Vampyr - Criterion Collection (1931)

With Vampyr Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer's brilliance at achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere profoundly unsettling imagery (as in The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath) was for once applied to the horror genre. Yet the result-concerning an occult student assailed by various supernatural haunts and local evildoers at an inn outside Paris-is nearly unclassifiable a host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds creating a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs ominous scythes and foreboding echoes Vampyr is one of cinema's great nightmares.SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:New restored high-definition digital transfer of the 1998 film restoration by Martin Koerber and the Cineteca di BolognaOptional all-new English-text version of the filmAudio commentary featuring film scholar Tony RaynsCarl Th. Dreyer (1966) a documentary by Jorgen Roos chronicling Dreyer's careerVisual essay by scholar Casper Tybjerg on Dreyer's influences in creating VampyrA 19TK radio broadcast of Dreyer reading an essay about filmmakingNew and improved English subtitle translationPLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by Mark Le Fanu and Kim Newman Martin Koerber on the restoration and an archival interview with producer and star Nicolas de Gunzburg as well as a book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul's original screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu 1871 story "Carmilla" a source for the filmSystem Requirements:Running Time: 75 minutes Language: German Subtitles: English Format: DVD MOVIE Genre: HORROR/VAMPIRES Rating: NR UPC: 715515030427 Manufacturer No: CC1757DDVD Product Description

YES!!!

I just about jumped out of my chair when I saw that Vampyr was getting the Criterion treatment. I love this film and own the first dvd pressing of it which is alright so I can only imagine seeing it get the care that is deserves. Already put my pre-order in and am counting down the days. June 5, 2008

