Vampyr is an impressionistic horror film by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, released in 1932. The French- German production stars Julian West (stage name of Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, the film's producer and financial backer), Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel, Sybille Schmitz, Jan Hieronimko, and Henriette Gérard.

The source for the screenplay of this unorthodox vampire story is credited as J. Sheridan Le Fanu's collection of short fiction In a Glass Darkly (1872). This book included the " lesbian vampire" novella Carmilla and the " premature burial" story The Room in the Dragon Volant, which serve as very loose source material for the film (the departures from the sources being more striking than the similarities. ^[3])

Plot

On a late evening, the Allan Gray arrives at an inn close to the village of Courtempierre where he gets a room. Allan Gray wakes in inn when the door to his room is opened. An an old man enters the room who leaves a square packet on Gray's table and leaves a package with "To be opened after my death," written on it. Gray takes the package and walks outside finding shadows showing him the way to an old castle where he sees several shadows dancing and wandering on their own, an old man and an elderly woman. Gray leaves and then walks to a manor looks inside through one of the windows where he sees the man who gave him the package, suddenly murdered by gunshot. Gray is let into the house with servants rushes to the aid of the old Lord, but it is too late to save him. The servants have Gray to stay the night, where The Lord of the Manor's youngest daughter, Giséle leads Gray to the Library where he learns that her sister, Leone is gravely ill in a room upstairs. Gray and Giséle suddenly spot Leone walking in the grounds outside. They rush to her finding her laying unconscious with fresh bite wounds. They have her carried back up to the manor. Gray remembers the parcel given to him. Opening it, he finds the book is about horrific demons called Vampyrs.

With the book, Gray discovers Leone is is a victim of a Vampyr. Gray learns that shadows of executed criminals are pawns of the Vampyr, but also living humans can be forced into submission. The old servant lets village doctor into the manor, who Gray recognizes as the old man he saw in the castle. Gray follows the doctor up to Leone. The doctor says that a blood transfusion is needed, with Gray offering his blood to save Leone. Exhausted from blood loss, Gray wakes in another room and rushes to Leone finding the doctor who has just dropped a poison vial from his hand as the doctor attempts to flee with a kidnapped Giséle. Gray follows finding himself in the castle where he there succeeds in rescuing Giséle, while the doctor is able to get away.

The old servant find Gray's book, discovering the way to defeat a Vampyr is with an iron bar through their heart. By Marguerite Chopin's grave behind the village Chapel, the servant meets Allan Gray. They open the grave and find the old woman laying there and begin to hammer a large metal bar through her heart together. A this moment, the village doctor has finds refuge in an old mill. He finds himself locked into a small chamber where the flour sacks are filled. The old servant arrives and activates the machinery, making the Vampyr's associate drown in the flour that comes crashing down. The curse of the Vampyr is lifted with Leone recovering. Giséle and Gray cross the river outside by boat finding themselves on a brighter area.

Cast

• Julian West as Allan Gray: A young wanderer who studies of devil worship have made him a dreamer who finds his surroundings of the real and unreal blurred.
• Rena Mandel as Giséle: The younger sister and daughter of the Lord of the Manor. Giséle is kidnapped by the Village Doctor late in the film.
• Sybille Schmitz as Léone: The older sister of Giséle, who is bedridden and finds her strength growing less day by day
• Jan Hieronimko as the Village Doctor: The village doctor older man and is a pawn of the the vampire Marguerite Chopin and kidnaps Giséle late in the film.
• Henriette Gérard as Marguerite Chopin: Chopin is an elderly women who commands her minions to make the people in the village commit suicide which sends their souls to hell after their death.
• Maurice Schutz as the Lord of the Manor: The lord of the manor is the father of Giséle and Léone who offers Gray a book vampirism to help Gray save Léone and Giséle.
• Albert Bras as an Old Servant: The Old Servant works for Lord of the Manor. After the death of his master, he finds Gray's book on vampirism and aids Gray in relieving the village of Marguerite Chopin and her minions.

Production

Development

Director Carl Theodor Dreyer began planning Vampyr in late 1929, a year after the release of his previous film The Passion of Joan of Arc. ^{[4] [5]} The production company behind Dreyer's previous film had plans for Dreyer to make another film, but the projected was dropped. This lead to Dreyer deciding to go outside the studio system to make his next film. ^[4] Being Dreyer's first sound film, it was made under difficult circumstances. The arrival of sound put the European film industry in turmoil. In France, film studios lagged behind technologically with the first French sound films being shot on sound stages in England. ^[4] Dreyer went to England to study sound film, where he got together with Danish writer Christen Jul who was living in London at the time. ^[4] Dreyer decided to create a story based on the supernatural and read over thirty mystery stories and found a number of re-occurring elements including doors opening mysteriously and door handles moving with no one knowing why. Dreyer stated proudly that "We can jolly well make this stuff too". ^[4] In London and New York, the stage version Dracula had been a large hit in 1927. ^[4] Dreyer created a story based on vampires which he considered to be "fashionable things at the time". ^[4] Vampyr is based on elements from J. Sheridan Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly, a collection of five stories first published in 1872. ^[1] Dreyer draws from two of the stories for Vampyr, one being Carmilla, a vampire story with a lesbian subtext and the other being The Room in the Dragon Volant about a live burial. ^[6] Dreyer found it difficult to decide on a title for the film. It may have initially been titled Destiny and then Shadows of Hell. ^[1] When the film was presented in the film journal Close Up it was titled The Strange Adventure of David Gray. ^[1]

