Vampire Flicks: Vampyr (1932)

You were probably expecting me to say I first learned of this fairly obscure item in the book, 101 Horror Movies You Must See Before You Die, or some prestigious documentary but, in fact, it was featured in the vampire section of The History of Sci-Fi and Horror. There, Butch Patrick made mention of what a strange film it is, noting how it had no real narrative and contained such oddities as a man whose shadow has detached itself from him and a menacing old woman, and the documentary itself showed clips of the aforementioned shadow rejoining its caster as he sits on a bench, the old woman looking around in an eerie manner, and the main character pulling back a shroud to see his own corpse, while he himself appeared to be vanishing into thin air. Patrick ended the small bit on by commenting, "It is a unique film," which is a massive understatement. In fact, giving it my personal label of "Vampire Flicks" is kind of an insult because, while it is a vampire movie at the end of the day, that doesn't begin to do it justice. I finally saw it in 2018 when I bought the Criterion Collection release on DVD and, while there are a number of movies that have a slow, dream-like pace and atmosphere, this is one which I can truly say is very much akin to watching someone else's nightmare. Everything about it is ethereal, from the fuzzy, blurred look and minimal dialogue to the characters, most of whom are not even played by professional actors, being hollow vessels for the "story," which itself is little more than a series of unusual events and weird images that, as in a dream, they just go along with without any questioning. That's also the approach you as a viewer have to take when watching this film, as it's a stream of consciousness on celluloid that you experience rather than a straightforward plot with a beginning, middle, and end which you follow. You also have to be in a certain mood for it and it's best not to watch if you're tired, as its tone and pace will likely put you to sleep. Speaking for myself, while I'm not always in the right mindset to watch Vampyr, and I wouldn't call it a movie I love, either, I can't deny that it is a fascinating piece of work.

Allan Gray, a young man obsessed with the occult to the point where his worldview has become a blur of the real and supernatural, finds himself at a riverside inn near the village of Courtempierre one evening. Taking a room for the night, he gets a scare when he hears someone chanting on the floor above his and, when he investigates, comes upon a man with a disfigured face. He runs back to his room and locks himself in, and after a restless night, he's awakened when a mysterious old man enters his room. He tells Allan, "She must not die. Do you hear me?", and leaves a package with the message that it is to be opened after his death. Feeling that someone is in mortal danger, Allan leaves the inn and goes exploring. He finds his way to an eerie, old rundown building, filled with shadows who wander about the grounds, work, and even dance by themselves, as well as a man with a wooden leg whose own shadow comes and goes at will and a creepy old woman who appears to have sway over all those there. Exploring further, he hears the sounds of dogs barking and a child crying, and encounters a menacing old man who tells him there are no dogs or children there. He then shows Allan out, after which he meets with the old woman, who gives him a bottle of poison. Allan, meanwhile, heads on through the woods and comes across a manor, the lord of which turns out to be the man who visited him in his room at the inn. Before he can get in and meet him formally, the lord is fatally shot and dies soon afterward, despite Allan and the servants' attempts to save him. Allan stays with the family while one of the servants goes to fetch the police and, remembering the parcel they lord gave him, opens it to find a book called The Strange History of Vampires. Reading through it, he learns what vampires are, how they feed on the blood of the living, and pass their curse onto them. Through this, he realizes that the lord's gravely ill daughter, Leone, is under the influence of a vampire, who just happens to be the old woman from. Identified in the book as Marguerite Chopin, she has preyed upon the people of Courtempierre before and has a living servant in the man whom Allan also met at the old castle, who's also the village doctor. Now, Allan and the lord's manservant must save Leone and her younger sister, Giselle, from becoming Marguerite and the doctor's latest victims.

