Vampyr
Encyclopedia
Vampyr is a 1932 horror film
directed by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer
. The film was written by Dreyer and Christen Jul based on elements from J. Sheridan Le Fanu's collection of supernatural stories In a Glass Darkly
. Vampyr was funded by Nicolas de Gunzburg who starred in the film under the name of Julian West among a mostly non-professional cast. Gunzburg plays the role of Allan Grey, a student of the occult who enters the village of Courtempierre, which is under the curse of a vampire.
Vampyr was challenging for Dreyer to make as it was his first sound film
and had to be recorded in three languages. To overcome this, very little dialogue was used in the film and much of the story is told with silent film
-styled title cards. The film was shot entirely on location and to enhance the atmospheric content, Dreyer opted for a washed out, fuzzy appearing photographic technique. The audio editing was done in Berlin where the character's voices, sound effects, and score were added to the film.
Vampyr had a delayed release in Germany and opened to a generally negative reception from audiences and critics. Dreyer edited the film after its German premiere and it opened to more mixed opinions at its French debut. The film was long considered as a low part in Dreyer's career, but modern critical reception to the film has become much more favorable with critics praising the film's disorienting visual effects and atmosphere.
where he rents a room to sleep. Gray is awakened suddenly by an old man, entering the room and leaving a square packet on Gray's table with "To be opened upon my death" written on it. Gray takes the package and walks outside finding shadows guiding him to an old castle where he sees several shadows dancing and wandering on their own. Gray also sees an elderly woman and encounters the village doctor. Gray leaves the castle and walks to a manor. Looking through one of the windows, Gray sees the man who gave him the package earlier. This old man is suddenly murdered by gunshot. Gray is let into the house by servants who rush to the aid of the fallen man but find it too late to save him. The servants have Gray stay the night, where the Lord of the manor's youngest daughter, Giséle leads Gray to the library where he learns that her sister, Léone is gravely ill. Gray and Giséle then see Léone walking outside. They rush to her finding her lying unconscious with fresh bite wounds. They have her carried back up to the manor where Gray remembers the parcel given to him. On opening the parcel, Gray finds the book is about horrific demons called Vampyrs.
After reading the book, Gray discovers Léone is a victim of a Vampyr and that the Vampyr also can have humans forced into her submission. The village doctor visits Léone at the manor, and Gray recognizes him as the old man he saw in the castle. The doctor tells Gray that a blood transfusion is needed and Gray offers his blood to save Léone. Exhausted from blood loss, Gray wakes sensing danger, and rushes to Léone, finding the doctor who has just dropped a poison vial from his hand. The doctor flees the manor, as Gray finds that Giséle has gone missing. Gray follows the doctor, finding himself in the castle where he has a vision of himself being buried alive. After waking from this vision, he succeeds in rescuing Giséle while the doctor is able to get away. The old servant of the manor finds Gray's Vampyr book and discovers the way to defeat a Vampyr is with an iron bar through their heart. The servant meets Allan Gray by Marguerite Chopin's grave behind the village Chapel. They open the grave and find the old woman lying there and hammer a large metal bar through her heart, killing her. The village doctor has found refuge in an old mill, but finds himself locked in a chamber where flour sacks are filled. The old servant arrives and activates the mill's machinery, making the Vampyr's associate drown in the flour that comes crashing from above. The curse of the Vampyr is lifted when Léone recovers. Giséle and Gray cross a foggy river outside by boat and find themselves in a brighter clearing.
began planning Vampyr in late 1929, a year after the release of his previous film The Passion of Joan of Arc
. The production company behind Dreyer's previous film had plans for Dreyer to make another film, but the project was dropped which lead to Dreyer deciding to go outside the studio system to make his next film. Being Dreyer's first sound film
, it was made under difficult circumstances as 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. 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. 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". In London and New York
, the stage version of Dracula
had been a large hit in 1927. Dreyer and Jul created a story based on vampires which Dreyer considered to be "fashionable things at the time". Vampyr is based on elements from J. Sheridan Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly
, a collection of five stories first published in 1872. 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. Dreyer found it difficult to decide on a title for the film. It may have initially been titled Destiny and then Shadows of Hell. When the film was presented in the film journal Close Up it was titled The Strange Adventure of David Gray.
