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Writing Vampyr
A bonus on the Criterion Collection set for Carl Theodor Dreyer's "Vampyr" includes his screenplay of the 1932 film "Vampyr" as well as Sheridan Le Fanu's "Carmilla" the novella from "In a Glass Darkly" that was the main inspiration for the film, and one of the cornerstones of the vampire subgenre.
214 pages, Paperback
First published July 22, 2008
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28 people want to read
About the author
Carl Theodor Dreyer
24 books19 followersCarl Theodor Dreyer, Jr. (3 February 1889 – 20 March 1968) was a Danish film director. He is regarded by many critics and filmmakers as one of the greatest directors in cinema.
Life
Dreyer was born illegitimate in Copenhagen, Denmark. His birth mother was an unmarried Scanian maid named Josefine Bernhardine Nilsson, and he was put up for adoption by his birth father, Jens Christian Torp, a farmer who was his mother's employer. He spent the first two years of his life in orphanages until his adoption by a typographer named Carl Theodor Dreyer, Sr., and his wife, Inger Marie (née Olsen). His adoptive parents were emotionally distant and his childhood was largely unhappy. But he was a highly intelligent school student, who left home and formal education at the age of sixteen. He dissociated himself from his adoptive family, but their teachings were to influence the themes of many of his films.
Dreyer was ideologically conservative. According to David Bordwell: "As a youth he belonged to Radical Socialist party, a conservative group radical only in their opposition to military expenditures..."Even when I was with Ekstrabladet," Dreyer recalled, "I was conservative."..."I don't believe in revolutions. They have, as a rule, the tedious quality of pulling development back. I believe more in evolution, in the small advances."
Dreyer died of pneumonia in Copenhagen at age 79. The documentary Carl Th. Dreyer: My Metier contains reminiscences from those who knew him.
Career
As a young man, Dreyer worked as a journalist, but he eventually joined the film industry as a writer of title cards for silent films and subsequently of screenplays. His first attempts at film direction had limited success, and he left Denmark to work in the French film industry. While living in France he mixed with Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo and other members of the French artistic scene and in 1928 he made his first classic film, The Passion of Joan of Arc. Working from the transcripts of Joan's trial, he created a masterpiece of emotion that drew equally from realism and expressionism. Dreyer used private finance from Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg to make his next film as the Danish film industry was in financial ruin. Vampyr (1932) is a surreal meditation on fear. Logic gave way to mood and atmosphere in this story of a man protecting two sisters from a vampire. The movie contains many indelible images, such as the hero, played by de Gunzburg (under the screen name Julian West), dreaming of his own burial and the animal blood lust on the face of one of the sisters as she suffers under the vampire's spell. The film was shot mostly silent but with sparse, cryptic dialogue in three separate versions - English, French and German.
Both films were box office failures, and Dreyer did not make another movie until 1943. Denmark was by now under Nazi occupation, and his Day of Wrath had as its theme the paranoia surrounding witch hunts in the sixteenth century in a strongly theocratic culture. With this work, Dreyer established the style that would mark his sound films: careful compositions, stark monochrome cinematography, and very long takes. In the more than a decade before his next full-length feature film, Dreyer made two documentaries. In 1955, he made Ordet (The Word) based on the play of the same name by Kaj Munk. The film combines a love story with a conflict of faith. Dreyer's last film was 1964's Gertrud. Although seen by some as a lesser film than its predecessors, it is a fitting close to Dreyer's career, as it deals with a woman who, through the tribulations of her life, never expresses regret for her choices.
The great, never finished project of Dreyer’s career was a film about Jesus. Though a manuscript was written (published 1968) the unstable economic conditions and Dreyer’s own demands of realism together with his switching engagement let it remain a dream.
