Vampyr - Criterion Collection
 | Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer Starring: N. Babanini, Albert Bras, Baron Nicolas de Gunzberg, Henriette Gerard, Jan Hieronimko Criterion, 1931, DVD Customer Rating: 31 reviews Recommend |
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With Vampyr, Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer's brilliance at achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, profoundly unsettling imagery (as in The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath) was for once applied to the horror genre. Yet the result-concerning an occult student assailed by various supernatural haunts and local evildoers at an inn outside Paris-is nearly unclassifiable, a host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds creating a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs, ominous scythes, and foreboding echoes, Vampyr is one of cinema's great nightmares.
In this chilling, atmospheric German film from 1932, director Carl Theodor Dreyer favors style over story, offering a minimal plot that draws only partially from established vampire folklore. Instead, Dreyer emphasizes an utterly dreamlike visual approach, using trick photography (double exposures, etc.) and a fog-like effect created by allowing additional light to leak onto the exposed film. The result is an unsettling film that seems to spring literally from the subconscious, freely adapted from the Victorian short story Carmilla by noted horror author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, about a young man who discovers the presence of a female vampire in a mysterious European castle. There's more to the story, of course, but it's the ghostly, otherworldly tone of the film that lingers powerfully in the memory. Dreyer maintains this eerie mood by suggesting horror and impending doom as opposed to any overt displays of terrifying imagery. Watching Vampyr is like being placed under a hypnotic trance, where the rules of everyday reality no longer apply. As a splendid bonus, the DVD includes The Mascot, a delightful 26-minute animated film from 1934. Created by pioneering animator Wladyslaw Starewicz, this clever film — in which a menagerie of toys and dolls springs to life — serves as an impressive precursor to the popular Wallace & Gromit films of the 1990s. — Jeff Shannon
Title: Vampyr - Criterion Collection
Sales Rank: 3864 in DVD
Actor: N. Babanini, Albert Bras, Baron Nicolas de Gunzberg, Henriette Gerard, Jan Hieronimko
Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Studio: Criterion, 2008-07-22, Theatrical Release: 1931
Format: Black & White, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, NTSC, Acpect Ratio 1.33:1
Languages: German (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Audience Rating: Unrated
Region Code: 1
Running Time: 75 minutes
Item Dimensions: 1 pounds
Package Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.7 x 1.7 inches, 1 pounds
- A nightmare captured on film.
- Released at the same time as Dracula and Frankenstein,Carl Theodor Dreyer's dreamlike film,"Vampyr" is one of the few times in cinema a director has succeded in capturing a nightmare on the screen.
The film loosely follows Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla",Vampyr follows the story of a wanderer who finds himself in a village surrounded by superstition and the supernatural.
The mood Dreyer creates is one… More reviews
- A restored Vampyr
- Carl Dreyer is a film-maker's film-maker. His films resonate, and are imbued not just with striking images, mise-en-scene and editing choices, but with a numinous nexus of meaning. I'll watch a Dreyer film, and in the course of the days and weeks to come, a moment or moments from the film: a notion, a face, a dramatic epiphany, (or all these things), will… More reviews
- Great
- The Criterion Collection will shortly be releasing a two disk version of the 1932 black and white classic horror film by Carl Theodor Dreyer, Vampyr. I first watched this film about twenty years ago, on a VHS release, and, unlike many others, immediately recognized it as a supernal piece of cinema. Then, I did not have the critical knowledge to discern why, but… More reviews
- A Dream of Death Captured on Film
- Criterion has done a magnificent job in the production of this handsome, hefty, lovely-to-hold DVD package literally packed with all-sorts-of goodies. You get two DVDs in a gothic three-fold holder and the screenplay and short story that influenced the film in a neat little volume. The DVDs and their slipcase and the book are neatly contained in a further… More reviews
- This I considered a rip off
- This movie was terrible and I didn't think that it lived up to the hype advertised. It was so bad I returned it and requested my money back. Picture was awful, sound was terrible and definitely not worth the money I spent. … More reviews
