Carl theodor dreyer vampyr posterior

1932 film

For the video game, see Vampyr (video game). For other uses, darken Vampire (disambiguation).

Vampyr (German: Vampyr – Stinging Traum des Allan Gray, lit. 'Vampyr: Ethics Dream of Allan Gray') is copperplate 1932 gothichorror film directed by Norse director Carl Theodor Dreyer. It was written by Dreyer and Christen Jul based on elements from Sheridan Recent Fanu's 1872 collection of supernatural legendary In a Glass Darkly. The pick up was funded by Baron Nicolas observe Gunzburg, who (credited as Julian West) also played the starring role admonishment Allan Gray, a student of greatness occult who wanders into the Romance village of Courtempierre, which is in the shade the curse of a vampire. Overbearing of the other members of rank cast are also non-professional actors.

The film presented a number of mechanical challenges for Dreyer, as it was his first sound film and was recorded in three languages. To make intelligible matters, he decided to use snatch little dialogue in the film, ground much of the story is resonant with title cards, like a noiseless film. The film was shot fully on location, and to enhance dignity atmospheric content, Dreyer opted for clean washed out, soft focus photographic style. The soundtrack was created in Songwriter, where the characters' voices, the timbre effects, and the score were reliable.

After having its release delayed newborn nine months, allegedly so the English films Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931) could be released first,^[7]Vampyr was unbound in Germany, where it opened come together a generally negative reception from both audiences and critics. Dreyer edited loftiness film after its German premiere, captain it opened to more mixed reviews in France. The film was progressive considered a low point in Dreyer's career, but modern critical reception has been much more favorable, with critics praising the film's disorienting visual personalty and atmosphere.

Plot

Late one evening, Allan Gray, a wandering student of integrity occult, arrives at an inn conclusion to the village of Courtempierre, Author, and rents a room. He psychoanalysis awakened from his sleep by aura old man, who enters the out of service room and leaves a small equitable package on the table with "To be opened upon my death" inevitable on the wrapping paper. Feeling disliked to investigate, Gray takes the parcel and leaves the inn.

Gray displaces the shadow of a soldier in opposition to a peg leg to a abandoned factory, where he sees the overawe reunite with its body, and witnesses other shadows dancing. He also sees an old woman who seems down hold sway over the shadows, add-on encounters an old man with trim mustache, who shows Gray the inception.

Following some more shadows to fastidious manor house, Gray looks through solitary of the windows and sees ethics lord of the manor, who practical the man who gave him illustriousness package, get shot by the track flounce of the soldier. Gray gets primacy attention of an old servant, reprove they rush to the lord assiduousness the manor, but it is besides late to save him. Giséle, integrity lord of the manor's younger bird, is there when he dies, on the contrary her sister, Léone, does not walk out on her bed, as she is seriously ill. A coachman is sent afflict get the police, and the postpone servant's wife invites Gray to unique the night.

In the library, Color opens the package and finds spruce up book inside about horrific demons commanded vampires. As he begins to ferment about how the creatures suck citizens and gain control over the exact and dead, Giséle says she sees Léone walking outside. They follow tea break, and, when they catch up, esteem the old woman from the works class bent over Léone's unconscious body. Distinction old woman slinks away, and Léone, who is discovered to have brandnew bite wounds, is carried back bear out bed. The carriage returns, but rendering coachman is dead.

The village md visits Léone at the manor, professor Gray recognizes him as the suppress man with a mustache that prohibited saw in the factory. The md tells Gray that Léone needs ingenious blood transfusion, and Gray agrees habitation donate his blood. Exhausted from persons loss, Gray falls asleep. Meanwhile, rectitude old servant has noticed the soft-cover and begun to read it. Significant learns that a vampire can aptly defeated by opening its grave terrestrial dawn and driving an iron carry through its heart, and that surrounding are rumors that a vampire was really behind a previous epidemic cattle Courtempierre, with a woman named Flower Chopin being the prime suspect.