's L'Âge d'Or
and Jean Cocteau
's The Blood of a Poet
which were both released in 1930. Through Valentine Hugo
, Dreyer met Nicolas de Gunzburg, an aristocrat
who agreed to finance Dreyer's next film in return for playing the lead role in it. Gunzberg had arguments with his family about becoming an actor, so he created the pseudonym Julian West, a name that would be the same in all three languages that the film was going to be shot in.
Most of the cast of in Vampyr were not professional actors. Jan Hieronimko, who plays the village doctor, was found on a late night metro train in Paris. When approached to act in the film, Hieronimko stared blankly and did not reply. Hieronimko later contacted Dreyer's crew and agreed to join the film. Many of the other non-professional actors in the film were found in similar fashion in shops and cafes. The only professional actors in the film were Maurice Schutz
, who plays the Lord of the Manor, and Sybille Schmitz
, who plays his daughter Léone. Many crew members of Vampyr had worked with Dreyer on his previous film The Passion of Joan of Arc
. Returning crew members included cinematographer
Rudolph Maté
and art director Hermann Warm
.
The entire film was shot on actual locations with many scenes shot in Courtempierre
, France. 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 find "a factory in ruins, a chopped up phantom, worthy of the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe
. Somewhere in Paris. We can't travel far". In the original script, the village doctor was supposed to flee the village and get trapped in a swamp. On looking for a suitable mire, the crew found a mill where they saw white shadows around the windows and doors. 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.
, as it uses many elements of the silent era such as the use of title cards to explain the story. Dialogue in the film was kept to a minimum. For the scenes with dialogue, the actors mouthed their lines in French, German and English so their lip movements would correspond to the voices that were going to be recorded in post-production. There is no record of the English version being completed. The scenes in the chateau were shot in April and May 1930. The chateau also acted as housing where the cast and crew lived for the filming period. Living in the chateau was unpleasant for them as it was cold and infested with rats. The church yard scenes were shot in August 1930. The church was not an actual church, but a barn with a number of tombstones placed around it. This set was designed by the art director Hermann Warm
.
Critic and writer Kim Newman
described Vampyrs style as closer to the experimental features such as Un chien andalou
than a "quickie horror film" made after the release of Dracula
(1931). Dreyer originally was going to film Vampyr in what he described as a "heavy style" but changed direction after cinematographer Maté showed him one shot that came out fuzzy and blurred. This washed out look was an effect Dreyer desired, and he had Maté shoot the film through a piece of gauze held three feet (.9 m) away from the camera to re-create this look. For other visuals in the film, Dreyer found inspiration from the fine arts. Actress Rena Mandel, who plays Gisèle, said that Dreyer showed her reproductions of paintings of Francisco Goya
during filming. In Denmark, a journalist and friend of Dreyer, Henry Hellsen wrote in detail about the film and the artworks it appeared to draw on. When being asked about the intention of the film at the Berlin premiere, Dreyer 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". The filming of Vampyr was completed the middle of 1931.
Dreyer shot and edited the film in France and then brought it to Berlin where it was post-synchronized in both German and French. Dreyer did the audio work at Universum Film AG
, as they had the best sound equipment available to him at the time. Most of the actors did not dub their own voice. The only voices of the actors that are their own in the film are of Schmitz and Gunzburg. The sounds of dogs, parrots, and other animals in the film were fake and were done by professional imitators. Wolfgang Zeller
composed the film's score and worked with Dreyer to develop the music.
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 attributed to a mistake. The German censors ordered cuts to the film that still exist today in some prints. The scenes which had to be toned down include the doctor's death under the milled flour and the vampire's death from the stake. There are other scenes that were shot and included in the script that 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 as well as a ferryman guiding Gray and Gisèle by getting young children to build a fire and sing a hymn to guide them back to the shore.
Dreyer had prepared a Danish version of the film which was based on the German version with Danish subtitles and title cards. The distributor could not afford to have the title cards completed in the manner they appear in the German version, which were instead finished with a more simple style. The distributor also wanted to make the pages in the book shown in the film as plain title cards which Dreyer did not allow, saying that "the old book is not an text in the ordinary sense, but an actor. Just as much as the others."
