Vampyr (1932)

Vampyr is a French-German film by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, released in 1932. An art film, it is short on dialogue and plot, and is admired today for its innovative use of light and shadow. Dreyer achieved some of these effects through using a fine gauze filter in front of the camera lens to make characters and objects appear hazy and indistinct, as though glimpsed in a dream.

Vampyr ranks in many circles as one of the greatest horror films of all time. Inspired by Sheridan Le Fanu's Carmilla, the story concerns a mysterious series of killings, committed by a crone of a female vampire (Henriette Gerard). The story is told through the eyes of a holiday reveller (Julian West), who at first scoffs at the notion of a supernatural murderer, but who is eventually forced to believe that there are more things in heaven and earth. Dreyer offers few explanations of the phenomena he presents on screen: the strange and frightening happenings just happen, as casually as any everyday occurrence. As was his custom, Dreyer mostly uses nonprofessionals in his cast. Vampyr is available in a wide variety of severely edited and duped versions.

Made in 1930, the early days of sound film, it was filmed in three language versions: English, French and German.

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I always thought the lead actor looks a lot like Lovecraft. So the whole movie plays to me like a nightmare Lovecraft had. Love this movie.

Actually, the lead actor was Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg (using the name of Julian West), who also financed the film and lost almost all his money on it. In the restored version of the film issued in The Masters of Cinema Series, there is a beautiful and melancholic documentary about the eccentric baron, which I would recommend to anyone interested.

Hi all,

I also love this film, and recently saw it with a live soundtrack by Steven Severin (the ex Banshee) so it is on tour. He has a project called 'Music for Silents' and also produced some theatre soundtracks for 'Maldoror' and 'Beauty and the Beast'.

He seems nice (and certainly informed) when we chatted briefly after his gig in Newcastle.

I didnt know of the eccentric Baron Gunzburg though. I shall add him to my list of 'people to look up'.

Slightly off topic, Severin also did a soundtrack to a stage adaptation of Kobo Abes novel 'Woman in the Dunes'. There is also a film version (1964). Both book and film rate very highly on the 'odd' scale, and is certainly within ligotti lovers territory. There are clips on Youtube.

REGARDS!

J

David Rudkin, the writer of such weird TV masterpieces as Artemis 81 and Penda's Fen, has written an excellent book about Vampyr.
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