Vampyr

Genre: horror movie (in black and white)

With: Nicolas de Gunzburg, aka Julian West (Allan Grey), Maurice Schutz (the Lord of the Manor), Rena Mandel (Gisèle), Sybille Schmitz (Léone), Jan Hieronimko (the Doctor), Henriette Gérard (Marguerite Chopin), Albert Bras (the servant)  

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer

Screenplay: Christen Jul, Svend Rindom and Carl Theodor Dreyer (based on a book by J. Sheridan Le Fanu)

Release: 1932

Studio: Tobis Filmkunst

Rating: -

MBiS score: 8.8/10 

 

Still Creepy After All These Years* 

 

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Story-line: Allan Grey, a young man fascinated by devil worship and vampirism, stops in the village of Courtempierre and takes a room at the local inn. That evening, after hearing a strange chant and seeing a disfigured man, he goes to bed, sleeps badly and is awakened by the old Lord of the Manor who tells him ‟Quiet!... She must not die. Do you understand?”  

Pluses: fine acting all around, an efficient and eerie screenplay stoking much tension, spare dialogues complemented by a continuous stream of sinister music by Wolfgang Zeller, adept editing, artful direction, competent cinematography (by Rudolph Maté and Louis Née) and Henri Armand’s striking special effects.

Minuses: since this spellbinding movie is 90 years old, don’t expect state-of-the-art production values − for one thing, the door to Allan’s room looks like it’s made of cardboard − but such shortcomings are more than compensated by a brilliant display of imagination and strangeness. A series of mysterious events involving Allan at the one-hour mark can be explained as a dream sequence.  

Comments: for anyone not acquainted with vampires, this pioneering work by the legendary C.T. Dreyer serves as a fitting and wide-ranging introduction to their dark and nightmarish universe. In fact, VAMPYR does so much with so little − and with such potency − that I was unsure if it was a movie I was watching or some scary dream I had unwittingly stepped into. Doubtless a classic and a chilling good time for all. And just in time for Halloween...  

 

MBiS 

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*My apologies to Paul Simon, of course.