Vampyr is an undisputed classic of horror cinema. It is unlike the other horror movies of the 1930s, and in fact, is still a unique experience.
Tagline: “The Strange Adventures of David Gray” [Even though in the extant prints he is always billed as ‘Allan Gray’]
AKA: The Vampire, The Strange Adventures of David Gray, Vampyr: The Dream of Allan Gray, Castle of Doom [avoid this version; see Quick Bits below]
WTF Factor: ***
Notable Title Card:
“What was going on? What terrifying secret was unfolding? Allan Gray felt certain of one thing: A soul in mortal distress was crying out for help, and a voice within urged him to heed that call.”
Note: For this synopsis, I watched the English Text version of the 2008 Criterion Collection restoration, which is remarkably sharp. The title cards and book pages are recreated in English, while the dialogue is in German, with English subtitles. All the included screen shots were taken from this version.
Synopsis: A title card informs us that our protagonist, Allan Gray (Julian West) is a student of the occult and “a dreamer.” He aimlessly goes to a country inn near Courtempierre, carrying a big net for some reason. He sees a man with a sickle ringing a bell to call the ferry.
While Allan is sleeping, there is a knock at the door and an old man (Maurice Schutz) enters, even though the door is locked. He says, “She must not die.” Allan just stares. The old man leaves a package to be opened after his death. Somehow Allan feels compelled to help.
Allan leaves the inn the next day and follows a shadow with no one casting it. He enters a building that is full of shadows but no people. He wanders about, following the shadow of a gendarme with a peg leg. He sees an old woman (Henriette Gérard) and recoils. He watches the shadow rejoin the gendarme outside.
He enters a room to the sounds of a lively tavern, with music and shadows of dancers on the wall, which stop abruptly when the old woman enters the room.
In his wanderings through the building, as we listen to dogs bark, Allan finds an old medical laboratory and sees an old man, the doctor (Jan Hieronimko), who ignores him. Allan says he heard a child.
Doctor: “There is no child here.”
Allan: “But the dogs?”
Doctor: “There are no children or dogs here.” [We heard them both.]
The doctor shows him out of the building, then goes to help the old woman to his office. The old woman hands him a bottle of poison.
Allan wanders the park and follows shadows that have no corresponding people. He finds a chateau that belongs to the old man who visited him during the night. The old man checks on his two sleeping daughters, Giséle (Rena Mandel) and Léone (Sybille Schmitz), who is ill and has wounds on her neck. Léone exclaims about “the blood.”
Outside Allan sees the shadow of a rifle and the old man is shot.
Giséle arrives and her father dies. The servant invites Allan to stay. Allan pulls out the package the old man gave him; it contains a small book called The Strange History of Vampires. Allan reads the book while we see what the book says. [In short, it telegraphs the major plot points as they happen.]
Léone wanders off and Giséle and Allan follow her. They find her collapsed on a bench with the old woman bending over her.
Once Léone is back in her bed, she wishes to die. Suddenly she goes from distraught to leering at Giséle with her teeth bared.
The doctor arrives. The book on vampires says that humans can be accomplices to vampires and cites a case involving a doctor. The doctor examines Léone and tells Allan she is doing poorly.
Allan: “Can’t she be saved?”
Doctor. “Perhaps. But she needs blood…it must be human blood. Are you willing to give her your own?”
While Allan provides a transfusion, Giséle asks why the doctor always comes at night. Afterward Allan is weak and lies down.
Allan: “Herr doctor…I am losing my blood.”
Doctor: “Nonsense, your blood is right here.”
An old servant (Albert Bras) reads the book as well, which says the vampire will try to drive its victim to suicide. The book describes how to kill a vampire with an iron stake and mentions a local elderly woman named Marguerite Chopin who was suspected to be a vampire many years previously.
Meanwhile, Allan dreams.
The servant wakes Allan and they prevent Léone from taking the poison that the doctor has given her. Léone fears she is damned, while Allan chases the doctor, but he collapses on a bench and separates into 2 semi-transparent entities.
One of them goes back to the old building he was in before and he finds his own body (a third incarnation?) in a coffin that was empty before.
Allan then finds Giséle tied up, presumably by the doctor, who returns a moment later.
The gendarme comes to seal Allan’s coffin with a windowed board. We now see through the eyes of the corpse in the coffin; the old woman peers in at him.
We see the funeral procession from within the coffin. Then Allan’s two bodies reconverge on the bench. He sees the old man’s servant breaking open the tomb of Marguerite Chopin and helps him open the coffin. The old woman is inside. The servant impales her with a metal stake; she turns to a skeleton. Léone immediately rises from her bed, saved. We see sun breaking through the clouds.
The doctor and gendarme see a vision of the dead chateau owner. The doctor runs away but the gendarme falls and dies. Allan unties Giséle and they run away, while the doctor hides in an old flour mill.
