Directed by | Carl Theodor Dreyer
Produced by | Carl Theodor Dreyer
Julian West
Written by | Sheridan Le Fanu (novel)
Christen Jul
Carl Theodor Dreyer
Starring | Julian West
Maurice Schutz
Rena Mandel
Music by | Wolfgang Zeller
Cinematography | Rudolph Maté
Louis Née
Editing by | Paul Falkenberg
Release date(s) | 1932
Running time | 75 min.
Country | France
Germany
Language | German

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.

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

It exists in prints of various lengths and arrangements of scenes, and under alternate titles including Vampyr: Der Traum des Allan Grey (The Dream of Allan Grey) It was copyright in the USA in 1934 as The Vampire and exhibited theatrically with the title Not Against the Flesh in 1935, both by General Foreign Sales Corporation. A re-edited, English dubbed version, The Castle of Doom, in the very late 1930s by Arthur Ziehm Inc.. It stars Julian West (a 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.

Production
Dreyer's cast was predominantly made up of amateurs (only Sybille Schmitz and Maurice Schutz were professional actors). However, this was unimportant to a director who was more concerned with creating an atmosphere of dread than staging a play. Dreyer reportedly told his cameraman, "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 get."

No sets were constructed for the film. The inn and castle were real, and the building of dancing shadows was a disused ice cream factory. Dreyer altered the ending of the film to include a white, dust-filled plaster works. White is the predominant colour, representing the loss of blood, and seen in the use of white mist, white flour and the white buildings and skies that recur throughout the film.

Plot
The plot is credited to J. Sheridan Le Fanu's collection In a Glass Darkly, which includes the vampire novella Carmilla, although, as Timothy Sullivan has argued, its departures from the source are more striking than its similarities.

The actual events are rather obscure and dominated by a weird, dream-like atmosphere. Allan Gray (despite the film's German title), a youth travelling in the French countryside, puts up at an inn in the surroundings of a solitary castle, near the village of Courtempierre. He begins to see strange sights that are impossible to explain (notably shadows leading a life independent from that of their "owners").

Having been asked for help by the Lord of the Manor, Allan visits the castle and becomes involved in the tragic events that are befalling the family. Leone, the daughter of the Lord of the Manor appears to suffer from anaemia, but her father already suspects that her illness is caused by a vampire. The Lord of the Manor dies, seemingly of natural causes, but actually as a result of the actions of the servants of the undead. As Allan reads an old book about vampires, he learns more and more about these creatures, while the fiend continues to assault the young woman.

The vampire turns out to be an extremely evil old woman, Marguerite Chopin, who died in mortal sin and caused a similar epidemic a quarter of a century ago. She is conspiring with the village doctor who helps her to gain access to her victim; her ultimate objective is to cause the victim to commit suicide and thus deliver her to the devil. Eventually, Allan and an old servant stake her, and her servants also die. At the end, Allan is seen leaving together with Leone's sister, Gisele.

Cast
* Julian West as Allan Gray
* Rena Mandel as Gisele
* Sybille Schmitz as Leone
* Jan Hieronimko as the Village Doctor
* ? as the Peg-legged Soldier
* Henriette Gérard as Marguerite Chopin
* Jane Mora as The Nurse
* Maurice Schutz as the Lord of the Manor
* Albert Bras as an Old Servant
* N. Babanini as His Wife

Response
The film, produced in 1930 but not released until 1932, was originally regarded as an artistic failure. It got shortened by distributors, who also added narration. This left Dreyer deeply depressed, and ten years passed before he again was allowed to direct a feature film (Vredens Dag).

Following the pattern of several other Dreyer films, the critical reputation of Vampyr has changed dramatically since its original release. It is today regarded as a masterpiece of cinema.

Hopefully, the film's reputation will not suffer from the poor quality of its American and British home video releases (one Seattle-based reviewer on Amazon.com calls the U.S. version: "By far it's the worst transfer to DVD I've seen yet."). A better DVD version is available as part of a French box set, and a newly restored edition from Masters of Cinema has been announced[citation needed].

Trivia

* The appearance of the vampire hunting professor played by Jack MacGowran in Roman Polanski's film The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) was inspired by the Village Doctor played by Jan Hieronimko in Vampyr.
* An obscure, low-budget semi-remake of Vampyr appeared in 1990, under the title Vampyre, starring Randy Scott Rolzer and Cathy Seyler.

References

* Sullivan, J. (editor), The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, Penguin, 1986, p.440. ISBN 0-670-80902-0
* Cited in Aylesworth, T.G., Monster and Horror Movies, Bison Books, 1986, p.74. ISBN 0-86124-285-8
* Butler, I., Horror in the Cinema, Zwemmer/Barnes, 1970, p.57. ISBN 0-302-02058-6
* See Sullivan, The Penguin Encyclopedia of Horror and the Supernatural, p.440.

The article "Vampyr" is part of the Wikipedia encyclopedia. It is licensed under the terms of the GNU FDL.

modified: 2007-12-13 00:44:03