Vampyr was the tenth film for Danish-born filmmaker, Carl Theodor Dreyer, who'd entered the film industry in the early 1910's and made his directorial debut with 1919's The President. In 1928, he made his final silent film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, now considered one of his greatest accomplishments but, at the time, it was a flop. After his initial follow-up fell through, Dreyer, who was working in the French film industry and knew he would now have to make the switch to sound, went to England to study how to do so. There, he and writer Christen Jul got together to craft a screenplay after Dreyer decided he wanted to make a horror film, specifically about vampires, since the stage production of Dracula had been a big hit in both London and New York. The two of them used a pair of stories from the collection, In a Glass Darkly, specifically Carmilla and The Room in the Dragon Volant, as their basis, and Dreyer then sought independent financing from Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, who, in exchange, was cast in the lead role. Unfortunately for the director, Vampyr failed even worse than The Passion of Joan of Arc, and this, combined with what a draining experience production on the film was, caused Dreyer to have a nervous breakdown. He entered a French psychiatric clinic for some time and then basically dropped out of sight, not making another movie until 1943, when he directed Day of Wrath. The rest of Dreyer's output would be just as sporadic, as his next film wasn't until 1955 with The Word and then, in 1964, he made what would be his final film, Gertrud. He attempted to make a movie about Jesus Christ afterward but, for various reasons, it never came to be. Dreyer died of pneumonia in 1968, at the age of 79.

I know I went into it in the introduction but I must stress how words really cannot do justice to what it's like to watch Vampyr. It's nothing but 72 minutes of mood and atmosphere, played out with a cast of characters who themselves feel like phantoms in how they act and speak. None of the performances are particularly amazing, and some of the main characters don't do much of anything, but their mere presence and strange behavior, sometimes acting and speaking as if they're in a trance, help give the movie its unique air. Case in point, Nicolas de Gunzberg (using the pseudonym of Julian West) as our "protagonist," Allan Gray. While an intertitle tells us that he's interested in the occult and finds himself in this odd locale as a result of his studies, he's little more than an observer who continuously finds himself confronted with strange sights and sounds at the small inn he stays at, the surrounding countryside, the rundown castle, and the manor in the woods. Another intertitle tells us that his snooping around is because he has a feeling that someone is in danger but, in reality, he just as easily could be moving on from the inn when he comes across the rundown castle filled with sentient shadows, the sinister old woman, and the mysterious old man. Following that, he's supposedly guided by the shadows and finds his way to the manor and witnesses the death of the man who visited him in his room at the inn that morning. As he stays with the man's family, he remembers the parcel the man left in his room and opens it to find a book about vampires. In reading it, he figures that Leone, the lord's ill daughter, is falling under the influence of a vampire, something he should've already known, seeing as the opening intertitle said vampires were part of his studies. He's also downright stupid as, just after he reads an entry in the book about a Hungarian doctor who was found to be a vampire's servant, he learns that the strange, suspicious old man he met at the castle is the village doctor, but still volunteers for a blood transfusion for Leone. Following the transfusion, Allan loses consciousness due to the blood loss and it is the lord's manservant who continues the reading of the book, learns the identity of the vampire attacking Leone, and how to destroy her. It's also only through the manservant's intervention that Allan awakens in time to stop the doctor from poisoning Leone.

All throughout the film, Allan has this same blank, often wide-eyed expression on his face, tends to move rather slowly, and when he speaks, he barely shows any emotion; basically, he comes off like a sleepwalker, aligning with the movie's dreamish vibe. Also, the opening intertitle tells us that his studies into the occult have caused his view of the world to become blurred between the real and the supernatural, meaning that this whole thing could be his own dream or, at the very least, his warped

perception of a real situation. One of the film's most memorable sequences comes when, while pursuing the doctor, Allan sits down on a bench and has an out of body experience where he roams the grounds of the castle in a spiritual form. Besides finding where the lord's other daughter, Gisele, is being kept after having been abducted, Allan also witnesses and experiences his own burial at the hands of the doctor and the vampire. Whether it's something he actually experiences, a hallucination caused by his lack of blood, or a

memory of his own death, with this story being his wanderings in the afterlife, is anyone's guess. Upon returning to his body, he helps the manservant in opening the vampire's crypt, although the servant is the one who actually stakes her. With that, Allan saves Giselle and the two of them escape down a fog-enshrouded river, eventually coming to a lovely clearing.