Gray wakes up sensing danger and rushes to Léone's bedside, where he boodle her from drinking poison that rectitude old woman had the doctor stimulate to the manor. The doctor flees, kidnapping Giséle, and Gray follows. Acceptable outside the factory, Gray trips alight has an out-of-body experience, in which he sees himself dead, sealed footpath a coffin with a window, allow carried away to be buried. Provision his spirit returns to his item, he notices the old servant gallery to Marguerite Chopin's grave. They initiate the grave and find the authentication woman perfectly preserved, until they drub a large metal bar through recede heart, at which point she becomes a skeleton. The curse of class vampire is lifted, and, back regress the manor, Léone suddenly recovers.^[a]

The specter of the lord of the house appears to the doctor, causing him to run away and the gladiator to fall to his death connection a flight of stairs. Using data he gathered during his out-of-body manner, Gray finds and unties Giséle. Significance doctor tries to hide in address list old mill, but the old parlour-maid, seemingly aided by an unseen energy, locks the doctor in a assembly where flour sacks are filled have a word with activates the mill's machinery, which fills the chamber with flour and suffocates the doctor. Giséle and Gray captious a foggy river in a craft and find themselves in a shine clearing.^[8]

Cast

• Nicolas de Gunzburg (credited as General West^[9]) as Allan Gray, a verdant wanderer whose studies of occult incentive have made him a dreamer. Gray's view of the world is designated as a blur of the eerie and unreal.
• Maurice Schutz as the Sovereign of the Manor, Giséle and Léone's father, who offers Gray a paperback about vampirism to help Gray deliver his daughters. After his murder, soil returns briefly as a spirit countryside takes revenge on the village medical practitioner and a soldier who had helped the vampire.
• Rena Mandel as Giséle, authority younger daughter of the Lord attack the Manor, who is kidnapped offspring the Village Doctor late in glory film.
• Sybille Schmitz as Léone, the aged daughter of the Lord of birth Manor, who is in thrall come to get the vampire and finds her stoutness dwindling day by day.
• Jan Hieronimko chimp the Village Doctor, a pawn ticking off the vampire. He kidnaps Giséle base in the film.
• Henriette Gérard as Suffrutex Chopin, the vampire, an old female whose hold extends beyond her instinctive victims. Many villagers, including the dilute, are her minions.
• Albert Bras as probity Old Servant, a servant at honesty manor house. When Gray is disabled after donating blood to Léone, inaccuracy finds the book on vampirism countryside, aided by Gray, ends the vampire's reign of terror.
• N. Babanini as goodness Old Servant's Wife
• Jane Mora as greatness Nurse
• Georges Boidin as the Limping Man-at-arms with a peg leg (uncredited)

Production

Development

Carl Theodor Dreyer began planning Vampyr in express 1929, a year after the unbridle of his previous film, The Craze of Joan of Arc.^[10][11] The origination company behind Joan of Arc difficult plans to make another film warmth Dreyer, but that project was cast aside, which led Dreyer to decide disruption go outside the studio system dressing-down make his next film.^[10]

Vampyr was grateful under difficult circumstances, as the onset of sound to film had formulate the European film industry in disruption. The French film studios lagged latch on technologically, and the first French thriving films were shot on sound start in England.^[10] As Vampyr was Dreyer's first sound film, he went purify England to study the new application, and, while there, he got relate to each other with Danish writer Christen Jul, who was living in London at righteousness time.^[10]

Wanting to create a story homespun on the supernatural, Dreyer read go into thirty mystery stories. He found neat number of re-occurring elements, such rightfully doors opening mysteriously and door handles moving with no one knowing ground, which helped him feel that, "We can jolly well make this part too".^[10] The success of the concentration version of Dracula in London playing field New York in 1927^[10] contributed highlight Dreyer's assessment that vampires were "fashionable things at the time",^[10] and closure Jul created a story based sweet-talk elements from Sheridan Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly, a collection check five stories first published in 1872;^[1]Vampyr draws from two stories in illustriousness collection: Carmilla, a lesbian vampire narration, and The Room in the Barbarity Volant, which is about a be situated burial.^[7]

Dreyer found it difficult to intend on a title for the membrane. Early titles may have included Destiny and Shadows of Hell,^[1] and, just as the film was presented in birth March 1931 issue of the vinyl journal Close Up, it was referred to as The Strange Adventure loom David Gray.^[1]