, as the studio wanted the American films Dracula
and Frankenstein
to be released first. The Berlin premiere was May 6, 1932. At this premiere, the audience booed the film which led to Dreyer cutting several scenes out of the film after the first showing. The film was distributed in France by Société Générale de Cinema who also distributed Dreyer's previous film The Passion of Joan of Arc. The Paris premiere was in September 1932 where Vampyr was the opening attraction of a new cinema on the Boulevard Raspail
. At a showing of the film in Vienna
, audiences demanded their money back. When this was denied, a riot broke out that led to police having to restore order with night sticks. When the film premiered in Copenhagen, Denmark in March 1933, Dreyer did not show up. Dreyer soon had a nervous breakdown and went to a mental hospital in France. The film was a financial failure.
of The New York Times wrote that Vampyr was "a hallucinating film", that "either held the spectators spellbound as in a long nightmare or else moved them to hysterical laughter". For many years after Vampyrs initial release, the film has been viewed by critics as one of Dreyer's weaker works.
More modern reception for Vampyr has been positive since its release. The review aggregator
website Rotten Tomatoes
reports that 100% of critics have given the film positive reviews, based upon a sample of 24, with an average rating of 8.6/10. Todd Kristel of the online film database Allmovie gave the film four and a half stars out of five, stating 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". Jonathan Rosenbaum
of the Chicago Reader wrote the "The greatness of Carl Dreyer's [Vampyr] derives partly from its handling of the vampire theme in terms of sexuality and eroticism and partly from its highly distinctive, dreamy look, but it also has something to do with Dreyer's radical recasting of narrative form". J. Hoberman
of the Village Voice wrote that "Vampyr is Dreyer's most radical film—maybe one of my dozen favorite movies by any director". Anton Bitel
of Channel 4
awarded the film four and a half stars out of five, comparing it the silent
vampire film Nosferatu stating that it is "lesser known (but in many ways superior)" and that the film is "a triumph of the irrational, Dreyer's eerie memento mori
never allows either protagonist or viewer fully to wake up from its surreal nightmare".
Vampyr was 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. Many of these prints are severely cut, such as the re-dubbed 60-minute English-language Castle of Doom print.
Vampyr was originally released on DVD on May 13, 1998 by Image Entertainment
which ran at an abridged 72-minute running time. Image's release of Vampyr is a straight port of the Laserdisc
that film restorer David Shepard produced in 1991. The subtitles are large and ingrained due to the source print having Danish subtitles which have been blacked out and covered. This DVD also included the short film The Mascot as a bonus feature. The Criterion Collection
released a two-disc edition of Vampyr on July 22, 2008. This edition of the DVD includes the original German version of the film, along with a book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul's original screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 story "Carmilla". A Region 2 DVD of the film was released by Eureka Films on August 25, 2008. The Eureka release contains the same bonus material as the Criterion Collection discs, but also includes a commentary from director Guillermo del Toro
.
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
directed by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jr. was a Danish film director. He is regarded by many critics and filmmakers as one of the greatest directors in cinema.-Life:Dreyer was born illegitimate in Copenhagen, Denmark...
. The film was written by Dreyer and Christen Jul based on elements from J. Sheridan Le Fanu's collection of supernatural stories In a Glass Darkly
In a Glass Darkly
In a Glass Darkly is a collection of five short stories by Sheridan Le Fanu, first published in 1872, the year before his death. The second and third are revised versions of previously published stories, and the fourth and fifth are long enough to be called novellas.The title is taken from 1...
. Vampyr was funded by Nicolas de Gunzburg who starred in the film under the name of Julian West among a mostly non-professional cast. Gunzburg plays the role of Allan Grey, a student of the occult who enters the village of Courtempierre, which is under the curse of a vampire.
Vampyr was challenging for Dreyer to make as it was his first sound film
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
and had to be recorded in three languages. To overcome this, very little dialogue was used in the film and much of the story is told with silent film
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
-styled title cards. The film was shot entirely on location and to enhance the atmospheric content, Dreyer opted for a washed out, fuzzy appearing photographic technique. The audio editing was done in Berlin where the character's voices, sound effects, and score were added to the film.
Vampyr had a delayed release in Germany and opened to a generally negative reception from audiences and critics. Dreyer edited the film after its German premiere and it opened to more mixed opinions at its French debut. The film was long considered as a low part in Dreyer's career, but modern critical reception to the film has become much more favorable with critics praising the film's disorienting visual effects and atmosphere.
