Vampyr

CRITERION/IMAGE
Street: July 22
Prebook: now
> Seminal early vampire film from the Danish master gets the Criterion treatment.

By almost any standard of measure, this 1932 horror movie—a German/French co-production—is a real museum piece. But Vampyr also is a bonafide masterwork (despite its glacial pace), filled with a number of visual and thematic elements that innumerable filmmakers later appropriated. Shot on location near Paris, with snatches of dialog spoken in French, German and English, the movie revolves around young traveler Allan Grey (amateur Dutch actor Julian West, a pseudonymous nobleman who also financed the film), who witnesses first-hand the effects of vampirism on the master of a remote castle and two sisters. Unlike today’s fright films, which show everything in gory detail, Vampyr leaves a great deal to the imagination. Director Carl Theodor Dreyer and cinematographer Rudolph Mate achieve wonderfully atmospheric, low-tech visual effects, many of them accomplished by shooting with diffused light reflected off gauze. (And all of them look gorgeous in Criterion’s stunning new high-definition transfer.) Working under acute financial and logistical restrictions, Dreyer created—almost accidentally—a brilliant Gothic spine-tingler whose impact continues to be reflected to this day.

Shelf Talk: That a pristine version of Vampyr belongs in every library, museum and university collection goes without saying, but, like that other early vampire film, Nosferatu, it also should make its way into the hands of young horror fans and budding cinephiles who haven’t seen it. Vampyr regularly appears on Top 10 horror film and early cinema lists, so it shouldn’t be hard to sell to audiences.