Vampyr

BFI Film Classics

by David Rudkin

Vampyr Der Traum des Allan Gray (1932) is one of the founding and defining works of psychological horror cinema, adapted from Gothic stories by Sheridan Le Fanu, a disturbing narrative of vampirism, obsession and posession of the soul. But it is also a film directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, the revered and legendary Danish director of La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1927). Shot in France with private money and a largely nonprofessional cast and primitive sound equipment, Vampyr is to some extent a ruin. There is no definitive print and English versions are marred by poor image quality and subtitles. And yet it is unquestionably extraordinary, a vivid and haunting manifestation of Dreyer's power to make visible on screen the inner human state, and to convey a dreamlike imagery of textures of nature amidst which transient, solitary human figures pass, some illuminated by an inner light, others threatened by a malign or demonic presence. In relation to Dreyer's long but often frustrated career, Vampyr is often thought of as an uneven or disappointing film. But, according to David Rudkin, this is to misunderstand what it sets out to do, which is systematically to set the spectator adrift in a mysterious world. In a meticulous formal analysis of Vampyr, Rudkin expands on this contention, pinpointing the sources of the film's uniquely disquieting effect. And yet, however strange it is, Vampyr remains a profound and troubling artwork concerned at the last to communicate human meanings--and none more so than the essence of death - in remarkable filmic imagery.

Genres: Film

80 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 2005

About the author

British playwright for theatre, film, television, and radio.

Reviews

[Tim Pendry]

I was disappointed with this particular BFI Film Classic. This is a series I have much appreciated. It is at its best when it is scholarly, giving us the historical context of a film, the system in which it was produced, the creative process and some sense of what it meant when it was created and its subsequent influence.

This account of Carl Dreyer's mess of a film (a mess through no fault of his own) seems to be the reading of an imaginative Dreyer fan boy who insists on interpreting the film shot by shot according to his own expectations and assumptions. Rudkin is a highly acclaimed playwright but it might not always be wise for one artist to comment on another.

Yes, there is some scholarly input but too much is in the notes and not enough in the body of the work. To be fair, the production cannot be said to have been part of a system that could be described easily. Dreyer was having difficulty financing his work and an aristocrat turned up prepared to bung a large wad but only if he was given the starring role. Not an auspicious start!

Dreyer is undoubtedly one of the greatest film directors in the history of cinema. His late 'Day of Wrath' (1943) is a staggering achievement cinematically that shows that his powers did not wane with age yet what survives of 'Vampyr' is hard to accept as a sufficiently coherent work that fully demonstrates his genius. It is a work of flashes of genius alongside presumption of genius.

It could be argued that, by 1932, it was an error to follow Murnau and Browning unless something truly radical could be demonstrated that had access to adequate control and resources. Shifting from Stoker to Le Fanu was not going to be enough even if the atmospherics and innovative camera work of 'Vampyr' have been rightly praised within the horror genre.

This is where the book irritates because Rudkin clearly wants to demonstrate a coherence that may not be there. We are treated to an extremely dull shot by shot analysis that forgets that, well, we can watch the film for ourselves and make our own judgement. There are insights but also far too much surmise and determination to see what might not be there.

The 'poetic' interpretation of the narrative strikes this reader as very unstable. Perhaps lack of coherence was artful, an example of radical experimentation, yet if there is one characteristic of all the Dreyer that I have seen it is that clarity of vision is central to his work. His camera concentrates on facial expression to express character and there is always logic in his work.

Yes, it is possible that Dreyer was experimenting with an inversion of his usual values in order to show us the unnatural and disturbed world of supernatural vampirism but I do not see the evidence beyond surmise that this justifies acceptance of all errors of logic and continuity.

This is the 'artist' in the author speaking, shaping the world to meet a vision, trying to recover Dreyer's film from its own terrible fate in the hands of various butchers. I certainly do not have a problem with Rudkin doing this but, please, not as a BFI Film Classic. I do not want surmise. I want fact that will help me come to a view on my own account.

[Oscar Cremmen]

aber der hunds

[Jesse]

Disappointing. Vampyr is one of my favorite films, and Rudkin is at his most insightful when negotiating the complex and often tenuous connection to its purported source novel (Sheridan Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly) and what he calls the "problems of Vampyr," that is, the reasons why historically this has been considered one of the Danish master's lesser achievements. Unfortunately, this only comprises about ten pages, with the rest being devoted to a shot-by-shot analysis, an approach that doesn't translate well to the page (it's quite tedious to read an extended analysis through meticulous description of something intended to be seen). Though I've only done a cursory glance-through as of yet, it came off more or less like a gloss of Bordwell's thorough analysis of the film in The Films of Carl-Theodor Dreyer.

[Pieter Mannaerts]

2nd edition, 2013. Excellent introduction to and analysis of the film.

[Sunset glimmer]

I love the books about vampires because the main characters are interesting.

[Jeff Miller]

One of the best BFI Film Classics I’ve read – on many levels…

This is a book about a film that almost exists in a different world; with ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’, Dryer made one of cinema’s greatest films, but then four years later he makes ‘Vampyr’…or ‘The Dream of Allan Gray’…or ‘The Strange Adventure of Allan Grey’…or maybe David…possibly Gray…there is very little documentation to understand exactly what Dreyer’s motivations were, but he did set out to make the film simultaneously in English, French and German…hence the changes. Once completed he was forced to make some edits by the German censor, but did he go further and cut as much as 10 minutes from the film? Are remaining publicity stills an echo of what is lost, or were they only ever for marketing purposes? Who knows? What was the actual running sequence?

Again, shrouded in the same fog that hangs on the lake, as what remains are differing versions, some with repeated shots…is what we have what Dreyer intended? Is there a lost spool somewhere in a vault that will reveal all??

David Rudkin does a masterful job in breaking this film down shot by shot, to understand what is happening, and what may have originally happened. There is no doubt at all about how much he loves this film – in equal measure to being frustrated and confused by it…and this is where we start to differ. By breaking it down so deeply, I fear that Rudkin may lose some of the elements that make the film so enthralling to me. What he may see as poor cinematic form, I see as intentional playing of the audience to unnerve and unsettle, without actually doing anything specific. You know it’s not right, you just don’t necessarily know why…and when you are confronted with that, scene after scene, it adds up. But maybe it’s not what Dreyer intended and it’s just a happy accident that happens to sit very nicely in my view…but when you realise that an actor very deliberately gets up from a chair, walks around the back of a moving camera to take a seat placing them on the other side of a bed, waiting for the pan to catch up with them…then that shouts out to me that something is going on here. What is undeniable, is that the cinematic technique for a film from 1932 is quite staggering.

Maybe the film is incomplete and that what we now watch isn’t what Dreyer intended, although he did once state "...had not any particular intention. I just wanted to make a film different from all other films. I wanted, if you will, to break new ground for the cinema. That is all."

What we have is, for me, a magnificent and rare piece of cinema, one that creeps into the room and then sits in a corner and just stares back at you…and thanks to this book, a film that I am now enjoying even more and am eager to watch again.

[Chris Lilly]

This is by David Rudkin, and Rudkin is a genius playwright, so it's worth attending to. But you really have to want to read a shot by shot analysis of a film that has three surviving variant prints. But it's Rudkin, and it's Dreyer, so it's valuable.