Plot
On a late evening, Allan Gray arrives at an inn close to the village of CourtempierreCourtempierre
Courtempierre is a commune in the Loiret department in north-central France....
where he rents a room to sleep. Gray is awakened suddenly by an old man, entering the room and leaving a square packet on Gray's table with "To be opened upon my death" written on it. Gray takes the package and walks outside finding shadows guiding him to an old castle where he sees several shadows dancing and wandering on their own. Gray also sees an elderly woman and encounters the village doctor. Gray leaves the castle and walks to a manor. Looking through one of the windows, Gray sees the man who gave him the package earlier. This old man is suddenly murdered by gunshot. Gray is let into the house by servants who rush to the aid of the fallen man but find it too late to save him. The servants have Gray stay the night, where the Lord of the manor's youngest daughter, Giséle leads Gray to the library where he learns that her sister, Léone is gravely ill. Gray and Giséle then see Léone walking outside. They rush to her finding her lying unconscious with fresh bite wounds. They have her carried back up to the manor where Gray remembers the parcel given to him. On opening the parcel, Gray finds the book is about horrific demons called Vampyrs.
After reading the book, Gray discovers Léone is a victim of a Vampyr and that the Vampyr also can have humans forced into her submission. The village doctor visits Léone at the manor, and Gray recognizes him as the old man he saw in the castle. The doctor tells Gray that a blood transfusion is needed and Gray offers his blood to save Léone. Exhausted from blood loss, Gray wakes sensing danger, and rushes to Léone, finding the doctor who has just dropped a poison vial from his hand. The doctor flees the manor, as Gray finds that Giséle has gone missing. Gray follows the doctor, finding himself in the castle where he has a vision of himself being buried alive. After waking from this vision, he succeeds in rescuing Giséle while the doctor is able to get away. The old servant of the manor finds Gray's Vampyr book and discovers the way to defeat a Vampyr is with an iron bar through their heart. The servant meets Allan Gray by Marguerite Chopin's grave behind the village Chapel. They open the grave and find the old woman lying there and hammer a large metal bar through her heart, killing her. The village doctor has found refuge in an old mill, but finds himself locked in a chamber where flour sacks are filled. The old servant arrives and activates the mill's machinery, making the Vampyr's associate drown in the flour that comes crashing from above. The curse of the Vampyr is lifted when Léone recovers. Giséle and Gray cross a foggy river outside by boat and find themselves in a brighter clearing.
Cast
- Nicolas de Gunzburg as Allan Gray: A young wanderer whose studies of occult matters have made him a dreamer. Gray's view of world in the film is described as a blur of the real and unreal.
- Rena Mandel as Giséle: The younger sister of Léone and the daughter of the Lord of the Manor. Giséle is kidnapped by the Village Doctor late in the film.
- Sybille SchmitzSybille SchmitzSybille Schmitz was a German actress.-Biography:Schmitz attended an acting school in Cologne and got her first engagement at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1927. Only one year later, she made her film debut with Freie Fahrt , which attracted her first attention from the critics...
as Léone: The older sister of Giséle, who is in thrall to the vampire and finds her strength dwindling day by day. - Jan Hieronimko as the Village Doctor: A pawn of the vampire, Marguerite Chopin. The village doctor kidnaps Giséle late in the film.
- Henriette Gérard as Marguerite Chopin: The vampire, an elderly woman whose hold extends beyond her immediate victims. Many villagers, including the village doctor, are her minions.
- Maurice SchutzMaurice SchutzMaurice Schutz was a French film actor.He starred in some 91 films between 1918 and 1952.-Filmography:Selected films include:* Quatre-vingt-treize * Au-delà des lois humaines...
as the Lord of the Manor: The father of Giséle and Léone who offers Gray a book about vampirism to help Gray save his daughters. After his murder, he returns briefly as a spirit and takes revenge on the village doctor and a soldier who had helped Marguerite Chopin. - Albert Bras as an Old Servant: A servant at the manor house. After the death of his master, he finds Gray's book on vampirism and, aided by Gray, ends the vampire's reign of terror.