As you'd probably expect, given the film's nature, there's no love interest for Allan Gray here, although there are two supporting female characters in the form of the unnamed lord's daughters. Gisele (Rena Mandel), the younger of the two, looks after her ailing sister following her father's murder and has a totally drained, sad expression on her face throughout the film, coming across like somebody who's been put through the wringer. Her older sister, Leone (Sybille Schmitz),

is the latest victim of the vampire, Marguerite Chopin, and, as she remains bedridden for much of the film, is fighting a losing battle for her soul as Marguerite feeds on her more and more. You see this battle firsthand in one chilling scene where, when she's brought back into the manor after being lured outside by Marguerite in order for her to drink some of her blood, Leone awakens and cries, wishing for death. This upsets Gisele but Leone insists, "I know. I'm lost. I'm damned." But then, Leone's expression changes from sorrow to a bloodthirsty, sneering grin, as her eyes scan the ceiling before settling on her horrified sister, glowering at her before she leaves the room. Gisele, not understanding what's happening to Leone, believes her to be dying. Later, when the doctor comes by, he attempts to goad Leone into committing suicide by drinking poison, thereby eternally damning her soul, and although Allan and the manservant manage to stop him, he's revealed to have abducted Gisele and is holding her at Marguerite's castle. However, Allan and the manservant manage to save Leone when they find Marguerite's grave and stake her, and Allan himself finds and rescues Gisele, with the two of them escaping down the river. 

As for the girls' father (Maurice Schultz), though he doesn't have much screentime before he's murdered by one of Marguerite's servants, he sees fit to deliver a book about the history of vampires to Allan at the inn and gives him the cryptic message of, "She must not die." Why did he specifically seek out Allan? And why didn't he just come out and tell him what was going on, as he clearly knows and also seems to know of Allan's personal interest in the subject? In this kind of

movie, we're never given an answer, and it doesn't really matter, either. And despite his murder, at the end of the movie, the lord appears as an angry spirit to the doctor and the peg-legged soldier who's also been aiding Marguerite. He sees to it that the former falls to his death down a flight of stairs, while the doctor flees to a mill, where he's killed by the lord's manservant. Said servant (Albert Bras), despite being fairly old and feeble-looking, ends up being more of a hero than Allan at the end of the day. While Allan volunteers for a blood transfusion to keep Leone alive, the servant reads through the book on vampires, learns how they corrupt their victims, how to destroy them, and, most significantly, the identity of the vampire who's feeding on Leone. He then wakes Allan up in time to stop Leone from drinking poison and, following Allan's out of body experience, he helps the servant in opening Marguerite's grave and staking her. The servant also kills the doctor in the mill by activating the machinery and burying him in flour, suffocating him.

The vampire, Marguerite Chopin (Henriette Gerard), is a villain whose evil deeds are talked about more than they're actually seen. In fact, the only horrible things we see her do is give the doctor the bottle of poison he later uses to try to kill Leone and briefly feed on Leone before Allan and Giselle's approach prompt her to retreat. She may also have been responsible for killing the servant who went to get the police, whose coach arrives back at the manor with his dead body. Otherwise, she does little more than stand around and look menacing, as well as yell at the dancing shadows in her castle to be quiet in one of her few instances of dialogue. And yet, surprisingly, there is a palpable malevolent vibe about her, both due to the severe, scowling expressions on her face and what we learn about her from the book. As the manservant reads, the text describes how Marguerite has preyed upon the village of Courtempierre before, claiming eleven lives, and that when she was alive, she was equally as wicked, so much so that, when she died, the church denied her the Last Sacraments. Now, with the assistance of the village doctor, she's not only continuing her reign of terror but is attempting to damn Leone's soul through suicide. Thus, she more than deserves to have the metal spike driven through her heart at the end of the movie.

