Films: 1930s
(1932) Vampyr
Saturday, October 14, 2006
Vampyr
Director: Carl Theodore Dreyer
Release: 1932
A great deal has been made about the strangeness, the dreamlike quality of "Vampyr."
While director Carl Theodore Dreyer's 1932 film is atmospheric, unsettling and full of dramatically lit scenes, it is also fairly straightforward and efficient.
Unlike a dream, its narrative is linear. Like a dream, its plot is coincidental and suffused with legend and supernatural menace.
Allan Grey (Julian West under pseudonym, the actor is actually Baron Nicolas de Gunzberg - the film's financier), who is described as a devil worshipper and student of the otherworldly, arrives at a rural inn and encounters a desperate man (Maurice Schutz) who leaves a mysterious package in his room. The next day, suspecting something strange, Grey explores the countryside. He discovers that the inn is plagued with ghosts, and that something sinister is housed in an old laboratory upstairs. Grey spies a robed old woman in the shadows. A scraggily doctor (Jan Hieronimko) wanders the premises, denying anything uncommon is afoot.
Next door, Grey finds the castle of the desperate package deliverer, who is Lord of the Manor, and his two daughters. The Lord of the Manor is slain by the shadow of a soldier from the inn. Grey stays to protect the girls and their servants. He opens the Lord of the Manor's gift from the night before. It is a history of vampires and it helps Grey draw important conclusions to follow.
The older of the two daughters, Leone (Sybille Schmitz), is sick. Grey and her sister, Gisele discover her collapsed on the grounds, crouched over by the strange old woman he saw at the inn.
Gisele worries that the doctor only comes at night and Grey is suspicious to the point of discovery. The doctor undoes him by ordering a blood transfusion from Grey to Leone.
Meanwhile, the Old Servant of the manor (Albert Bras) who discovers what is happening. He reads a passage in Grey's book of vampires that describes an old woman of the village as Marguerite Chopin, guilty of a horrific life, excommunicated and executed years before. The book proposes that she is undead, and continuing to prey on the innocent. The Old Servant wakes the enervated Grey, just in time to stop Leone from killing herself with poison left by the doctor (Schmitz would successfully commit suicide in 1955). The doctor captures Gisele, however, on his way out.
Grey chases the fleeing felon, but his body give out and he dreams a terrifying vision of death and burial before coming to and joining the Old Servant in uncovering the Chopin's grave and hammering a metal rod through her heart. Grey rescues Gisele, while the Old Servant hunts down the doctor for a final revenge.
Whereas Todd Browning's camera in 1931's "Dracula" was stationary to the point of meditation, Dreyer's and cinematographer Rudolph Mate's camera is muscular and roving. It rolls through rooms, finding action and then pans back to reveal other characters in other rooms, listening and reacting.
Art director Hermann Warm, renown for production design on Robert Wiene's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" in 1920, creates an alternately stark and abstract world in "Vampyr." Grey wanders alabaster hallways or he stumbles through rooms littered with coffins and wood shavings, apothecaries and skull-strewn attics.
Henri Armand's special effects couple with Warm's environment. Shadows separate from bodies, then rejoin. Gravediggers replace dirt, one shovelful at a time. Bones shift and turn to follow Chopin across a room. Most significantly, Grey's dream self departs his corporeal form on a bench in a field and a brilliantly translucent spirit moves through Chopin's chambers in search of Gisele.
There were three soundtracks for "Vampyr." What seems to exist on available DVDs is a fairly faint and scratchy amalgamation of the German and French dialogue. Removed and full of echo, it adds to the overall atmosphere.
Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan of Arc" was marked by intense close-up after intense close-up, "Vampyr" is physically more detached, placing its principals in foggy, overexposed landscapes that seem at times to threaten complete consumption of the actors. "Vampyr" is perhaps only equaled by F.W. Murnau's "Nosferatu" at evoking a sense of dread. It may surpass "Nosferatu" by a neck.
"Vampyr" is certainly not as personal and visceral "The Passion of Joan of Arc." This is a more intellectualized effort, a sense of cleverness and morbid glee pervades "Vampyr," which is, in its own way, as relentless.
James O'Brien
Cinescare Staff
Vampyr, 1932
Dreyer's 'The Passion of Joan of Arc' was marked by intense close-up after intense close-up, 'Vampyr' is physically more detached, placing its principals in foggy, overexposed landscapes that seem at times to threaten complete consumption of the actors. 'Vampyr' is perhaps only equaled by F.W. Murnau's 'Nosferatu' at evoking a sense of dread. It may surpass 'Nosferatu' by a neck.