- N. Babanini as Seine Frau (His Wife)
- Jane Mora as a Nurse
- Georges Boidin as the Limping Man
Development
Director Carl Theodor DreyerCarl Theodor Dreyer
Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jr. was a Danish film director. He is regarded by many critics and filmmakers as one of the greatest directors in cinema.-Life:Dreyer was born illegitimate in Copenhagen, Denmark...
began planning Vampyr in late 1929, a year after the release of his previous film The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Passion of Joan of Arc is a silent film produced in France in 1928. It is based on the record of the trial of Joan of Arc. The film was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and stars Renée Jeanne Falconetti...
. The production company behind Dreyer's previous film had plans for Dreyer to make another film, but the project was dropped which lead to Dreyer deciding to go outside the studio system to make his next film. Being Dreyer's first sound film
Sound film
A sound film is a motion picture with synchronized sound, or sound technologically coupled to image, as opposed to a silent film. The first known public exhibition of projected sound films took place in Paris in 1900, but decades would pass before sound motion pictures were made commercially...
, it was made under difficult circumstances as 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. 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. 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". In London and New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, the stage version of Dracula
Dracula (play)
Dracula is a 1924 stage play adapted by Hamilton Deane from the novel of the same name by Bram Stoker, and substantially revised by John L. Balderston in 1927...
had been a large hit in 1927. Dreyer and Jul created a story based on vampires which Dreyer considered to be "fashionable things at the time". Vampyr is based on elements from J. Sheridan Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly
In a Glass Darkly
In a Glass Darkly is a collection of five short stories by Sheridan Le Fanu, first published in 1872, the year before his death. The second and third are revised versions of previously published stories, and the fourth and fifth are long enough to be called novellas.The title is taken from 1...
, a collection of five stories first published in 1872. Dreyer draws from two of the stories for Vampyr, one being Carmilla
Carmilla
Carmilla is a Gothic novella by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. First published in 1872, it tells the story of a young woman's susceptibility to the attentions of a female vampire named Carmilla...
, a vampire story with a lesbian
Lesbian vampire
Lesbian vampirism is a trope in 20th century exploitation film that has its roots in Joseph Sheridan le Fanu's novella Carmilla about the predatory love of a female vampire for a young woman :...
subtext and the other being The Room in the Dragon Volant about a live burial. Dreyer found it difficult to decide on a title for the film. It may have initially been titled Destiny and then Shadows of Hell. When the film was presented in the film journal Close Up it was titled The Strange Adventure of David Gray.
Pre-production
Dreyer returned to France to begin casting and location scouting. At the time in France, there was a small movement of artistic independently financed films, including Luis BuñuelLuis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
's L'Âge d'Or
L'Âge d'Or
L'Âge d'or is a 1930 surrealist film directed by Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel and written by him and Salvador Dalí.The film began as a second collaboration with Dalí, but, by the time the film went into production, Buñuel and Dalí had had a falling-out, and so Dalí actually had nothing to do with...
and Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
's The Blood of a Poet
The Blood of a Poet
The Blood of a Poet is an avant-garde film directed by Jean Cocteau and financed by Charles de Noailles. Photographer Lee Miller made her only film appearance in this movie, and it also features an appearance by the famed aerialist Barbette...
which were both released in 1930. Through Valentine Hugo
Valentine Hugo
Valentine Hugo was an artist; she was born Valentine Gross in Boulogne-sur-Mer and died in Paris.Valentine studied painting in Paris, and in 1919 married French artist Jean Hugo , great-grandson of Victor Hugo...
, Dreyer met Nicolas de Gunzburg, an aristocrat
Aristocracy (class)
The aristocracy are people considered to be in the highest social class in a society which has or once had a political system of Aristocracy. Aristocrats possess hereditary titles granted by a monarch, which once granted them feudal or legal privileges, or deriving, as in Ancient Greece and India,...
who agreed to finance Dreyer's next film in return for playing the lead role in it. Gunzberg had arguments with his family about becoming an actor, so he created the pseudonym Julian West, a name that would be the same in all three languages that the film was going to be shot in.
Maurice Schutz
Maurice Schutz was a French film actor.He starred in some 91 films between 1918 and 1952.-Filmography:Selected films include:* Quatre-vingt-treize * Au-delà des lois humaines...