The character whom I find to be the most unnerving is the doctor (Jan Hieronimko), as he's just such a creepy-looking old guy. Even before it's revealed he's Marguerite's servant, when Allan first encounters him at the old castle, the way he slowly creeps down the stairs and around the corner at the bottom, then stares intensely at Allan when he tells him there are no children or dogs to be found there, is really spooky. It's also unnerving when he smiles evilly at the bottle of poison Marguerite gives him and later, when he appears at the manor, examines Leone, and asks Allan to provide his blood for a transfusion, again looking at him very intensely and then getting out the equipment for it before Allan really gives an answer. After that, he tells a nun who's attending to Leone to go to bed and, when she's slow in doing so, he angrily orders her, and also ignores Allan when he says he's losing blood, saying, "Nonsense! Your blood is right here!" As per Marguerite's orders, the doctor, after increasing Leone's bloodlust with the transfusion, nearly succeeds in compelling her to commit suicide by drinking poison but Allan stops her. However, somewhere along the line, he abducts Gisele and takes her back to the castle, tying her up in a room. She's not his prisoner for long, as the lord's angry spirit attacks both him and the peg-legged soldier, prompting the doctor to flee and allowing Allan to save Gisele. The doctor winds up in an old mill, where he's killed by the manservant who activates the machinery and buries him alive in flour.

It should be clear by this point why I said labeling this film as a "vampire flick" is something of an insult, as well as a bit of a misnomer in that, while the main villains are a vampire and her Renfield-like servants, it encompasses so much more, as did Carl Dreyer's intentions for making it, I'm sure. In fact, while it's often said to be an adaptation of the story, Carmilla, all it takes from it is the notion of a female vampire (who's more akin to Carmilla's mother than Carmilla herself) and a bit of the lesbian overtones in how Marguerite's current

victim is a woman, just as it does the concept of a live burial from The Room in the Dragon Volant. Regardless, like in Nosferatu, the exposition for what vampires are and how they function is detailed in a book given to the protagonist. They're described as having been people who were so evil in life that they've become demonic entities in death, deriving their power from Satan himself and existing only to feed on the blood of the living and corrupt them into becoming vampires themselves. Before we see the internal struggle Leone is going

through, Allan Gray reads about it, with the book describing the victims as being torn between their developing craving for blood and the horror over what's happening to them. It also describes how those who become vampires target their immediate loved ones (as seen when Leone glowers at Gisele when her bloodlust momentarily takes hold of her), leading to whole families and villages becoming infected with vampirism. And in a truly horrific bit that I don't think I've seen in any other movie, it's

said that the vampire's ultimate goal is to push its victim to suicide, eternally damning their soul. Aside from the feeding on blood, the human servants, and their feeding being part of what causes others to become vampires, the only other familiar trope in this film is the driving of a stake (in this case, an iron one) through the heart, although other methods of destroying vampires are hinted at in the book.

Staying on the actual topic of vampires, I personally view this film as a sort of feature-length employment of a technique Francis Ford Coppola tried to go for in Bram Stoker's Dracula decades later. In that film, Coppola put in numerous strange phenomena, chief among them Dracula's sentient shadow, as well as images of rats running across a ceiling beam while upside down and the like, to accentuate the presence of a supernatural being like a vampire. I feel that Dreyer was maybe going for the same thing here, with all of the strange things

Allan Gray begins seeing and experiencing the minute he enters the village of Courtempierre and the surrounding countryside. The book in the film also states that vampires have sway over the dead, particularly the souls of executed criminals, which I think could be meant as an explanation for why the peg-legged soldier's own shadow has become detached from him and why the spirit of the murdered lord is the one who disposes of him, while his still living manservant kills the doctor. 

Going back to my original point, I will admit that, not being a fan of Bram Stoker's Dracula, I think Dreyer was more successful at this than Coppola. As impressive as the visuals and effects in that film are, I find them to be endlessly distracting and they feel as though Coppola were trying to show off, as it wasn't an approach expected of him, whereas all of the strange stuff you see in Vampyr fit in naturally with a movie that's weird, experimental, and dream-like from beginning to end.

