded visuals and poor soundtrack elements, admirers of Dreyer's masterpiece have long cried out in vain for a restored version, especially now that the later films of the director have been reissued. Even such earlier silents such as the lesser, decidedly more obscure, Master Of The House (1925) have lately arrived with a five star treatment on disc. Whether or not this lapse is due to a fatal absence of original materials I am not sure, but fans of one of the very finest horror films, and a rare one by a great director to boot, will not be satisfied until this Vampyr at least is resurrected and given the new life it deserves.

Simply: it's beautiful work of art. No action. No slasher scenes. There is almost less speaking then in Aki Kaurismäki's films. Master of silent movie, Carl Th. Dreyer, uses more silent film magic than any spoken voices. Movie's style is from another world. Living shadows, ghosts, vampire in the foggy wood and (of course) the famous scene where man watch himself to be buried alive. There is no way you can say what this film is true and what dream. It's like Dreyer would have put he's own dream in to the screen. Nobody have done anything like this later, perhaps because the gray light that is all the time in the film came by an accident. There is no movie like this and no way there is another horror movie like this! Vampire- movie fan can watch this with F. W. Murnau's Nosferatu. They are different film's, but strange way spooky at same way.