Germanic ideal of a vampire's bloodlust- UNDEAD UNDEAD UNDEAD

This cinematic piece of visual poetry defies easy catagorizing. Is it a vampire film? Oh, sure, but if you merely desire a little bit(e) from the traditional DRACULA story, you will soon find yourself disappointed. It could be argued, that most of this film, is a sleepwalker's hazy recollections in the morning, or a hallucination by a skitzoid young man, instead of a surreal odyssey into the damnation of the living dead, doomed to drink blood to remain young. This main protagonist, Herr von GRAY, is a sensitive man, given to the study of occult books, fantasizing about vampires, ghosts and death. He arrives at a small, poor country Inn, and that's when all surreal HELL breaks out. The director, DREYER, was famous in the French avant guarde film world, such as it was back then, for his previous film "THE PASSSION OF JOAN OF ARC" from 1927. OH, and guess who designed the sets, and was the art director for VAMPYR? None other than Herman Warm, who designed sets for CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI, an undeniable masterpiece of German pre-WWII "Bauhaus" influenced set design. If just WARM were involved in this film, as art director, it would still be well worth seeing. Oddly enough, the director chose to work with mostly non-actors, for the authenticity. He did use two actual actors. The lead was an actor, a wealthy German Baron who also co-produced, and financed the film. He plays the lead man, GRAY, who entering the Inn, finds that he has entered a world of nightmares. He looks out the window, and sees a man with a scythe going on a boat. ITS THE SPECTOR OF DEATH ITSELF. Next, a man's shadow walks down the stairs outside the Inn, and sits down on a bench. Then, a man also walks up to the bench, sits down, and we realize that the SHADOW BELONGS TO THE MAN WHO JUST SAT NEXT TO IT. Then, they leave together, with the shadow reconnected to the man. SO, a land of SHADOWS is brought into vivid existence, thru clever technical effects. Another oddity to the film, is a near total lack of dialouge. That helps the film, but having a lot of back story to read as pages flash up on the scene, one wonders why it was not given to some kind of voice over. No doubt the presence of very little dialogue throughout the film, only lends to that uneasy, dreamlike quality. Often, one is tempted to see this as a silent film, but of course, there is SOME talking going on here and there. Next a woman is seen having her blood sucked from her body. We end up reading a book with GRAY about Vampires, and the local legend of an Evil woman who turned the whole town into vampires, before she was stopped. Extreme close-ups of the bizarre gothic wood cuts in the book, and then, a long shot thru a bookcase with a human skull once more visually brings in the leitmotif of death, and the German romantic ideal of death. Next, we have some screens of a man seen pitching hay, but the film is running backwards. Apparently, in this dream nightmare world, time and action can move backwards. All parameters of logic are ignored, and the nightmare advanced on the viewer. Then its dark, and we are moving around outside, in dense, impenetrable fog, searching for the master vampire's grave, so they can be killed while she sleeps. This part of the film had been overexposed from light leaking into a faulty camera, but the director liked the foggy, washed out effect it gave the print, so he used it for all the outdoor shots. Yes, deliberate filming in the "lo-fi" esthetic...I loved it. So, the film goes on like this, with one part of a nightmare leading to another. One of the women in the Inn, who was bitten by the vampire, needs blood. One of the GREATEST turn arounds on the typical vampire film occurs here. Instead of your Van Helsing doctor who gives us the medical/metaphysical information to defeat the vampire, we have instead a doctor who assists the vampire in finding suitable victums. So, the duplicitious doctor bleeds Gray, in order to help save the dying young woman's life, who is really a transforming vampire, needing her first blood meal, at Gray's expense. However, this puts him into some kind of psychic link with the vampire, that nearly kills him. Next, we see Gray sitting down, and his image splits, with a transparent doubleganger image, or his dream-spirit, going off and wandering around the inn, and the local town. By this time, even tho I have watched the movie at least three times, I start to lose the thread of whatever logic or daytime sanity I use the plot for. In fact, I can only imagine that the surrealist film Le Chien d'Andelou influenced the Director, with the non logic of the images in relation to the movement of the film, and the unexpected, nauseating horror of some of the scenes. (Gray's bloodletting was especially creapy, mostly because of the crudeness of the hypo used to get blood. )That leads me to the most bizarre, unsettling image from the entire film. In the end, the evil Doctor who was in cahoots with the head vampire is killed. He runs, or is chased, into an old mill, filled with an impossible amount of gears and strange machinery. He flees into a cage-like chamber, that looks like an elevator shaft. He becomes locked in this fenced in little area, when the waterwheel starts up the gears, and flour from above starts to fall down upon the evil doctor. At first, he is covered with flour, and he looks like a ghost. Then, the flour slowly fills up around him, until he's buried alive far above his head in flour. Again, i can't figure out how they shot some of the last images, because it DOES look like the doctor is buried. As the images become more threatening, more surreal and disturbing, as the film unfolds, the best is saved for last. The buried alive scene, is a visual crescendo of the macabre. That image seems to unlock a very primal fear of death, for those of us who are buried whole. Premature burial is the probible basis of some of the horror surrounding the idea of the dead living..or being alive in your own tomb. So the cinematic images of death, and blood, and ghosts, disembodied souls, vampirism as a deadly disease, and premature burial just leaves you unable to shake what seems to be a nightmare. Our subconscious wakes and screams, and you try to piece the frightening images into some semblence of linear logic. But that negates the dark beauty of this film. This film belongs to the realm of night, and nightmares, of frightening, ambiguous images that function as a cinematic memento morti . Anyway, I highly recommend this film. This new print far improves on the older DVD edition of the film by "Blackhawk film". They mastered off a badly damaged print, with punched out words appearing during the film's transistion between reels, and a soundtrack which was so faint and fuzzy, you might as well have been listening to a silent film. Naturally, they fixed those horrible gothic lettered subtitles, which took up a third of the scene as well. The Blackwater edition does give you a little extra, to compensate for their poor print they used to master from. It's a little piece of stop animation filmed in 1934 by a Pole, called The Mascot. Altho you wont have that, you will have what is (besides Murnau's original NOSFERATU, and Leghosli's DRACULA), one of the greatest meditations on Death, and the vampire legend, ever filmed. I'm glad Critilion restored the film, and gave it the full deluxe treatment. A word of advice, however--this film seems to grow on you. It might sink its teeth into you the first night you watch it, but it needs to feed on your subconscious, drop by drop. After you spend a few more nights watching the film, slowly absorbing the morbid imagery, you will be hooked. Only then will the film, as all great works of art, transform you into something new. (Let's hope its a better informed cinema fan, and not a....creature of the bad pun. That would be a hellish fate.) May 24, 2008

A Vampire Classic.

"Imagine we are sitting in an ordinary room. Suddenly we are told that there is a corpse behind the door. In an instant, the room we are sitting in is completely altered: everything in it has taken on another level; the light, the atmosphere have changed, though they are physically the same. This is because we have changed. This is the effect I want to get"--Carl Theodor Dreyer.

