Vampyr (1932) dir. by Carl Th. Dreyer: Proof that vampires have always been sexy

Modern viewers, accustomed to the graphic violence available on network television, are unlikely to find Vampyr the least bit horrifying. As much as I would like to claim a special sensitivity which has allowed me to still take fright in what the film presents, I cannot. The 2000s, horror's torture-porn decade, has foreclosed the possibility. Thankfully, this is a Dreyer film released at the height of the silent film era's aesthetic refinement, and, as expected, it is wonderful even though it doesn't feature any doe-eyed magazine models or power tools being used on a person tied to a chair.

Stuffs I Liked

There is a moment fifteen minutes into the film where the protagonist, Allan Gray, played by Nicolas de Gunzburg, a man who looks like he could have been Kafka's older, taller, equally as gaunt brother, notices a shadow on the ground. The shadow captures a farmer tossing hay with a pitchfork, only, the shadow appears to be attached to a world where time is running backwards. Over and over again the shadow hay leaps from the earth onto the shadow pitchfork held in the shadow farmer's hand who lowers the shadow hay back to its pile. The moment was accompanied by a frisson for me as I realized I was being drawn into a dreamlike world replete with a logic coming straight from Dreyer's head. I was in his vision. The effect reminded me of David Lynch's work. As in Lynch's alternate realities in movies like Blue Velvet and Mulholland Drive, Vampyr is uncompromising. It strives, and is largely successful, in creating a world that makes sense in it own terms, without regard for whether or not the viewer finds it nonsensical. There is a sequence where Allan is split in two (the magic of double exposure!) and is both sitting unconscious on a park bench and watching his own funeral. This is not a contradiction. It is simply a consequence of the mysterious land he is lost in. As opposed to, oh, I don't know, Twilight, where the supernatural has invaded the mundane, in Vampyr the supernatural and the mundane are inseparable. See? You don't have to watch Avatar in order to visit another planet.

The camera movement is exceptional, especially within the manor house where a large part of the action takes place. The frame will drift slowly to one side or the other, revealing hidden characters as though conjuring them. Or it will roll back down a long hallway granting a sudden, eerie expansiveness to a cramped interior. In other words, as befits a movie saturated in the supernatural, the cinematography is magical.

This dude gets killed by flour. Flour.

Stuffs I Didn't Like

The digital transfer I saw was of poor quality, probably because every available print of the film is of poor quality. There are noticeable artifacts (damn you line scratches!) in almost every scene. At their worst they severely distort the image to the point where figures are almost unrecognizable. On the plus side, these artifacts lend a creepy, if unintended ambience. You could pretend you found the movie at the bottom of an abandoned well....Boo!

The lady vampire wasn't hawt. She was old, and she didn't do any ninja shit or play a stupid baseball game with a bunch of other idiot vampires.