Vampyr - Criterion Collection
by Carl Theodor Dreyer
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Albert Bras, Baron Nicolas de Gunzberg, Henriette Gerard, Jan Hieronimko, N. BabaniniDirector: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Brand: Image Entertainment
Cinematographer: Rudolph Mat?
Cinematographer: Louis Nee
Composer: Wolfgang Zeller
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: German (Original Language); English (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, NTSC, Special Edition, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 75 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-07-22
Audience Rating: Unrated
Studio: Criterion
Movie Reviews of Vampyr - Criterion Collection
Movie Review: Dreyer's masterpiece of horror....
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a rare horror film that doesn't bludgeon you, but unsettles you. I like what Dreyer said about the effect he was trying to achieve....
"Imagine we are sitting in an ordinary room. Suddenly we are told that there is a corpse behind the door. In an instant, the room we are sitting in is completely altered: everything in it has taken on another level; the light, the atmosphere have changed, though they are physically the same. This is because we have changed... This is the effect I want to achieve in Vampyr.".
Dreyer achieves this effect masterly. The film is an eerie dream. There really is no logic to it. It is comprised of ethereal, many unexplained images, and the look of the film is unique and special. The look was achieved when on the first day of shooting. The cameraman and Dreyer were looking at the footage, and they discovered a light leak in the camera. This brought great distraught to the cameraman, but Dreyer liked the look of the footage, so they shot the rest of the film that way. There is little dialogue, mostly muffled sounds, which makes the film even stranger and more unsettling. The most famous shot is the best one in the film. It's when the Baron (played by Julian West) dreams that he is dead, and we see a funeral from his point of view in a coffin. It's one of the weirdest, most unforgettable scenes ever in a horror film, and even to this day it's still remarkable.
Dreyer was primarily known as a spiritual director, directing such films as Passion of Joan of Arc, Day of Wrath, and his best film, Ordet. Directing a horror film was unusual for him, but he was such a great artist that he could pull it off. Unfortunately, Vampyr bombed at the box office, and Dreyer didn't direct again until 11 years later. Regardless of its box office performance, Vampyr is still a startling film, one that really is scary and incredibly memorable.
Summary of Vampyr - Criterion Collection
With Vampyr, Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer's brilliance at achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, profoundly unsettling imagery (as in The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath) was for once applied to the horror genre. Yet the result-concerning an occult student assailed by various supernatural haunts and local evildoers at an inn outside Paris-is nearly unclassifiable, a host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds creating a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs, ominous scythes, and foreboding echoes, Vampyr is one of cinema's great nightmares.In this chilling, atmospheric film from 1932, Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer favors style over story, offering a minimal plot that draws only partially from established vampire folklore. Instead, Dreyer emphasizes an utterly dreamlike visual approach, using trick photography (double exposures, etc.) and a fog-like effect created by allowing additional light to leak onto the exposed film. The result is an unsettling film that seems to spring literally from the subconscious, freely adapted from the Victorian short story Carmilla by noted horror author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, about a young man who discovers the presence of a female vampire in a mysterious European castle. There's more to the story, of course, but it's the ghostly, otherworldly tone of the film that lingers powerfully in the memory. Dreyer maintains this eerie mood by suggesting horror and impending doom as opposed to any overt displays of terrifying imagery. Watching Vampyr is like being placed under a hypnotic trance, where the rules of everyday reality no longer apply. As a splendid bonus, the DVD includes The Mascot, a delightful 26-minute animated film from 1934. Created by pioneering animator Wladyslaw Starewicz, this clever film--in which a menagerie of toys and dolls springs to life--serves as an impressive precursor to the popular Wallace & Gromit films of the 1990s. --Jeff Shannon
Stills from Vampyr (Click for larger image)
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