One of the greatest filmmakers in cinema, Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer is known for his meticulous eye for detail and artistic idiosyncrasies. He made his first classic film in 1928, The Passion of Joan of Arc, a film drawn directly from the transcripts of Joan's trial. He then went on to make Vampyr ("Vampyr-Der Traum des Allan Grey") in 1932. Both films were financial failures.

Based on J. Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novella, Carmilla, Vampyr is ultimately a French-German meditation on fear. Originally shot as a silent film (the dialogue was added later in English, French and German), Vampyr is short on dialogue, thin on plot, but rich in weird atmosphere (which is reason enough to experience this superb, nightmare-like film). It tells the story of a young traveler, Allan Gray (Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, using the stage name Julian West), who does his best to protect two sisters, anaemic Leone (Sybille Schmitz) and Gisele (Rena Mandel), from a vampire. He becomes obsessed with vampires, with his own burial, with skulking, shadowy creatures, and with the blood lust on Leone's face after she seemingly falls under a vampire's spell. (Spoiler Alert: I say "seemingly" because by the end of the film, Vampyr is not so much about about a vampire as a batty old dead woman named Marguerite Chopin (Henriette Gérard).) Despite the fact that Dreyer's film lacks an actual vampire (at least in the traditional sense), many critics have called it the greatest vampire film ever made. (At the risk of sparking a debate, when it comes to classic vampire movies, I will always prefer both F.W. Murnau's German silent classic, Nosferatu, and Werner Herzog's later remake Nosferatu: The Vampyre/Phantom Der Nacht.)

This film has a history of poor-quality American and British versions, often shown on late-night TV. The new Criterion double-disc edition of Vampyr features the original German version in a high-definition digital transfer from the 1998 restoration by Martin Koerber and the Cineteca di Bologna; a newly credited alternate version with English text; audio commentary featuring film scholar Tony Rayns; "Carl Th. Dreyer (1966)," a documentary by Jørgen Roos chronicling Dreyer's career; a visual essay by scholar Casper Tybjerg on Dreyer's influences in creating Vampyr; a radio broadcast from 1958 of Dreyer reading an essay about filmmaking; and a booklet featuring new essays by Mark Le Fanu and Kim Newman, Koerber on the restoration, and a 1964 interview with producer and star Nicolas de Gunzburg, as well as a book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul's original screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu 1872 story "Carmilla," a source for the film.

G. Merritt May 11, 2008

A human soul in fear of Death cried out

The rat-toothed Nosferatu and the charming Transylvanian Count are the best known examples of early vampire movies, mostly because there weren't very many others at the time.

But more often than not, "Vampyr" gets passed over when you talk about early vampire movies -- and that's a shame. Carl Th. Dreyer's masterpiece (loosely based on the works of J. Sheridan Le Fanu) is a straightforward little story wrapped in a hazy cocoon of dreamlike imagery and haunting direction. From the very beginning, this movie clings to you like a spiderweb.

Occult student Allan Gray is staying at a hotel in the French countryside. But after being woken by a strange old man's cryptic warning, he finds that the inn is swarming with eerie supernatural happenings, including shadows that move independently. After he departs, a strange old man lets an ancient crone out of a closet.

And when Allan arrives at a nearby chateau, he finds that the owner has been murdered, and his daughter Leone is suffering from mysterious wounds. After the girl is rescued from a strange old crone, she begins acting predatory toward her sister Gisele -- and the weird old doctor says that only a transfusion will save her. But the doctor is in league with the vampire -- and is working to destroy Leone...

"Vampyr" has a pretty simple storyline, loosely based on a couple of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's short stories (including the classic "Carmilla"). But it's not the plot that makes this movie a classic -- it's the powerful, ghostly visuals that permeate it. And the beautiful real-life settings (the inn, chateau and church) don't hurt the atmosphere of it all.

In many ways, "Vampyr" is like a silent movie -- the characters are quiet, text cards intersperse the scenes, and several minutes are taken up by printed text from the "History of Vampires" book. In addition to this, the visuals are so powerful that it's almost a shock when one of the characters actually speaks out loud. Even then, nobody says anything unless it's actually necessary.

