Vampyr (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

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 return to haunt me. Fortunately it's not usually a spooky haunting, but an artistic one: the mastery of Dreyer as a cineaste strikes notes which always resound in this viewer's soul.Oddly enough, in the case of Vampyr it is a spooky haunting. Sort of. As the wonderful supplemental features in this Criterion edition of Vampyr make clear, Dreyer wanted to make a "popular" (or at least commercially successful) film after the financial disaster of The Passion of Joan of Arc. Vampires had made at least a modest bite into the popular culture of the 1920s: Nosferatu, London After Midnight and the stage production of Dracula with Bela Lugosi all exploited the public interest in the undead. Dreyer had his subject.I won't repeat the story of the production tribulations of Vampyr, where Dreyer worked both as a producer and director. Suffice it to say that Vampyr was also a commercial flop. Dreyer had a nervous breakdown and checked himself into the Joan of Arc Sanatarium to recover. He didn't make another film for about another 10 years. As for the film: the original negative for Vampyr no longer exists. The soundtrack, especially in those early days of European sound-film making is horrible. When I first saw this movie long ago back in college, I was entirely put off. The sound sucked, the acting seemed stilted and the print lookedfuzzy, scratchy and just plain terrible. Worse still, it just wasn't scary.It's still not scary. But it's eerie, and this eeriness is worth consideration. Criterion has cleaned up the movie's sound, and, to the best extent possible, restored the image. Vampyr was a low-budget production and, though it looks antique to us, it was deliberately set in contemporary times. Dreyer found an abandoned factory for the scene where the vampire calls an abrupt halt to the fleeting shadows dancing across the walls during a witches' ball.These scenes feature startlingly modern compositions, evocative lighting and a fluidly gliding use of camera by Dreyer's gifted cinematographer Rudolph Mate. The musical score has been cleaned up as well, and contributes much to the disconsolate mood of the piece. I won't analyze the plot of the film, (loosely based on Sheridan Le Fanu's short novel "Carmilla") or the character relationships, whose opacity seems as much a characteristic of Dreyer's approach as of his largely non-professional cast's shortcomings as actors. The reason why Vampyr is worth watching is because this film succeeds astonishingly in conveying the surreal, illogical yet poetically thematic experience of dreams and nightmares. The episodes here don't link at all well in terms of narrative structure. However, the quality of light in one sequence (the boat caught in the fog) visually evokes the cascading flour in the mill sequence with which it's intercut. The parallel cutting suggests there may be a meaning linking the two sequences, but there is no overt narrative or even character link. We're left with the soft slow clouds of fog, the briskly tumbling suffocating clouds of flour, and the knowledge that the characters in these parallel scenes are lost. It's a dreamlike, poetic moment, evoked beautifully by cinematic means. Vampyr is the film poetry of unquiet dreams, and worth a visitation. (The special features of this fine two-disk set include interesting critical analyses, a wonderful short feature about the production of Vampyr, a filmed interview with Dreyer, and--- in a supplemental booklet--- the shooting script and a reprint of Le Fanu's "Carmilla." Film school in a coffin-box without the school! Enough to make any self-respecting movie vampire drool!)

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 casing that is chillingly evocative in its design. This is the perfect gift for the imminent Halloween - and watching this film is a perfect way to kick off the start of October.This movie was released in 1932, shot a few years prior. There are, of course, no CGI effects (thank God!). There are no grotesque makeups and over-the-top transformations as in many recent vampire/horror films. There aren't gallons - or even cupfulls of blood - and yet this film...this film is perhaps the most uncanny, weirdest, chilling "horror" movie ever made. Not because it is shock scarey, no, but because it is silently scarey. It is shadows-in-sunshine scarey. It is downright creepy! One of the best examples of what I'm talking about is an all-of-twenty second or so scene of ghost shadows dancing on a wall to weird music and a weird shadowy band that - in twenty-some seconds mind you - does more to haunt a man's soul than the entire "The Shining" by Kubrick with its own lavish many-peopled ghost party in the Gold Room (which I love!) or the Dance of the Dead in the classic "Carnival of Souls" (which I love also). It is truly amazing that with no CGI or big budget or latex makeup applications to simulate monsters and ghouls, this movie - and this one scene in particular - can unnerve and haunt and stay with you, long after you've watched the film's economical 73 minutes. What did the great director Dreyer have that makes this film so powerful? A rich and poetic Imagination! Visual and aesthetic Brilliance! Knowing how to edit in order to unnerve the viewer. And there is so much packed into these hallucinatory 73 minutes: the potent image early on of the bellringer with the scythe, the river before him, his back to us...and a face we can only imagine and DO NOT want to see! A disembodied shadow seating itself beside it's owner. Another shadow shovelling in reverse motion that is absolutely inexplicable and therefore bone-chilling. A woman's face slowly becoming overtaken by evil that is scarier than anything I've seen done with makeup or special effects: her rolled up eyes and malevolent smile are precursor's to the first shot of Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance in the aforementioned "The Shining" when we first know he is going mad. The crazy doctor in the ground-breaking film is also a dead-on precursor of Jack MacGowran's eccentric Professor Ambrosius in Polanski's "The Fearless Vampire Killers" (which I also love). The vampire in the film is totally against type - and thereby more fearful than those with dripping fangs and blood-shot eyes in later-day films. The much-commented upon sequence wherein our hero is being buried alive is likewise alone worth the price of admission. I could go on and on with the influences this film initiated in horror films down the years, but it is best to check it out for yourself. It puts Tod Browning's "Dracula" to shame, actually, despite the great Bela Lugosi (whom I love). No, this is not even so much a film as a dream/nightmare caught on film. It is perhaps as close to the world of the Dead as we, the viewers, might dare get...without crossing over ourselves! Yet! Strange, surreal, sublime: it must be seen to be believed.

Excelente edicion en Digipack como todas las de CriterionEn este caso es excelente que incluya un libro en el cual la mitad del mismo el guion de la pelicula original y la segunda mitad sea copia de la historia en la que se basa libremente.

It arrived a few day later then the top day estimate. But it is exceptional and perfect. Thx to the saller!

After making his masterpiece, The Passion of Joan Of Arc, Dreyer made another impressive work, one which deals with the paranormal universe of the vampire. But instead of the now unbearable Twilight vampires which are more ridiculous than mysterious, we have instead a very haunting vampire, and also paranormal, story here. The visuals are very impressive, for the year they were done which was 1932, and they are very effective. they offer us an eerie and almost nightmarish atmosphere that adds to the drama of the story. Even the music helps making the atmosphere more haunting, straight from the credits at the beginning. A great idea of putting the screenplay along with the novel that inspired the film. It can makes us see how at the time, the art of the screenplay was written at the time.

Super thorough packaging, lots of supplemental material and bonuses. Great looking film, really spooky.