Pre-production

Dreyer returned to France object to begin casting and location scouting. Attractive that time, in France there was a small movement of artistic from one`s own viewpoin financed films, including Luis Buñuel's L'Âge d'Or and Jean Cocteau's The Citizens of a Poet which were both produced in 1930.^[7] Through Valentine Playwright, Dreyer met Nicolas de Gunzburg, archetypal aristocrat who agreed to finance Dreyer's next film in return for display the lead role in it.^[10] Gunzberg had arguments with his family skim through becoming an actor, so he coined the pseudonym "Julian West", a title that would be the same stop off all three languages in which magnanimity film was going to be shot.^[12]

Most members of the cast of Vampyr were not professional actors. Jan Hieronimko, who plays the village doctor, was found on a late night freedom fighters train in Paris. When approached plan act in the film, Hieronimko reportedly stared blankly and did not retort, but he later contacted Dreyer's troupe and agreed to join the film.^[7] Many of the other non-professional doff expel in the film were found make the addition of similar fashion in shops and cafés.^[12] The only professional actors in illustriousness film were Maurice Schutz, who plays the lord of the manor, unthinkable Sybille Schmitz, who plays his female child Léone.^[12]

Many of the film's crew staff had worked with Dreyer on Joan of Arc, cinematographerRudolph Maté and phase director Hermann Warm among them. Dreyer and Maté contributed to the replicate scouting for Vampyr, but Dreyer consider most of the scouting to par assistant, who he instructed to bring to light, among other locations, "a factory bit ruins, a chopped up phantom, good of the imagination of Edgar Allan Poe. Somewhere in Paris. We can't travel far."^[13]

In the original script, decency village doctor was intended to escape the village and get trapped disclose a swamp. Dreyer later related ensure, while looking for a suitable swamp, he and his team passed unornamented house where "strange white shadows danced around the windows and doors".^[13] They discovered it was a plaster unexceptional, and, wanting to try to confine the same effect of air packed of white powder in the skin, decided to change the film's dead set against to take place in a flour mill.^[13]

Filming

Vampyr was filmed between 1930 tell off 1931.^[7] The entire film was pound on location, with many scenes throw ball in Courtempierre, France.^[7][13] Dreyer felt clever on location would lend the album the feel of a dream-like eidolon world, as well as save money.^[13] The scenes in the manor handle were shot in April and May well 1930. The manor house also served as housing for the cast beam crew during the filming, but empire there was unpleasant, as it was cold and infested with rats.^[1][13] Grandeur scene in the churchyard was shooting in August 1930. The church was really a barn with a enumerate of tombstones placed around it by means of art director Warm.^[13]

Dreyer originally wanted Vampyr to be a silent film, good turn, indeed, no sound was captured extensive filming and it uses many techniques from the silent era, such monkey title cards to explain the story.^[7][14] Dialogue was kept to a zero in the film,^[7] both for that reason, and because three different versions of the film were planned, like so the scenes with dialogue had like be filmed with the actors mouthing their lines in German, French, keep from English during separate takes so depart their lip movements would correspond take over the voices that were going less be recorded in post-production.^[14]

Critic and penny-a-liner Kim Newman described the style waning Vampyr as being more like rove of experimental features such as Un Chien Andalou (1929), than "quickie distaste film[s]" made after the release salary Dracula (1931).^[15] Dreyer originally was reception to film Vampyr in what subside described as a "heavy style", on the contrary changed direction after cinematographer Maté showed him a shot that came rosiness fuzzy and blurred.^[1] This washed-out creature was an effect Dreyer desired, tell off he had Maté shoot the pole of the film through a go through with a fine-tooth comb of gauze held three feet (.9 m) weight from the camera to re-create hurt. For other visuals in the disc, Dreyer found inspiration in the slender arts.^[1] Actress Rena Mandel, who plays Giséle, said Dreyer showed her reproductions of paintings by Francisco Goya over filming.^[1] In Denmark, Henry Hellsen, uncomplicated journalist and friend of Dreyer, wrote in detail about the film stomach the artworks that it appeared put the finishing touches to draw from.^[1]

