[6]
An occultist beds down at a remote inn where he discovers a young lady succumbing to vampirism after being bitten by an old woman — an old woman who is supposed to be buried in a nearby graveyard. Despite its title, Vampyr is absent all the usual stylings and accoutrement of other vampire film outings. You won’t find bats, fangs, or the site of any ghouls. But you will experience 73 minutes that float over and through you like a dream. Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc) employs long, sophisticated camera movements, shadow play, and gauzy photography to cast a potent spell. The pacing may be too languid for modern audiences, but anyone open to the experience may find it hypnotic.
As with Joan of Arc, Dreyer incorporates extreme closeups of the actors like few directors ever did at the time. One such effective moments is when a woman circles her sister’s bed as the sister’s sleepy face slowly morphs into a fiendish one. Another highlight comes when the occultist (Julian West) sits down under the moonlight. His spirit leaves his body. We then follow the spirit (superimposed to appear transparent) into a nearby home where he finds his own dead body lying in a coffin. He follows the pallbearers to burial before reuniting with his physical body. Was it a dream? Sure. Does it make sense? Hell if I know.
Vampyr is Dreyer’s first sound film, but it contains many trappings of the silent era. The amount of time the film spends making the audience read pages from a book about vampires is tedious. There’s very little dialogue in the movie, which aids in the pervasive dreamlike atmosphere. The sound effects and sound design are crude at best, sometimes jarring or unconvincing. It would probably have been better served as a silent film. But with its beautiful photography, stylistic flourishes, and progressive cinematic techniques, it’s a noteworthy marker in the history of phantasmagoric cinema.
With Maurice Shutz, Rena Mandel, and Sybille Schmitz.