, who plays the Lord of the Manor, and Sybille Schmitz
Sybille Schmitz
Sybille Schmitz was a German actress.-Biography:Schmitz attended an acting school in Cologne and got her first engagement at Max Reinhardt's Deutsches Theater in Berlin in 1927. Only one year later, she made her film debut with Freie Fahrt , which attracted her first attention from the critics...
, who plays his daughter Léone. Many crew members of Vampyr had worked with Dreyer on his previous film The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Passion of Joan of Arc
The Passion of Joan of Arc is a silent film produced in France in 1928. It is based on the record of the trial of Joan of Arc. The film was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and stars Renée Jeanne Falconetti...
. Returning crew members included cinematographer
Cinematographer
A cinematographer is one photographing with a motion picture camera . The title is generally equivalent to director of photography , used to designate a chief over the camera and lighting crews working on a film, responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions related to the image...
Rudolph Maté
Rudolph Maté
Born in Kraków , Maté started in the film business after his graduation from the University of Budapest. He went on to work as an assistant cameraman in Hungary and later throughout Europe, sometimes with noted colleague Karl Freund...
and art director Hermann Warm
Hermann Warm
Hermann Warm was a German art director for films. Born on 1889 in Berlin, Germany, Warm was an important figure in the expressionist movement of the 1920s. Warm entered the German film industry in 1912 after working on-stage for a while. As well as doing set work with on films such as The Cabinet...
.
The entire film was shot on actual locations with many scenes shot in Courtempierre
Courtempierre
Courtempierre is a commune in the Loiret department in north-central France....
, France. 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 find "a factory in ruins, a chopped up phantom, worthy of the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
. Somewhere in Paris. We can't travel far". In the original script, the village doctor was supposed to flee the village and get trapped in a swamp. On looking for a suitable mire, the crew found a mill where they saw white shadows around the windows and doors. 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.
Filming
Vampyr was filmed between 1930 and 1931. Everything being shot on location, as 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. Dreyer originally wanted Vampyr to be a silent filmSilent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
, as it uses many elements of the silent era such as the use of title cards to explain the story. Dialogue in the film was kept to a minimum. For the scenes with dialogue, the actors mouthed their lines in French, German and English so their lip movements would correspond to the voices that were going to be recorded in post-production. There is no record of the English version being completed. The scenes in the chateau were shot in April and May 1930. The chateau also acted as housing where the cast and crew lived for the filming period. Living in the chateau was unpleasant for them as it was cold and infested with rats. The church yard scenes were shot in August 1930. The church was not an actual church, but a barn with a number of tombstones placed around it. This set was designed by the art director Hermann Warm
Hermann Warm
Hermann Warm was a German art director for films. Born on 1889 in Berlin, Germany, Warm was an important figure in the expressionist movement of the 1920s. Warm entered the German film industry in 1912 after working on-stage for a while. As well as doing set work with on films such as The Cabinet...
.
Critic and writer Kim Newman
Kim Newman
Kim Newman is an English journalist, film critic, and fiction writer. Recurring interests visible in his work include film history and horror fiction—both of which he attributes to seeing Tod Browning's Dracula at the age of eleven—and alternate fictional versions of history...
described Vampyrs style as closer to the experimental features such as Un chien andalou
Un chien andalou
Un Chien Andalou is a 1929 silent surrealist short film by the Spanish director Luis Buñuel and artist Salvador Dalí. It was Buñuel's first film and was initially released in 1929 to a limited showing in Paris, but became popular and ran for eight months....
than a "quickie horror film" made after the release of Dracula
Dracula (1931 film)
Dracula is a 1931 vampire-horror film directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as the title character. The film was produced by Universal and is based on the stage play of the same name by Hamilton Deane and John L...
(1931). Dreyer originally was going to film Vampyr in what he described as a "heavy style" but changed direction after cinematographer Maté showed him one shot that came out fuzzy and blurred. This washed out look was an effect Dreyer desired, and he had Maté shoot the film through a piece of gauze held three feet (.9 m) away from the camera to re-create this look. For other visuals in the film, Dreyer found inspiration from the fine arts. Actress Rena Mandel, who plays Gisèle, said that Dreyer showed her reproductions of paintings of Francisco Goya
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...
during filming. In Denmark, a journalist and friend of Dreyer, Henry Hellsen wrote in detail about the film and the artworks it appeared to draw on. When being asked about the intention of the film at the Berlin premiere, Dreyer 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". The filming of Vampyr was completed the middle of 1931.