Vampyr is very much all about visuals and mood rather than story and characters (honestly, during the middle of the movie, I tend to lose track of what exactly is going on or who's doing what because of slow and ethereal everything is). When I think of the movie, what comes to mind is a series of eerie, ghostly images, such as the strange, simultaneously angelic and creepy wind vane on the inn's roof, silhouetted against the cloudy sky; the shot of a man with a large scythe ringing a bell down by the river; numerous shots of Allan Gray

wandering through dark corridors and exploring strange buildings, wherein he finds more bizarre things; the peg-legged soldier's shadow wandering about before rejoining him as he sits down on a bench; shadows dancing away within the castle before Marguerite silences them; the creepy shots of the doctor when he first appears, followed immediately by the first good looks at Marguerite; the unsettling sight of Leone going from distraught over what's happening to her to becoming possessed by a vampire's desire for blood; and the

entire sequence of Allan leaving his body and watching his own burial. These images would be striking enough in any film of the time but there's something about the way they come off here that really makes it feel like you're literally watching a nightmare. The film's otherworldly look is mostly down to a technique Carl Dreyer employed of shooting through a thin layer of gauze but it also comes through normal graininess, aging, and the film's having to be copied from already existing

prints, with some shots looking much blurrier and more washed out than others. Either way, it makes you feel like you're watching ghosts in some sort of afterlife rather than real people in real locations. Dreyer and his cinematographer, Rudolph Mate, added to it further by creating some truly surreal lighting effects for certain moments by appearing to roll and tilt around very strong light-beams or have actors move and twist around in front of them, producing a roiling, distorting effect in the shadows.

Altogether, the film is very well-photographed by Mate, who'd also shot The Passion of Joan of Arc. Besides the ghostly look and amazing depth of the numerous shadows with the black-and-white, the camerawork is very fluid, often floating around, smoothly panning to, and directly following characters like Allan Gray, as if it were a ghost itself. The best photographed sequence in the film is, again, Allan's out of body experience, which has plenty of impressive shots of his spiritual self looking at his own corpse and, at one point, it

switches to the body's POV as the lid is closed on the coffin. Through a small window in the lid, we see the soldier screwing the lid tight, Marguerite glaring down at Allan, and, as the coffin is carried out the graveyard, the ceiling passing overhead and then giving way to the sky and trees, before passing by the church. All of this is intercut with shots in front of the corpse's head within the coffin and looking down through the window at his face from the outside, adding up to a truly unforgettable

sequence. Speaking of editing, Dreyer uses it to create a brief but unsettling dream or vision that Allan appears to have when he passes out from the blood transfusion. As he lies on a sofa with his head on a pillow, you see flashing lights around his head that appear to signify lightning, complete with thunderous sounds, and you also see shots of a skull rising up and a skeletal hand holding the bottle of poison the doctor attempts to make Leone drink. Allan tosses back and forth on the pillow, but before the dream or premonition or whatever it is can go on any further, he's awakened by the manservant, alerting him to the danger that's afoot.

As I said in the introduction, the film plays out like a dream in that things just... happen, and the characters, particularly Allan Gray, although scared or unnerved by it, simply go along. Despite Allan's arrival in Courtempierre ostensibly being due to his studies into the occult, that first shot of him simply wandering towards the inn is akin to the random situation you're plopped into when a dream starts, with no knowledge of how it began or what led you to it. As soon as he arrives, Allan starts seeing and experiencing one strange thing after the other, like

the chanting in the room above his, his coming across the deformed man when he goes to investigate, the old lord randomly wandering into his room and leaving a parcel for him, even though he's never met him before, the castle filled with shadows that move around by themselves and the sound of dogs and a child crying, the strange old doctor, and so on. It just keeps going like this throughout the whole length of the film and yet, Allan, despite being weirded out by it, rarely stops

to question any of it, instantly continually moving forward. The instances of dialogue he has with the characters also come off like those a dreaming person would have with figments of their dream, such as Allan asking the lord in his room, "Who are you?", and he simply says, "Quiet. Shh. She must not die. Understand?", or this one between him and the doctor: "Did you hear that?" "Yes. The child." "The child?" "Yes, yes! The child!" "There's no child here." "But the dogs." "There are no children or dogs here." "No?" "No. Good night."