Life
Dreyer was born illegitimate in Copenhagen, Denmark. His birth mother was an unmarried Scanian maid named Josefine Bernhardine Nilsson, and he was put up for adoption by his birth father, Jens Christian Torp, a farmer who was his mother's employer. He spent the first two years of his life in orphanages until his adoption by a typographer named Carl Theodor Dreyer, Sr., and his wife, Inger Marie (née Olsen). His adoptive parents were emotionally distant and his childhood was largely unhappy. But he was a highly intelligent school student, who left home and formal education at the age of sixteen. He dissociated himself from his adoptive family, but their teachings were to influence the themes of many of his films.
Dreyer was ideologically conservative. According to David Bordwell: "As a youth he belonged to Radical Socialist party, a conservative group radical only in their opposition to military expenditures..."Even when I was with Ekstrabladet," Dreyer recalled, "I was conservative."..."I don't believe in revolutions. They have, as a rule, the tedious quality of pulling development back. I believe more in evolution, in the small advances."
Dreyer died of pneumonia in Copenhagen at age 79. The documentary Carl Th. Dreyer: My Metier contains reminiscences from those who knew him.
Career
As a young man, Dreyer worked as a journalist, but he eventually joined the film industry as a writer of title cards for silent films and subsequently of screenplays. His first attempts at film direction had limited success, and he left Denmark to work in the French film industry. While living in France he mixed with Jean Cocteau, Jean Hugo and other members of the French artistic scene and in 1928 he made his first classic film, The Passion of Joan of Arc. Working from the transcripts of Joan's trial, he created a masterpiece of emotion that drew equally from realism and expressionism. Dreyer used private finance from Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg to make his next film as the Danish film industry was in financial ruin. Vampyr (1932) is a surreal meditation on fear. Logic gave way to mood and atmosphere in this story of a man protecting two sisters from a vampire. The movie contains many indelible images, such as the hero, played by de Gunzburg (under the screen name Julian West), dreaming of his own burial and the animal blood lust on the face of one of the sisters as she suffers under the vampire's spell. The film was shot mostly silent but with sparse, cryptic dialogue in three separate versions - English, French and German.
Both films were box office failures, and Dreyer did not make another movie until 1943. Denmark was by now under Nazi occupation, and his Day of Wrath had as its theme the paranoia surrounding witch hunts in the sixteenth century in a strongly theocratic culture. With this work, Dreyer established the style that would mark his sound films: careful compositions, stark monochrome cinematography, and very long takes. In the more than a decade before his next full-length feature film, Dreyer made two documentaries. In 1955, he made Ordet (The Word) based on the play of the same name by Kaj Munk. The film combines a love story with a conflict of faith. Dreyer's last film was 1964's Gertrud. Although seen by some as a lesser film than its predecessors, it is a fitting close to Dreyer's career, as it deals with a woman who, through the tribulations of her life, never expresses regret for her choices.
The great, never finished project of Dreyer’s career was a film about Jesus. Though a manuscript was written (published 1968) the unstable economic conditions and Dreyer’s own demands of realism together with his switching engagement let it remain a dream.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
June 15, 2020
A short book included with the Criterion Collection DVD for Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr (1932). Contains Dreyer's screenplay for the film and Irish writer Sheridan Le Fanu's novella "Carmilla," on which the film is loosely based.
Reading Dreyer's screenplay for the film is an interesting experience. Although there are some significant differences with the finished film, it's largely the same. Even in cases where specific details are changed the broad strokes remain the same: here Allan Gray (called Nikolas in this script) sees disembodied shadows dancing by the side of the road rather than on the walls of an abandoned factory. The two biggest differences are the death of the doctor (he sinks into a bog rather than being buried under flour), and some scenes entirely absent from the film of the vampire commanding a pack of dogs and siccing them on a young boy. Allan Gray's romance with Gisele is more developed, which makes his coupling with her at the end feel more natural.
Some of the most striking differences occur in the scene where the vampire is staked. When her coffin is opened her eyes are still open even though she's unconscious, which makes the scene feel even creepier. Although the staking itself isn't actually shown there are shots of blood splashing, which not even the most lenient censors would allow a horror film to get away with in 1932.