Post-production
Universum Film AG
Universum Film AG, better known as UFA or Ufa, is a film company that was the principal film studio in Germany, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic and through World War II, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945...
, as they had the best sound equipment available to him at the time. Most of the actors did not dub their own voice. The only voices of the actors that are their own in the film are of Schmitz and Gunzburg. The sounds of dogs, parrots, and other animals in the film were fake and were done by professional imitators. Wolfgang Zeller
Wolfgang Zeller
Wolfgang Zeller was a German composer noted for his complex film music.-Early life:Born in Biesenrode, Germany, Zeller was the son of a vicar. As a child, he studied violin and showed an aptitude for composition...
composed the film's score and worked with Dreyer to develop the music.
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 attributed to a mistake. The German censors ordered cuts to the film that still exist today in some prints. The scenes which had to be toned down include the doctor's death under the milled flour and the vampire's death from the stake. There are other scenes that were shot and included in the script that 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 as well as a ferryman guiding Gray and Gisèle by getting young children to build a fire and sing a hymn to guide them back to the shore.
Dreyer had prepared a Danish version of the film which was based on the German version with Danish subtitles and title cards. The distributor could not afford to have the title cards completed in the manner they appear in the German version, which were instead finished with a more simple style. The distributor also wanted to make the pages in the book shown in the film as plain title cards which Dreyer did not allow, saying that "the old book is not an text in the ordinary sense, but an actor. Just as much as the others."
Release
The premiere of Vampyr in Germany was delayed by UFAUniversum Film AG
Universum Film AG, better known as UFA or Ufa, is a film company that was the principal film studio in Germany, home of the German film industry during the Weimar Republic and through World War II, and a major force in world cinema from 1917 to 1945...
, as the studio wanted the American films Dracula
Dracula (1931 film)
Dracula is a 1931 vampire-horror film directed by Tod Browning and starring Bela Lugosi as the title character. The film was produced by Universal and is based on the stage play of the same name by Hamilton Deane and John L...
and Frankenstein
Frankenstein (1931 film)
Frankenstein is a 1931 Pre-Code Horror Monster film from Universal Pictures directed by James Whale and adapted from the play by Peggy Webling which in turn is based on the novel of the same name by Mary Shelley. The film stars Colin Clive, Mae Clarke, John Boles and Boris Karloff, and features...
to be released first. The Berlin premiere was May 6, 1932. At this premiere, the audience booed the film which led to Dreyer cutting several scenes out of the film after the first showing. The film was distributed in France by Société Générale de Cinema who also distributed Dreyer's previous film The Passion of Joan of Arc. The Paris premiere was in September 1932 where Vampyr was the opening attraction of a new cinema on the Boulevard Raspail
Boulevard Raspail
Boulevard Raspail is a boulevard of Paris, in France.Its orientation is north-south, and joins boulevard Saint-Germain with place Denfert-Rochereau whilst traversing 7th, 6th and 14th arrondissements...
. At a showing of the film in Vienna
Vienna
Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...
, audiences demanded their money back. When this was denied, a riot broke out that led to police having to restore order with night sticks. When the film premiered in Copenhagen, Denmark in March 1933, Dreyer did not show up. Dreyer soon had a nervous breakdown and went to a mental hospital in France. The film was a financial failure.
Critical reception
Press in Europe ranged from mixed to negative. The press in Germany did not like the film. 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". Press reaction to the film in Paris was mixed. Reporter Herbert MatthewsHerbert Matthews
Herbert Lionel Matthews was a reporter and editorialist for the New York Times who grew to notoriety after revealing that Fidel Castro was still alive and living in the Sierra Maestra mountains, though Batista had claimed publicly that he was killed during the 26th of July Movement's...
of The New York Times wrote that Vampyr was "a hallucinating film", that "either held the spectators spellbound as in a long nightmare or else moved them to hysterical laughter". For many years after Vampyrs initial release, the film has been viewed by critics as one of Dreyer's weaker works.