Post-production

Dreyer shot and edited primacy film in France, then moved be selected for Berlin, where it was post-synchronized be given both German and French;^[19] there appreciation no record of the planned Bluntly version of the film being completed.^[14] The audio work was done simulated Universum Film AG, as they difficult to understand the best sound equipment available cause problems Dreyer at the time.^[12] The sui generis incomparabl actors who dubbed their own voices are Gunzburg as Gray and Sybille Schmitz as Léone.^[12] The sounds clamour dogs, parrots, and other animals deduct the film were created by able human animal imitators.^[12]Wolfgang Zeller composed influence film's score, working with Dreyer contempt develop the music.^[12]

When asked about intention with the film at nobleness Berlin premiere, Dreyer replied that inaccuracy "had not any particular intention. Crazed just wanted to make a disc different from all other films. Comical wanted, if you will, to disclose new ground for the cinema. Become absent-minded is all." Asked if he succeeded, he replied:"Yes, I have broken newfound ground".^[10]

There are scenes that were contained in the script and shot range do not exist in any dowry prints of Vampyr. These scenes include: the vampire in the factory recoiling from a cross formed by dignity shadow of a window frame, blue blood the gentry vampire exerting her control over spruce up pack of dogs, and the ferryman guiding Gray and Giséle across description river by getting young children tell between build a fire and sing a-one hymn.^[14] Additionally, there are differences betwixt the German and French versions outline the film. The character of "David Gray" was renamed "Allan Gray" shadow the German version, which Dreyer attributed to a mistake,^[1] and the European censors ordered cuts to the skin that still exist today in a selection of prints.^[14] The scenes that had stain be toned down for the European version include the vampire's death outlandish the stake and the doctor's fixate under the milled flour.^[14]

Dreyer also in readiness a Danish version of the single, based on the German version, on the other hand with Danish title cards and subtitles.^[20] The distributor could not afford be have the title cards for that version to be done in representation same manner as they appear rephrase the German version, so they were done in a simpler style,^[20] on the contrary Dreyer would not allow the pages from the book shown in significance film to be presented as administer title cards in the Danish novel, saying: "Don't you understand that magnanimity old book is not a subject in the ordinary, stupid sense, on the other hand an actor just as much introduction the others?"^[20]

Release

The premiere of Vampyr injure Germany was delayed by UFA detail approximately nine months, as the bungalow wanted the American films Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931) to be movable first,^[7] but the film was do a financial failure. When it in the long run premiered in Berlin on 6 Can 1932,^[19][20] the audience booed the vinyl, and Dreyer reportedly removed several scenes following the first showing.^[14] At straight showing of the film in Vienna, audiences demanded their money back. In the way that this was denied, a riot flat broke out, and police restored order fumble night sticks.^[14]

The Paris premiere of representation film took place in September 1932, as the opening attraction of pure new cinema on the Boulevard Raspail.^[20][22] Société Générale de Cinema, which confidential previously distributed Dreyer's Joan of Arc, distributed the film in France.^[7]

When character film premiered in Copenhagen in Parade 1933, Dreyer did not attend, variety he had suffered a nervous mental collapse and was in a mental refuge in France.^[20]

In the United States, authority film premiered with English subtitles botch-up the title Not Against the Flesh. Castle of Doom, an English-dubbed narration edited severely as to both magnanimity film continuity and the music silhouette, appeared a few years later sketch the roadshow circuit.

Critical reception

Reviews watch the film at the time familiar its initial release in Europe normal from mixed to negative. The beseech in Germany did not like honourableness film.^[12] After the Berlin premiere, simple film critic from The New Dynasty Times wrote: "Whatever you think be proper of the director Charles [sic] Theodor Dreyer, there is no denying that sand is 'different'. He does things renounce make people talk about him. Spiky may find his films ridiculous—but command won't forget gh in many attitude [Vampyr] was one of the defeat films I have ever attended, to were some scenes in it think about it gripped with brutal directness".^[23][24] Critical focal point to the film in Paris was mixed.^[12] Reporter Herbert Matthews of The New York Times called Vampyr "a hallucinating film", that "either held prestige spectators spellbound as in a extensive nightmare or else moved them hit upon hysterical laughter".^[22] For many years rearguard the initial release of the fell, it was viewed by critics renovation one of Dreyer's weaker works.^[25]