The script is the same as the final film in that it shares its weird, expressionistic atmosphere. While this is the first script I've read, I can tell it's very different from most scripts: most of it describes imagery and onscreen happenings, and there's minimal dialogue. Dreyer's descriptions of scenes are rich and evocative, and the script reads as well as the film watches.
While Dreyer credited Le Fanu's "Carmilla" (or more properly the short story collection it's contained in, In a Glass Darkly) as the source material for Vampyr, many film critics have said that he only incorporated specific plot elements into an entirely original story. There is a lot of truth to that, but Dreyer did use the basic premise of "Carmilla" for his film (a female vampire feeding on a young woman and trying to turn her into one of the undead). He also uses other elements- the sinister doctor secretly harming his patient, the young woman under the control of an older female vampire, the idea of vampires taking over a town and sucking the life out of it.
One of Dreyer's biggest changes from "Carmilla" is that the vampire preying on the young woman is an old woman rather than a young one, and entirely eliminates the lesbian subtext. (Cinema would have to wait until Dracula's Daughter [1936] for a vampire film with lesbian undertones.) In truth, the lesbian content of "Carmilla" is really text rather than subtext: although the main character's relationship with the vampire isn't explicitly sexual there's a lot of mutual affection, declarations of love, and intimate time spent together, and the narrator talks a lot about the vampire's beautiful face and hair.
One of the story's most notable differences with typical depictions of vampires is that when the vampire is staked she's not portrayed as sleeping with her eyes clothes, but having them open even though she's unconscious (as does the vampire in Dreyer's original script). Another difference is that rather than laving a layer of her native soil in her coffin she has a layer of blood, a touch that makes the scene feel more disturbing and grotesque than those of most vampire stories. In this story not only is the vampire staked, but her corpse is decapitated.
Of course, the biggest difference between "Carmilla" and Vampyr is that Dreyer's film is more concerned with mood and atmosphere than story per se, and focuses more on creating a weird, uncanny effect than telling a traditional narrative. Dreyer's characters don't have a great deal of depth, and Allan Gray is a passive protagonist the audience can project themselves onto.
An interesting aspect of "Carmilla" is that certain elements of the iconic Universal version of Dracula (1931) are taken from it rather than the Bram Stoker novel: the older man who insists on the reality of vampires to the disbelief of the other characters, the vampire who puts on a charming guise in order to ingratiate himself with his victims.
Reading Dreyer's screenplay for the film is an interesting experience. Although there are some significant differences with the finished film, it's largely the same. Even in cases where specific details are changed the broad strokes remain the same: here Allan Gray (called Nikolas in this script) sees disembodied shadows dancing by the side of the road rather than on the walls of an abandoned factory. The two biggest differences are the death of the doctor (he sinks into a bog rather than being buried under flour), and some scenes entirely absent from the film of the vampire commanding a pack of dogs and siccing them on a young boy. Allan Gray's romance with Gisele is more developed, which makes his coupling with her at the end feel more natural.
Some of the most striking differences occur in the scene where the vampire is staked. When her coffin is opened her eyes are still open even though she's unconscious, which makes the scene feel even creepier. Although the staking itself isn't actually shown there are shots of blood splashing, which not even the most lenient censors would allow a horror film to get away with in 1932.
The script is the same as the final film in that it shares its weird, expressionistic atmosphere. While this is the first script I've read, I can tell it's very different from most scripts: most of it describes imagery and onscreen happenings, and there's minimal dialogue. Dreyer's descriptions of scenes are rich and evocative, and the script reads as well as the film watches.
While Dreyer credited Le Fanu's "Carmilla" (or more properly the short story collection it's contained in, In a Glass Darkly) as the source material for Vampyr, many film critics have said that he only incorporated specific plot elements into an entirely original story. There is a lot of truth to that, but Dreyer did use the basic premise of "Carmilla" for his film (a female vampire feeding on a young woman and trying to turn her into one of the undead). He also uses other elements- the sinister doctor secretly harming his patient, the young woman under the control of an older female vampire, the idea of vampires taking over a town and sucking the life out of it.