Speaking of dialogue, this may as well be a silent movie, for the most part, due to the minimal dialogue, with most of it spoken in hushed whispers, a fair number of intertitles giving us Allan Gray's backstory and what compels him to continue his investigation, close-ups of the vampire book's text as Allan and the manservant read through it, and the music score being the most prominent sound element. There are definitely elements where the actual soundtrack comes into play to help with the mood, such as Allan hearing

noises like the chanting, the sounds of the shadows dancing to music in the castle, the sounds of dogs barking and a child wailing there, and so on, but, again, it's almost purely a visual experience. In fact, it was shot silent and all of the sound and dialogue were recorded in post, with the actors merely mouthing the words during filming. Also, in order to give it a broad appeal, Carl Dreyer planned to create three different versions of the movie and had the actors do each of their dialogue

scenes three times, mouthing their lines in French, German, and English, and then recording the corresponding dub tracks later (at this time, the German version is the only one commercially available, as I'll get into). Only Nicolas de Gunzberg and Sybille Schmitz dubbed themselves, and all of the animal sounds, from the dogs to the parrot the doctor has in his office, were done by people rather than through recordings of actual animals, which is just one more element that adds to the strangeness.

In order to keep costs down, as well as lend all the more to the feeling he wished to evoke, Dreyer took F.W. Murnau's gambit of shooting much of Nosferatu on location and went to the next level by shooting the entirety of Vampyr in real areas and buildings in France. Specifically, they shot in the Loiret, Oise, and Aisne regions of northern France, with much filming done in the actual community of Courtempierre, including the inn in the opening and the Chateau de Courtempierre, which was used as the large house where the lord and his daughters

live (it was also where the cast and crew stayed during their time there). The inn looks innocuous enough on the outside and in the room immediately beyond the front door, but when Allan Gray is shown to his room, the place comes off as strangely bare, with completely white walls devoid of any papering, as well as a ladder standing in the middle of one hall. Allan's actual room seems fairly normal (as much as a place can be when shot through the movie's gauze-laden filter), but there are eerie things about it, such as a tilted painting on

one section of wall, a painting that shows mourners at a deathbed, along with a grinning, knife-wielding skeleton standing over the deceased, and just how much the white door sticks out from between the papered walls. The locale around the inn is similarly eerie due to the overcast sky, the misty river, and the men who make use of it, including the one guy with the scythe. When Allan walks beyond the inn, he heads through a forest filled with the sentient shadows and eventually

finds his way to the manor. It's a large, stately building out in the middle of the woods, with big, elegant rooms such as the foyer and the library, where many of the scenes are set, and smaller, sadder-feeling bedrooms upstairs, one of which is where Leone lays for much of her screentime. Like at the inn, the hallways and corridors of the manor's second floor feel strangely bare, and they're also rather dark and claustrophobic. (In real life, the place wasn't as pleasant to stay at as it would seem, as it was cold and had a rat problem. In a 1964 interview, Nicolas de Gunzburg also described it as the type of place that could have been haunted.)

The huge, rundown building revealed to be the home of Marguerite Chopin and her minions, as well as lost souls she dominates, is the most memorable setting to me, mainly because it doesn't feel like a castle. I guess that is what it's supposed to be but it feels more like a ruined factory, mill, or storage building, with its smooth stone walls, ladders, and old, dusty objects like bottles, carriage wheels, and the like littering the floor, leaning up against the walls, and, in some rooms, hanging from the ceiling. It's only when Allan Gray makes

his way through a cellar-like room with brick walls that the place starts to look more like a castle but then, he climbs up through a panel and, beyond a room that's later revealed to be where they make the coffin Allan sees himself being buried in, he finds the section where the doctor lives. Here, art director Hermann Warm was able to go a little crazy, filling up one room with small, deformed-looking skeletons, a human skull sitting amidst some books on a desk, a primate skull atop another desk housing a letter presser and a lantern, and a

parrot in a cage, and another room with more skulls lining a mantel above a fireplace, bottles of chemicals, a stew-pot and some ladles, and, in the hallway beyond, a grandfather clock without a face (in the climax, Allan finds that this is where the doctor keeps the key to the room where he imprisons Gisele). Creepily, when Marguerite enters those rooms, her presence seems to imbue the skulls with life, as their eye-sockets light up and they turn around by themselves. All of these set dressings are accentuated by the naturally old, peeling wallpaper that leaves bare patches here and there, and the winding staircase that lies beyond those two rooms, from which the doctor slowly descends when he makes his first appearance.