Allan and Giséle get in a boat and row away. The doctor is trapped and the servant turns on the mill. The doctor is smothered in flour from the chute.
Meanwhile Allan and Giséle row their way to safety in the fog and walk through the park into sunlight as the mill grinds to a halt. Ende.
Thoughts: Vampyr is probably the greatest classic of horror cinema that most people have never seen. It is a film anomaly on many levels, and even now, ninety years later, could still be considered experimental. It was the first sound film directed by the great Carl Theodor Dreyer (The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), Day of Wrath (1943)), but it feels more like a throwback to silent movies. There is ample use of screen text and a minimum of dialogue. This was deliberate on the part of the filmmakers. The film was a simultaneous production in German, French, and English; title cards could be easily adapted and the performers were all dubbed after the filming. Sadly, the original negative was lost; modern restorations work from edited prints, and even the most recent restoration, by The Criterion Collections, is not quite complete. However, what is available is more than enough to get the feel for this work of art.
Vampyr was the first major supernatural vampire movie that was not based on Dracula (as was Nosferatu (1922)). Instead, it was very loosely inspired by In a Glass Darkly, a collection of five supernatural stories by J. Sheridan Le Fanu. This collection includes Carmilla, the first female vampire story, used as inspiration for multiple later movies, such as Blood and Roses (1960) and The Vampire Lovers (1970). These later films played up the lesbian subtext in Carmilla. In contrast, the female vampire in Vampyr is a frail old woman (I guess in this case drinking blood doesn’t make her young and sexy).
The movie is deliberately dream-like; in fact, it may all be Allan’s dream, but that is up to the viewer to decide. Vampyr is genuinely atmospheric, in part due to filming entirely in real locations. The abandoned mill of the finale was a real find. In keeping with the dream-like atmosphere, some of the photography was shot though gauze, and sometimes film was exposed to air to create a grainy look. The movie was entirely shot at dawn and dusk for the ambiguous lighting (except for the final shots of sunlight). Many of the images are surreal; shadows come and go without bodies; a laborer is shown digging ‘backwards,’ with the dirt flying into the shovel and being dumped in the hole; the protagonist splits into two entities at one point, with contrasting points of view. There is a strong sense of dislocation between and even within scenes. There are no actual scares in Vampyr, just an uneasy atmosphere with only a little plot. One can safely call the film “slow moving.” It probably isn’t a surprise that Vampyr was not popular with its contemporary audiences.
French (??maybe) film buff Baron Nicholas de Gunzburg financed the production on the condition that he fill the ‘star’ role; he performed under the name Julian West. As Allan Gray, he makes a wide-eyed, slack-jawed appearance that fits with the character’s rather ineffectual nature. The non-professional actor almost never changed facial expression, which is actually in keeping with the instructions from his director. For the most part, the events of the movie happen around Allan and he provides an expressionless observer.
Most of the cast were non-professional actors, with the conspicuous exception of Sybille Schmitz (Léone). One of the most striking scenes in the movie is when Léone turns a vampiric eye to her sister, moving through expressions of innocence, lust, anger, and finally despair. It’s a masterful sequence. The performers were generally chosen for their looks, and an ability to mouth the dialogue in three languages. When the dubbing was performed, only Julian West and Sybille Schmitz provided their own voices.
Vampyr is essential viewing, at least once, if you want to call yourself a horror movie buff. It’s definitely worth finding a restored copy to watch. Vampyr does require a certain mindset, in that it has very little action and it moves at, shall we say, a leisurely pace. One might call it as much an experience as a movie; just let the surreal images and frequently nonsensical dialogue wash over you.
Quick bits:
- Castle of Doom is the title of a heavily revised English language version of Vampyr. To theoretically increase public appeal, it is twenty minutes shorter and has an obtrusive narration, supposedly by the servant, to fill all of the non-dialogue portions. Mostly the narrator tells us what we have seen or are about to see. Scenes have been truncated, rearranged, and in a few places, speeded up. Most interestingly, it has quick footage, missing from the Criterion restoration, of Allan driving the iron stake into the vampire with a mallet, and of the gendarme being ordered by the old woman to kill Léone’s father (this last piece of footage is repurposed from a different scene in the restored movie).
- Vampyr was filmed at about the same time as Universal’s Dracula (1931). As a filmed stage play, Dracula has not aged well. To Dreyer’s dismay, Vampyr was not formally released until 1932, because the film distributors did not want to directly compete with Dracula.
- This was Julian West’s only acting role; he otherwise worked as a major fashion journalist.
Suggested double feature: This is a tough one to pair up. I’m going out on a limb and saying Suspiria (1977), for its surrealism but accelerated tempo. You’ll be ready for that loud Goblin soundtrack after Vampyr. I’d love to hear your suggestions.
Tagline for Coming Attraction: “Frightmare! Born of jungle witchcraft! Created by a curse!” [Now we will move from the sublime to the ridiculous]