One of Dreyer's biggest changes from "Carmilla" is that the vampire preying on the young woman is an old woman rather than a young one, and entirely eliminates the lesbian subtext. (Cinema would have to wait until Dracula's Daughter [1936] for a vampire film with lesbian undertones.) In truth, the lesbian content of "Carmilla" is really text rather than subtext: although the main character's relationship with the vampire isn't explicitly sexual there's a lot of mutual affection, declarations of love, and intimate time spent together, and the narrator talks a lot about the vampire's beautiful face and hair.
One of the story's most notable differences with typical depictions of vampires is that when the vampire is staked she's not portrayed as sleeping with her eyes clothes, but having them open even though she's unconscious (as does the vampire in Dreyer's original script). Another difference is that rather than laving a layer of her native soil in her coffin she has a layer of blood, a touch that makes the scene feel more disturbing and grotesque than those of most vampire stories. In this story not only is the vampire staked, but her corpse is decapitated.
Of course, the biggest difference between "Carmilla" and Vampyr is that Dreyer's film is more concerned with mood and atmosphere than story per se, and focuses more on creating a weird, uncanny effect than telling a traditional narrative. Dreyer's characters don't have a great deal of depth, and Allan Gray is a passive protagonist the audience can project themselves onto.
An interesting aspect of "Carmilla" is that certain elements of the iconic Universal version of Dracula (1931) are taken from it rather than the Bram Stoker novel: the older man who insists on the reality of vampires to the disbelief of the other characters, the vampire who puts on a charming guise in order to ingratiate himself with his victims.
August 6, 2025
I had received the Criterion Collection blu-ray release of Carl Theodor Dreyer’s “Vampyr” for my birthday, but before I watched the movie I wanted to read the book that came with it. Not only does this contain the original script for the film, it has one of its primary inspirations, the early vampire fiction, “Carmilla.” Both were an interesting read. The script for “Vampyr” surprised me in how much it felt like a prose novel, albeit an incredibly surreal and stiff one. “Carmilla” is a pretty compelling vampire story, with the novel perspective of focusing on a female vampire and a female victim. Overall, this was a good read, though it’s not something I’d seek out on its own had I not gotten the blu-ray.
October 8, 2017
Using the influences of both Dracula and Carmilla, Dreyer creates a mix of unexpected encounters, unrequited love and death that acts more like a disease then a turning. The film was a bit on the artsy side for me, but the screenplay explained certain elements that were rather confusing in the film. The stylised manner really comes through in the silence and cinematography, yet the script is fairy precise in what it wants to achieve: a chilling tale where the truth and the culprits are not so easy to discover.
September 29, 2025
Carmilla is the first piece of vampire fiction to make me well and truly appreciate the appeal of vampire fiction.
Dreyer's script is interesting, insofar as a script for an experimental film is almost necessarily interesting. And it certainly adds some appreciation to the film itself. But giving me a reason to finally read Carmilla was the true value of this collection.
Dreyer's script is interesting, insofar as a script for an experimental film is almost necessarily interesting. And it certainly adds some appreciation to the film itself. But giving me a reason to finally read Carmilla was the true value of this collection.
September 2, 2022
CARMILLA: Five stars. Better than DRACULA, and not by a little.
VAMPYR screenplay: One and a half stars. Surrealism might make for arresting visual art, but it makes for terrible stories.
VAMPYR screenplay: One and a half stars. Surrealism might make for arresting visual art, but it makes for terrible stories.
March 25, 2016
I read this book, as well as the liner essays, to coincide with a post on a blog I am writing with my wife called "before we die films" on Wordpress where we discuss the relevance and impact that the "1001 films to see before you die" has on us. This book (and essays) contained a great deal of material that all had separate sort of things to say about them, and our review for the film is over at the blog.