Dreyer films this movie as if it were a choreographed dream, letting the camera drift through ornate rooms and hazy hills. And he often fixed on striking images -- pale feverish faces, still windvanes, cloudy skies, scythes, and the movement of shadows on walls and the ground. And there are some spectacularly creepy moments, such as when Leone starts baring her teeth gleefully at Gisele, or Allan watching the view from inside a coffin.

And he steeps the entire movie in dreamlike effects -- hazy countrysides, skeletons, floating girls, and shadows that can dance and move independently. These strange effects are done almost effortlessly, adding to the feeling that you're surrounded by the unreal. Dreyer even puts a note of humor in from time to time, such as the dancing shadows with their little folk band.

Julian West (aka Nicolas de Gunzburg) does a pretty solid job as our unflappable hero, although I question how his suit remains pristine all through the movie -- and he does a glorious job in that bizarre dream sequence. Sybille Schmitz has a small part, but is wonderfully feral as she starts to turn vampiric, and Henriette Gérard is unspeakably creepy as the ancient, stone-faced vampire who wants other people to suffer as well.

Criterion is apparently giving "Vampyr" the treatment it sorely needs, cleaning up the prints in an effort to restore the clarity. It's also got new subtitles, loads of information about Dreyer, his filmmaking and the creation of "Vampyr," articles about it, the screenplay and one of Le Fanu's short stories. Nice to see this underrated little movie is getting the attention is deserves.

Carl Th. Dreyer's "Vampyr" is a rarity among vampire movies -- all haunting images and ghostly, subtle horror, with excellent acting and exquisite directions. It's a cinematic classic that should not be overlooked. April 29, 2008

One of the best vampire movies ever gets the Criterion treatment. (Criterion features below)

Director Carl Th. Dreyer's ( The Passion of Joan of Arc (Criterion Collection Spine #62)) 1932 film Vampyr is as relevant a silent film (even though there is some talking) as the recent movie Once is a musical. Meaning, in Once when they bust out into song, they're actually musicians so it makes sense and when there are words on the screen in Vampyr it's because a book about vampires is being read. It works. The film plays like a black and white photograph come to life. It is filled with eerie dreamlike atmosphere and scares that hold up even now. This possibly could be the scariest vampire film rivaling Nosferatu, notably the part when one of the daughters goes from terrified about losing her sole to an evil smile. Even though it is made a decade after F.W. Murnau's classic Nosferatu (The Ultimate Two-Disc Edition) and one year after Browning's Dracula (75th Anniversary Edition) (Universal Legacy Series) this could still be the first movie about vampires.
In Nosferatu and Dracula the story tells of a specific vampire and in Vampyr it is about vampires in general. Vampires here are shadows we see not a guy without a shadow (very effective and eerie). They are people who have done wrong while living and are not at rest. They are companions of Satan and have minions working for them that could look like anyone. You can see how many countless vampire movies this has influenced, none of which come close to this masterpiece. I found the concept of the ending reminded me of Guillermo Del Toro's great Pan's Labyrinth [Blu-ray] but I won't go into detail.
If your familiar with Criterion or any of their horror releases this should be great and the original dvd could use improving. I've listed the Criterion features below from their website. Another reviewer did the same but I usually like to include features in my reviews as well.

CRITERION DVD FEATURES (DIRECTLY OFF CRITERIONCO'S WEBSITE)
Special Features

* - SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:
* - New, restored high-definition digital transfer of the 1998 film restoration by Martin Koerber and the Cineteca di Bologna
* - Optional all-new English-text version of the film
* - Audio commentary featuring film scholar Tony Rayns
* - Carl Th. Dreyer (1966), a documentary by Jörgen Roos chronicling Dreyer's career
* - Visual essay by scholar Casper Tybjerg on Dreyer's influences in creating Vampyr
* - A 1958 radio broadcast of Dreyer reading an essay about filmmaking
* - New and improved English subtitle translation
* - PLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by Mark Le Fanu and Kim Newman, Martin Koerber on the restoration, and an archival interview with producer and star Nicolas de Gunzburg, as well as a book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul's original screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu 1871 story "Carmilla," a source for the film

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Film Info
1932
75 minutes
Black & White
1.19:1
Dolby Digital Mono 1.0
Not Anamorphic
German April 23, 2008

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