Vampyr

Danish director Carl Theodore Dreyer’s haunting 1932 horror VAMPYR celebrates its 90th Anniversary this year – reason enough for Eureka to release this enduring classic as part of the label’s Masters Of Cinema series in a brand-new 2K restoration on Blu-ray.

Although now considered a much appreciated gothic classic (a French-German co-production shot entirely in France) this highly unique production had a rather difficult start: the film was booed upon its German premiere as cinema-goers considered the whole thing far too static as regards to the acting and the general pace whilst at the Austrian premiere audiences even demanded their admission fee back… it all led to a mighty kerfuffle with the police when the cinema managers refused to cough up the refunds!
Admittedly this expressionistic-surreal work (with a screenplay by Dreyer and Christen Jul) is perhaps not to everyone’s taste - the film draws its strength and expressiveness from Rudolph Matés' inspired camera work which lends VAMPYR its dreamlike and nightmarish quality, full of symbolic meanings and imagery which – in contrast to the sparse dialogue – are not easily forgotten. The sparse dialogue was another reason why the film was initially received with mixed feelings as Dreyer had originally intended to direct it as a silent film. However, due to the fact that both Tod Browning's ‘Dracula’ and James Whales' ‘Frankenstein’ were both released the previous year as successful talkies the production company (Tobis-Filmkunst) changed their original tune and decided to follow suit – possibly a mistake as it soon turned out, seeing how ‘Vampyr’ would really have worked better as a silent film and secondly - despite the dialogue - there are still a lot of intertitles to be found. Then again, perhaps this had something to do with the fact that the overall dialogue situation proved to be tricky from the start what with the the actors (only Sybille Schmitz and Maurice Schutz were professional actors) hailing from France, Germany and Poland while the main character - protagonist 'Allan Gray' - was portrayed by Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg (credited under the name Julian West), a Frenchman of Russian descent whose family had fled Russia at the outbreak of the October Revolution. Incidentally, it was Gunzburg who offered to finance the project under the condition that he would play the male lead. In addition, chunks of dialogue were dubbed in English while intertitles were written in German, French, English and Danish or simply as required. The fact that French film studios at that time were still lagging way behind when it came to using the new sound technology didn't help much either.

The plot itself was inspired by two of the five stories found in Sheridan Le Fanu’s collection 'In a Glass Darkly' with elements taken from the stories 'Carmilla' and 'The Room in the Dragon Volant'. Allan Gray (Julian West aka Baron de Gunzburg), a young man drawn to superstitions and the occult arrives at an inn near the French village of Courtempierre to investigate rumors of supernatural events in the area. Later that night he is woken up by an old man who enters his guest room and leaves a small package with the words "To be opened upon my death" on the table before making his exit with the strange words "She must not die". As if in a trance, Gray takes the package and follows strange shadows which lead him along a country road until he reaches an old, abandoned building where a one-legged soldier (Georges Boidin) whose shadow leaves his body, a mysterious doctor (Jan Hieronimko) and an old crone (Henriette Gérard) roam about, as well as witnessing the ghostly shadows of villagers who had at one time enjoyed dancing in the building.

More unseen forces lead Gray away from the abandonded building and onto yet more country lanes until he arrives at an ancient and magnificent looking estate. Peeping through one of the large windows he recognizes the mysterious man who entered his room at the inn and who left the strange package (now in Gray’s jacket pocket) on the table. The man is obviously the owner of the estate but just as Gray is about to knock on the door he hears a shot and sees the old man – now badly wounded, collapse… with no trace of the perpetrator though a shadow which we (the viewers) can see suggests the assailant may have been the one-legged soldier! When the servant (Albert Bras) and his wife (N. Babanini) bid Gray entry he arrives just in time to hear the mortally wounded man whisper the words "She must not die" once more - then he dies. The two servants ask Gray to spend the night in the house, and by accepting he learns the strange story of the dead man’s older daughter Léone (Sybille Schmitz) who has been suffering from an unspecified illness for a long time – leaving her weaker and weaker as time passes. Even her younger sister Giséle (Rena Mandel) can’t explain what’s wrong with Léone while the nurse (Jane Mora) also tries her best, albeit in vain. When the family practicioner arrives, Gray recognizes him as the same doctor he saw earlier on in the abandoned building on the outskirts of the village. Despite the medicine prescribed by the doctor, Léone’s condition worsens… In addition, she seems to be possessed by an invisible force and constantly whispers about death and damnation. That evening, Gray decides to open the package which the dead man had left on the table and finds a booklet about vampirism in it. Among number of superstitious accounts Gray reads of an incident which happened long ago in Courtempierre when a mysterious disease – initially presumed to be the plague - broke out and killed many of the locals. Some time later, the real cause turned out to be the female ‘vampire’ Marguerite Chopin – described by the villagers as “a monster even during her lifetime” who continued to spread fear long after her death.

During the night, Gray is awakened by Giséles' screams: her sister Léone has been lured away and is now lying semi-conscious on a bench in the huge park. When Gray and the servant carry her back to her bedroom they discover two bite marks on her neck and realise that a vampire is at work... it all begins to tie up with regard to the booklet which Gray and the servant had read. Meanwhile, the doctor orders Gray to donate blood in order to save Léone though the transfusion leaves Gray completely weakened himself and he starts hallucinating. Further investigation reveals that the vampire Marguerite Chopin is none other than the old crone whom Gray had previously glimpsed along with the doctor and the one-legged soldier in the abandoned building. Gray and the servant furthermore come to the conclusion that the one-legged soldier and the doctor are really nothing more than Marguerite Chopin's henchmen! When Gray is about to confront the doctor he catches him administering poison to Léone. The doctor manages to make his escape and in the process kidnaps Giséle whom he keeps locked away in an old flour mill. Gray and the servant head to the local cemetery to locate Marguerite Chopin's grave and destroy the undead forever – setting in motion the film’s tense climax and the most surreal sequences such as Gray’s out-of-body experience during which he observes his own funeral while vampire Marguerite looks on at his corpse through a small glass window in the coffin. After returning to his own body, he and the servant destroy the perfectly preserved corpse of Marguerite Chopin forever by hammering a metal rod through her heart - a scene shortened by the German censors! At the same moment, Léone wakes up from her unconsciousness and immediately feels better. Now only Giséle has to be rescued and the old flour mill provides the background for the exciting finale during which - with the help of the spirit of the murdered squire – both the doctor and the one-legged soldier meet their deservedly just end.

It would be fair to say that VAMPYR has more in common with Luis Bunuels’ surreal short film ‘Un Chien Andalou’ than with any horror film in the traditional sense since the symbolism in Dreyers' work and the slightly washed-out, soft-focus camera technique provide an atmosphere in which reality and fantasy become blurred. The performances are in fact secondary because the story is told through the power of the film’s visual compositions and its haunting use of shadows.

Eureka releases this brand-new restored film in a Limited Edition (3000 copies only), presented in a Hardbound Slipcase & 100-page Collector’s booklet. Other Bonus Material includes optional audio tracks, audio commentaries, visual essay on Dreyer’s ‘Vampyr’ and its influences, two new video interviews, documentaries and much more.