Vampyr’s Ghosts and Demons
By July 21, 2008
A glance at Vampyr should begin with a glance at its Danish begetter, Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889–1968), whose relatively restricted output has not prevented him from being spoken of as one of Read more »
- Denmark
- 1932
- 73 minutes
- Black and White
- 1.19:1
- German
- Spine #437
SYNOPSIS: With Vampyr, Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer’s brilliance at achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, profoundly unsettling imagery (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 in a village 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.
Cast & CreditsOpen
Cast
| Allan Gray | Julian West |
| Lord of the chateau | Maurice Schutz |
| Gisèle | Rena Mandel |
| Léone | Sybille Schmitz |
| The doctor | Jan Hieronimko |
| The woman from the graveyard | Henriette Gerard |
| The old servant | Albert Bras |
| His wife | N. Babanini |
| The nurse | Jane Mora |
Credits
| Director | Carl Th. Dreyer |
| Screenplay | Christen Jul and Carl Th. Dreyer |
| From a novel by | Sheridan Le Fanu |
| Cinematography | Rudolph Maté |
| Art direction | Hermann Warm |
| Music | Wolfgang Zeller |
Disc Features
SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET:
- The original German version in a new high-definition digital transfer from the 1998 restoration by Martin Koerber and the Cineteca di Bologna
- 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
- Visual essay by scholar Casper Tybjerg on Dreyer’s influences in creating Vampyr
- Radio broadcast from 1958 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, 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
From the CurrentView the Current »
Film Essays
News
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Carl Dreyer
June 10, 2010
Fans of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s films (which really should include any lover of cinema) have reason to celebrate. The long-gestating website devoted to the Danish director Read more »
Communication Arts Features Vampyr
October 16, 2008
Michael Boland’s design for Criterion’s special edition release of Vampyr has gotten some special attention of its own, from the prestigious design journal Communications Arts. In the Read more »
Press Notes
Press Notes: Vampyr Resurrected
September 11, 2008
“Before there were Luis Buñuel, Robert Bresson, Ingmar Bergman, or Andrei Tarkovsky (not to mention Lars von Trier, Carlos Reygadas, and Guy Maddin), there was Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889–1968 Read more »