One location that was truly not what it seemed was the churchyard where Allan and the manservant stake Marguerite in her grave; in reality, the church was a refurbished barn, with fake tombstones placed around it. Gunzburg later claimed the grave was real but I have a feeling that's not the case (he also claimed that all of the misty, hazy pictorial effects were natural rather than the work of the cinematographer), although the enormous slab covering it does look very convincing. The mill where the doctor runs for cover and ultimately

meets his demise, however, was very real and looked so great that they used it instead of the original ending, which had the doctor dying in a swamp. Indeed, it's another memorable location, thanks to its big wheels, cogs, and mechanisms, the small staircase beyond that, and the chamber where flour sacks are filled, which is where the doctor is trapped and suffocated. And finally, at the very end of the movie, after making their way down the misty river, Allan and Gisele come ashore to a lovely, sunny meadow and a patch of forest that looks straight out of a fairy tale.

Besides being memorable and interesting to look at in and of themselves, it's also impressive that the filmmakers were able to effectively achieve the visual effects necessary for the film's images during a time when the craft was in its infancy. Many of the effects are quite simple, like many sentient shadows, Allan Gray's see-through spiritual form during his out of body experience, Marguerite's body disintegrating into a skeleton after she's staked (something not even a Hollywood production like Universal's Dracula featured and

which is done in a remarkably smooth manner), and the lord of the manor's spirit appearing in the form of an enormous head outside of the doctor's office window, and they were probably achieved through equally simple optical techniques, but it's still awesome that they look as good as they do, considering the times. Some of the effects, however, are a bit more complicated, like when Allan sees a reflection in the river when there's no one on the bank casting it, the shot of the peg-

legged soldier's shadow rejoining him, a shot of one shadow "un-digging" a hole in the castle's courtyard, and Allan's living body remaining on the bench while his spiritual one roams around (said body becomes transparent as well, which may or may not have been a mistake) but they're pulled off just as skillfully and effectively.

Despite the lack of major onscreen violence (the lord of the manor's shooting death is done entirely through shadow and the one servant's death features a tiny bit of blood dripping from the carriage), the film ran into trouble with the German censors, who demanded cuts to the staking of Marguerite and the doctor getting buried under the flour. Though some of these cuts are retained in some prints, ultimately, in the Criterion Collection's complete release of the film, it cuts from a shot of the manservant just about to drive

the stake in to a quick shot of the sky and then to Marguerite's body as she disintegrates into a skeleton. The doctor's death, on the other hand, is fairly brutal and drawn out, as you first see him desperately trying to escape the chamber as it slowly fills up with flour, cursing the manservant and demanding he let him out, before he slowly begins to suffocate, letting out one last terrified yell before you get several final shots of his dead body almost completely buried, his fingers gripping onto the gate. I can see how censors at the time would've found this to be quite horrific and unsettling but, given what a villain the doctor was, watching this is nothing less than cathartic for me, personally.

The music score was composed by Wolfgang Zeller, whom Carl Dreyer worked with very closely in order to ensure the sound he wanted. Like I said earlier, the score is constant throughout the film, with very few instances of complete silence, although that's not say it doesn't know when to back off for the maximum effect. Because of that and how it, for the most part, underscores the action rather than plays directly to it or accentuates it, it feels more like music played to a silent movie. The opening at the inn, for example, is scored in a manner that continuously highlights the place's eerie atmosphere, and it continues on to when he makes his way to the rundown castle. When we see the shadows dancing and making music, the folksy tune they're making appears to be fighting against the actual score, as you'll hear a little bit of it, then the downbeat main score will come back in for a few seconds, more of the tune, and so on, culminating in a cartoonish-sounding, villainous bit of music that abruptly cuts off when Marguerite Chopin yells at the shadows to be quiet (which is actually a mixing mistake in the restoration). It then goes back to the eerie underscoring for the rest of Allan's snooping about the castle, as well as when Marguerite is formally introduced, along with the doctor. The music starts to play more to the actual visuals when we get to the manor, switching to a solemn, tragic sound when we see how the family is affected by what's happening to Leone, which is only punctuated and compounded when the lord is murdered. When Allan first opens up the book about vampires and starts to read through it, the music becomes very bombastic, but after Marguerite feeds on Leone out in the yard and she's brought back into the house, it becomes sadder-sounding when he reads about how those victimized by vampires target those closest to them. Leone's own struggle with what's happening to her is reflected in the music, which becomes soft and sad when she cries, wishing for death, but when she's then overtaken by her growing thirst for blood, it becomes menacing and downright freaky, with high-pitched, screechy strings accompanied by lower, uncomfortable ones.