Pre-production

Dreyer returned to France to begin casting and location scouting. Dreyer was on a contract with the distributing company Société Générale des Cinema who refused to fund his next project. ^[7] At the time in France, there was a small movement of artistic independently financed films, including Luis Buñuel's L'Âge d'or and Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet which both released in 1930. ^[6] Through Valentine Hugo, Dreyer met an Nicolas de Gunzburg, an aristocrat who agreed to finance Dreyer's next film in return for playing the lead role in it. ^[4] Gunzberg had arguments with his family about to become an actor, so he created the pseudonym Julian West, a name that would be the same in all three languages that the film was shot in. ^[8]

Most of the cast of in Vampyr were not professional actors. Jan Hieronimko who plays the village doctor in the film was found on a late night metro train in Paris. When approached to act in the film, Hieronimko stared blankly and didn't reply. Hieronimko later contated Dreyer's crew and agreed to join the film. ^[6] Many of the other non-professional actors in the film were found in similar fashion in shops and cafés. ^[8] The only professional actors in the film were Maurice Shutz who plays the Lord of the Manor and Sybille Schmitz who plays his daughter Leone. ^[8]

The entire film was shot on actual locations with many parts of the film shot in Courtempierre, France. ^{[6] [9]} Dreyer and his cinematographer Rudolph Maté took part in scouting for locations for Vampyr. Dreyer left most of his scouting to an assistant, who Dreyer instructed to "a factory in ruins, a chopped up phantom, worthy of the imagination of Edgar Allen Poe. Somewhere in Paris we can't travel far". ^[9] In the original script, the village doctor was supposed to flee the village and get trapped in a swamp. On looking for a suitable one, the crew found a mill where they saw white shadows around the windows and doors. ^[9] After seeing this place, they changed the film's ending to take place at this mill where the doctor dies by suffocating under the milled flour. ^[9]

Filming

Vampyr was filmed between 1930 and 1931. ^[6] With everything being shot on location, Dreyer believed it would be beneficial by lending the dream-like ghost world of the film as well as allowing them to save money by not having to rent studio space. ^[9] Dreyer originally wanted the film the film to be a silent film, and although that era of film had passed Vampyr has many elements of silent film such as the repeated use of title cards. ^{[10] [6]} Dialouge in the film is kept to a minimum. ^[6] For the scenes with dialogue, the actors spoke their lines in French, German and English so their lip movements with correspond to their recorded voices. ^[10] There is no record of the English version being completed. ^[10] The scenes in the chateau were shot in April and May 1930. It was also used as living quarters for the cast and crew where they had to live for this filming period. ^{[9] [1]} The chateau was cold and rat-filled making it an uncomfortable experience. ^[9] The church yard scenes were shot in August 1930. The church was not really a church but a barn with a number of tombstones placed around it. This set was designed by the art director Hermann Warm. ^[9]

Critic and writer Kim Newman described Vampyr's style as closer to the experimental features such as Un chien andalou then a "quickie horror films" made after the release Dracula (1931). ^[11] Dreyer originally was going to film Vampyr in what he described as a "heavy style" but changed direction after cinematographer Rudolph Maté came up with a shot one shot came out fuzzy and blurred. ^{[1] [12]} This washed out look was an effect Dreyer desired, and had Maté shoot through the film through a piece of gauze held three feet away from the camera to re-create this look. ^[12] For other visuals in the film, Dreyer found inspiration from the fine arts. ^[1] Actress Rena Mandel who plays Gisèle, said that Dreyer showed her reproductions of paintings of Francisco Goya during filming and in Denmark, journalist and friend of Dreyer Henry Hellsen wrote in detail about the film and the artworks it appeared to draw on. ^[1] When being asked about the intention of the film at the Berlin premiere, Dryer replied that he "had not any particular intention. I just wanted to make a film different from all other films. I wanted, if you will, to break new ground for the cinema. That is all. And do you think this intention has succeeded? Yes, I have broken new ground". ^[4] The filming of Vampyr was completed the middle of 1931. ^[6]

Post-production

Dreyer shot and edited the film in France and then brought it to Berlin where it was post-synchronized in both German and French. ^[13] Dreyer went did the audio work at Universum Film AG, as they had the best sound equipment available to him at the time. ^[8] Most of the actors did not dub their own voice. The only voices of the actors that are their own in the film are Sybille Schmitz and Nicolas de Gunzburg. ^[8] The sounds of dogs, parrots and other animals in the film were not real and done by professional imitators with one imitator per animal. ^[8] The score of the film was composed by Wolfgang Zeller who worked on the score with Dreyer. ^[8]