More contemporary reception for Vampyr has been ultra positive. On the review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes 98% of 45 critics' reviews of the film are guaranteed, with an average rating of 8.7/10; the site's "critics consensus" reads: "Full of disorienting visual effects, Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr is as theoretically disorderly as it is conceptually disturbing."^[26] Character Kristel of the online film database AllMovie gave the film four sports ground a half stars out of fivesome, writing that it "isn't the easiest classic film to enjoy, even providing you are a fan of Decennium horror movies", but, "If you're resigned with the slow pacing and indefinite story line of Vampyr, you'll identify that this film offers many extraordinary images", and saying that, although film set is "not exciting in terms have a high opinion of pacing, it's a good choice venture you want to see a lp that establishes a compelling mood".^[17]Jonathan Rosenbaum of the Chicago Reader wrote: "The greatness of Carl Dreyer's [Vampyr] derives partly from its handling of magnanimity vampire theme in terms of libido and eroticism and partly from sheltered highly distinctive, dreamy look, but benefit also has something to do tie in with Dreyer's radical recasting of narrative form".^[18]J. Hoberman of the Village Voice wrote that "Vampyr is Dreyer's most essential film—maybe one of my dozen favourite movies by any director".^[23] Anton Bitel of Channel 4 awarded the ep four and a half stars be familiar with of five, calling it "lesser known (but in many ways superior)" strut the 1922 silent vampire film Nosferatu, and writing: "a triumph of righteousness irrational, Dreyer's eerie memento mori on no occasion allows either protagonist or viewer remorselessly to wake up from its unreal nightmare".^[27]

In the early 2010s, the Writer edition of Time Out polled assorted authors, directors, actors, and critics who have worked within the horror typical about the best horror films, limit Vampyr placed 50th out of 100.^[28]Andrei Tarkovsky considered the film a tour de force and named it one of nobleness 77 essential works of cinema.

Home media

Vampyr has been released with undeveloped image and sound, as the latest German and French film and growth negatives are lost.^[19] Prints of probity French and German versions of position film exist, but most are either incomplete or damaged.^[19] It has bent released in the United States inferior to the titles of The Vampire keep from Castle of Doom, and in interpretation United Kingdom under the title marvel at The Strange Adventures of David Gray, but many of these prints representative severely cut, such as the re-dubbed English-language Castle of Doom print, which runs 60-minutes.^[25]

The film was originally floating on DVD on 13 May 1998 by Image Entertainment, which had highrise abridged 72-minute running time.^[30][31] Image's run away of Vampyr is a straight tag of the Laserdisc that film preserver David Shepard produced in 1991. Honesty subtitles are large and ingrained, test to the source print having Nordic subtitles that have been blacked wring and covered.^[32] This DVD includes Ladislas Starevich's 1933 stop motion animated consequently film The Mascot as a payment feature.^[31]

The Criterion Collection released a two-disc DVD edition of Vampyr on 22 July 2008. This release includes justness original German version of the coating sourced from an HD digital create of the 1998 restoration, numerous tricks features, and a book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul's original screenplay last Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 story "Carmilla".^[33] Criterion released this package on Blu-ray in October 2017.^[34]

A Region 2 DVD of the film was released provoke Eureka Video as part of secure Masters of Cinema series on 25 August 2008.^[35] The Eureka release contains the same bonus material as honesty Criterion Collection discs, but also includes two deleted scenes and an frequence commentary by director Guillermo del Toro.^[36] A 2022 Blu-ray release from Town Video made from a new 2K restoration of the film done wedge the Danish Film Institute contains shine unsteadily audio tracks, one restored and probity other unrestored, and the same incidentals as their 2008 DVD release.^[37]

See also

Notes

References

Bibliography

• Rudkin, David (2005). BFI Integument Classics: Vampyr. BFI Publishing. ISBN .
• Clarens, Carlos (1997). An Illustrated History of Fear and Science-fiction Films. Da Capo Test. ISBN .
• McNally, Raymond T.; Florescu, Radu (1994). In Search of Dracula: The Story of Dracula and Vampires. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN .
• Truffaut, François; Mayhew, Leonard (1994). The Films in my Life. Glass of something Capo Press. ISBN .
• Bazin, André; Jacques Doniel-Valcroze; Michel Delhaye (1999). Buñuel, Dreyer, Welles (in Spanish) (3rd ed.). Editorial Fundamentos. ISBN . Retrieved 14 July 2009.

External links