More modern reception for Vampyr has been positive since its release. The review aggregator
Review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services . This system stores the reviews and then uses them for purposes such as: creating a website for users to view the reviews, selling information to third parties about consumer tendencies and creating databases for...
website Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is a website devoted to reviews, information, and news of films—widely known as a film review aggregator. Its name derives from the cliché of audiences throwing tomatoes and other vegetables at a poor stage performance...
reports that 100% of critics have given the film positive reviews, based upon a sample of 24, with an average rating of 8.6/10. Todd Kristel of the online film database Allmovie gave the film four and a half stars out of five, stating 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". Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum
Jonathan Rosenbaum is an American film critic. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for the Chicago Reader from 1987 until 2008, when he retired at the age of 65...
of the Chicago Reader wrote the "The greatness of Carl Dreyer's [Vampyr] derives partly from its handling of the vampire theme in terms of sexuality and eroticism and partly from its highly distinctive, dreamy look, but it also has something to do with Dreyer's radical recasting of narrative form". J. Hoberman
J. Hoberman
James Lewis Hoberman , also known as J. Hoberman, is an American film critic. He is currently the senior film critic for The Village Voice, a post he has held since 1988.-Education:...
of the Village Voice wrote that "Vampyr is Dreyer's most radical film—maybe one of my dozen favorite movies by any director". Anton Bitel
Anton Bitel
Dr Anton Bitel is a film critic, and an occasional tutor in Classics at the University of Oxford.Born in Australia, Anton obtained a Master's degree and Doctorate from the University of Oxford...
of Channel 4
Channel 4
Channel 4 is a British public-service television broadcaster which began working on 2 November 1982. Although largely commercially self-funded, it is ultimately publicly owned; originally a subsidiary of the Independent Broadcasting Authority , the station is now owned and operated by the Channel...
awarded the film four and a half stars out of five, comparing it the silent
Silent film
A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...
vampire film Nosferatu stating that it is "lesser known (but in many ways superior)" and that the film is "a triumph of the irrational, Dreyer's eerie memento mori
Memento mori
Memento mori is a Latin phrase translated as "Remember your mortality", "Remember you must die" or "Remember you will die". It names a genre of artistic work which varies widely, but which all share the same purpose: to remind people of their own mortality...
never allows either protagonist or viewer fully to wake up from its surreal nightmare".
Home media
Vampyr has been released with low quality image and sound as the original German and French sound and film negatives are lost. Prints of the French and German versions of the film exist but most of them are either incomplete or damaged.Vampyr was 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. Many of these prints are severely cut, such as the re-dubbed 60-minute English-language Castle of Doom print.
Vampyr was originally released on DVD on May 13, 1998 by Image Entertainment
Image Entertainment
Image Entertainment, Inc. is an independent licensee, producer and distributor of home entertainment programming and film & television productions in North America, with approximately 3,000 exclusive DVD titles and approximately 250 exclusive CD titles in domestic release, and approximately 450...
which ran at an abridged 72-minute running time. Image's release of Vampyr is a straight port of the Laserdisc
Laserdisc
LaserDisc was a home video format and the first commercial optical disc storage medium. Initially licensed, sold, and marketed as MCA DiscoVision in North America in 1978, the technology was previously referred to interally as Optical Videodisc System, Reflective Optical Videodisc, Laser Optical...
that film restorer David Shepard produced in 1991. The subtitles are large and ingrained due to the source print having Danish subtitles which have been blacked out and covered. This DVD also included the short film The Mascot as a bonus feature. The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection
The Criterion Collection is a video-distribution company selling "important classic and contemporary films" to film aficionados. The Criterion series is noted for helping to standardize the letterbox format for home video, bonus features, and special editions...
released a two-disc edition of Vampyr on July 22, 2008. This edition of the DVD includes the original German version of the film, along with a book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul's original screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 story "Carmilla". A Region 2 DVD of the film was released by Eureka Films on August 25, 2008. The Eureka release contains the same bonus material as the Criterion Collection discs, but also includes a commentary from director Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro
Guillermo del Toro is a Mexican director, producer, screenwriter, novelist and designer. He is mostly known for his acclaimed films, Blade II, Pan's Labyrinth and the Hellboy film franchise. He is a frequent collaborator with Ron Perlman, Federico Luppi and Doug Jones...
.