There are differences between the German and French releases of the film. The character Allan Grey is named David Gray for the German release which Dreyer has says was simply a mistake. ^[10] The German censors ordered cuts to the film that still exist today in some prints. ^[10] The scenes include scenes of the doctor dying agony under the milled flour and where the vampire is killed with a stake, which had to be toned down. ^[10] Other scenes that were shot and included in the script do not exist in any current prints of Vampyr. These scenes reveal the vampire in the factory recoiling against a shadow of a christian cross and a scene at the end where the ferryman guides Gray and Gisèle by getting young children to build a fire and sing a hymn to guide them back to the shore. ^[10]

Dreyer had prepared a Danish version of the film which was based on the German version with Danish subtitles and title cards. ^[14] The distributor could not afford to have the titles done as they appear in the German version, and they were done in more simple style. ^[14] The distributor wanted to make the pages in the book shown in the film as plain title cards which Dreyer did not allow. Dryer responded to this idea saying that "the old book is not an text in the ordinary sense, but an actor. Just as much as the others." ^[14]

Release

The premiere of Vampyr in Germany by UFA was delayed as the studio wanted the films Dracula and Frankenstein from Universal Studios to be released first. ^[6] The Berlin premiere was May 6, 1932. ^{[14] [13]} At this premiere, the audience booed the film which led to Dreyer cutting several scenes out of the film after the first showing. ^[10] The film was distributed in France by Société Générale de Cinema who also distributed Dreyer's previous film The Passion of Joan of Arc. ^[6] The Paris premiere was in September 1932 where Vampyr was the opening attraction of a new cinema on the Boulevard Raspail. ^{[14] [15]} At showing of the film in Vienna, audiences demanded their money back after a showing. When this was denied, a riot broke out that lead to Police having to restore order with nightsticks. ^[10] When the film premiered in Copenhagen, Denmark in March 1933, Dreyer did not show up to this premiere. Soon after he had a nervous breakdown and went to a mental hospital in France. ^[14] The film was a financial failure. ^[16]

Critical Reception

Press in Europe ranged from mixed to negative. The press in Germany did not like the film. ^[8] At the Berlin preimere, a writer for The New York Times wrote "Whatever you think of the director Charles [sic] Theodor Dreyer, there is no denying that he is 'different.' He does things that make people talk about him. You may find his films ridiculous—but you won't forget them...Although in many ways [Vampyr] was one of the worst films I have ever attended, there were some scenes in it that gripped with brutal directness". ^[17] Press reaction to the film in Paris was mixed. ^[8] Reporter Herbert Matthews of The New York Times wrote that Vampyr was a " a hallucinating film," that "either held the spectators spellbound as in a long nightmare or else moved them to hysterical laughter". ^[15] For many years after Vampyr's initial release, the film has been viewed by critics as less quality film by Dreyer. ^[7]

Modern reception for Vampyr has been more positive since it's release. The film ranking website Rotten Tomatoes reported that 100% of critics had given the film positive reviews, based upon a sample of 23. ^[18] Todd Kristel of the online film database Allmovie stated that "Vampyr isn't the easiest classic film to enjoy, even if you are a fan of 1930s horror movies...If you're patient with the slow pacing and ambiguous story line of Vampyr, you'll find that this film offers many striking images" and that the film is "not exciting in terms of pacing, it's a good choice if you want to see a film that establishes a compelling mood". ^[19]

Home media

Vampyr has been released with low quality image and sound as the original German and French sound and film negatives are lost. ^[13]Prints of the French and German versions of the film exist but most of them are either incomplete or damaged. ^[13] Vampyr has been released in the United States under the titles of The Vampire and Castle of Doom and in the United Kingdom under the title of The Strange Adventures of David Gray. ^[20] Many of these prints are severely cut, such as the re-dubbed 60 minute English-language Castle of Doom print. ^[7]

Vampyr was originally released on DVD on May 13, 1998 by Image Entertainment which ran at an abridged 72 minute running time. ^{[21] [22]} Image's release of Vampyr is a straight port of the Laserdisc that film restorer David Shepard produced in 1991. The subtitles large and ingrained due to the source print having Danish subtitles which have been blacked out and covered. ^[23] This DVD also included the short film The Mascot as a bonus feature. ^[22] The Criterion Collection released a two disc edition of Vampyr released on July 22, 2008. ^[24] This edition of the DVD includes the original German version of the film, and includes a book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul's original screenplay and Sheridan La Fanu's 1872 story "Carmilla". ^[24] A Region 2 DVD of the film was released by Eureka Films on August 25, 2008. ^[25] The Eureka contains the same bonus material as the Criterion Collection release, but also includes a commentary from director Guillermo del Toro. ^[26]

Notes

Bibliography

• Clarens, Carlos (1997). An Illustrated History of Horror and Science-fiction Films. Da Capo Press. ISBN  0306808005.
• McNally, Raymond T. (1994). In Search of Dracula: The History of Dracula and Vampires. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN  0395657830. {{ cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) ( help)
• Truffaut, François (1994). The Films In My Life. Da Capo Press. ISBN  0306805995. {{ cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) ( help)

See also

• List of German films 1919-1933

External links

• Vampyr at AllMovie
• Vampyr at IMDb
• Vampyr at Rotten Tomatoes
• Vampyr at the TCM Movie Database