Vampyr

Vampyr

1932. France/Germany. Directed by Carl Th. Dreyer. Adapted by Dreyer, Christen Jul from the novel In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu. Cinematography by Rudolph Mate. With Julien West, Henriette Gerard, Jan Hieronimko, Sibylle Schmitz. Dreyer’s vampire film is truly experimental in its pervasively unsettling visual qualities. The overall effect is one of an atmospheric nightmare. One critic refers to the film’s “phenomenal lighting accentuating the otherworldliness, the myriad vague greys, mirroring the dream-states within, blurred, shaded.” Dreyer went on, all too slowly, to make several more masterpieces. Mate, who had photographed Dreyer’s great silent The Passion of Joan of Arc, wound up in Hollywood, where he worked for King Vidor, Leo Mc Carey, Alfred Hitchcock, and Ernst Lubitsch. In German; English subtitles. 70 min.