As the film goes on from this point, the score becomes more and more experimental, notably when Allan has his nightmare after passing out from giving blood, which is scored with a loud crackling sound, akin to thunder, and frantic strings as we see the skeletal hand holding the bottle of poison. Then, when Allan stops the doctor from poisoning Leone and he flees from the house, the music becomes as big, frantic, and traditional as it ever gets, but even that doesn't last long, as when the doctor runs out of the house (in the midst of which is another instance where the music abruptly stops), you hear the thunderclap-like sounds raging, followed by very creepy, wailing noises that sound like human voices and instruments mashed together. The music then returns to the way it was earlier, quiet and ethereal, when, while chasing the doctor, Allan sits down on a bench. It then underscores his out of body experience, becoming especially eerie and creepy during the vision of his own burial, until it drops out completely and all you hear are the sounds of the church bells. The staking of Marguerite is scored in a manner that starts out low and subtle but then grows and grows, reaching a fever pitch when the servant drives the iron stake in. The music then stops and, while the camera focuses on the sky, you hear the sound of hammering, followed by the shot of Marguerite's body becoming a skeleton, which is scored softly. The immediate revelation that Leone has been freed from the vampire's grasp is scored very beautifully, becoming soft and final when she lays back in peace and the manservant pushes the stone tablet back over Marguerite's grave. With that, there's some strong yet creeping music for when the lord of the manor's spirit comes to take revenge on the doctor and the soldier, although the doctor's actual death scene isn't truly scored, save for some backing with the "thunderclaps," as the loud sounds of the machinery are more than enough. Finally, the movie's ending, where Allan and Gisele make their way to the lovely spot of woods and meadow across the river, is suitably scored with the most beautiful piece of music in the whole film, signifying the end of the nightmare.

While various prints survive, the original film and sound negatives for both the German and French versions of Vampyr are lost, which is why, no matter the restoration, the film's picture and audio quality aren't as great as they could be. The restorations, the first of which was in the early 90's, have been further complicated by how, for the various international releases, they would take the original German print, cut out the instances of dialogue in that language, and splice in the takes that were done in English and French, as well as the cuts the German censors asked for. The English language version is either lost or was never completed, but the film was released in the U.S. in a heavily edited and dubbed version, with almost constant narration, under titles such as The Vampire and Castle of Doom (these versions can be seen on YouTube but, be warned, the audio and picture are absolutely horrendous). The Criterion Collection edition contains the most complete version of the German release, as well as an "English text" version that, in addition to the subtitles, also features English intertitles and English-written inserts for the pages of the book on vampires. If you have a hard time reading subtitles, I'd recommend that version as, while the original German version does come with subtitles for the onscreen texts, they clash horribly, as you can see in one screenshot in the section where I talked about the minimal amount of dialogue.

When Vampyr premiered in Berlin, Carl Dreyer, when asked what his intent behind it was, answered that he, "Just wanted to make a film different from all other films." He certainly accomplished that, as this is unlike any other movie, horror or otherwise, from that time period and even today, there are few that are as ghostly. The story and characters are rather thin but the focus here is on atmosphere and the way things look and, on that score, the film succeeds marvelously, as it's full of numerous images and sounds you aren't likely to forget, has an eerie visual style punctuated by the real locations and the numerous impressive effects, a lack of dialogue and almost constant music score that makes it feel like a sound movie with silent film aspects, and plays out like you're having a haunting dream while you're awake (as you can see, even the title has that vibe). It is a film worth seeing but, be advised, you'd best know who you are and understand the mindset you need to be in before attempting it. Also, if you're just interested in a typical vampire movie, you'd best look elsewhere. But, if you are intrigued by the idea of a movie as otherworldly as this then, by all means, check it out.