The screenplay...
First, the screenplay to Vampyr was excellent. It was well written and interestingly different than the film in a lot of cool ways. The prose within was definitely worth including in the Criterion DVD. The film is a little unclear at times based on what is happening (but it IS absolutely beautiful), so it is interesting to look at what the intended choices were going to be to see it executed on the screen. It is also interesting the differences in what they wanted to make versus what the final product looked like, including the ending, the addition of the dogs which were central to the piece, and other stuff that didn't make it.
Carmilla...
Carmilla was an interesting and beautifully written piece that differed from the film in many, many ways. It is easy to see how the director used it in his work, but it is also clear that there is a huge difference. What I found fascinating about this novella is its really cool narrative structure, bouncing between first person and then frame-narratives to drive the plot forward. The other-worldliness is also engaged through spooky diction and a strange unclear queer relationship between the main characters of the piece. I thought it was incredibly edgy and raw for a Victorian story, and while I have very little experience with vampire tales, this one is simply a very well written story that happens to have a bizarre vampire story as its centerpiece. Without giving too much away, the final scene where the tale ended made my skin crawl and engaged a hearty gross-out laugh. My wife asked, "what?" My only response was, "you don't want to know, but it was awesome." A great reading experience.
Le Fanu's "Vampyr's Ghosts and Demons"...
This essay was on many of the technical aspects of the film that I was not aware of, including the history of its genesis, its reception, and how it fits into the career of the artists involved. Fascinating.
Newman's "Vampyr and the Vampire"…
This was my favorite essay, mainly because of my background as an English major. Essentially it is a history of the genesis of the vampire itself, and how the novel was brought to the screen taking Carmilla and the history of the trope into consideration. Really enlightening and added a lot to the experience of the film and the novella.
Koerber's "Some notes on the Restoration..."
I mean, interesting considering the fact that huge chunks of the film are missing and the audio did not match up with what they had. What I found really crazy as I watched was the fact that some of the restoration work made the film look significantly newer than it is. Quite an achievement.
Weinberg and Weinberg's "interview with Baron Nicolas de Gunzberg" ...
This was also my favorite part as I learned the most from this essay. This includes the insane filming schedule, the casting choices, how the film was funded, and a lot of other really cool facts about the film through the mouth of one of the central characters of the film even happening. Again, a really fascinating read.
The screenplay...
First, the screenplay to Vampyr was excellent. It was well written and interestingly different than the film in a lot of cool ways. The prose within was definitely worth including in the Criterion DVD. The film is a little unclear at times based on what is happening (but it IS absolutely beautiful), so it is interesting to look at what the intended choices were going to be to see it executed on the screen. It is also interesting the differences in what they wanted to make versus what the final product looked like, including the ending, the addition of the dogs which were central to the piece, and other stuff that didn't make it.
Carmilla...
Carmilla was an interesting and beautifully written piece that differed from the film in many, many ways. It is easy to see how the director used it in his work, but it is also clear that there is a huge difference. What I found fascinating about this novella is its really cool narrative structure, bouncing between first person and then frame-narratives to drive the plot forward. The other-worldliness is also engaged through spooky diction and a strange unclear queer relationship between the main characters of the piece. I thought it was incredibly edgy and raw for a Victorian story, and while I have very little experience with vampire tales, this one is simply a very well written story that happens to have a bizarre vampire story as its centerpiece. Without giving too much away, the final scene where the tale ended made my skin crawl and engaged a hearty gross-out laugh. My wife asked, "what?" My only response was, "you don't want to know, but it was awesome." A great reading experience.
Le Fanu's "Vampyr's Ghosts and Demons"...
This essay was on many of the technical aspects of the film that I was not aware of, including the history of its genesis, its reception, and how it fits into the career of the artists involved. Fascinating.
Newman's "Vampyr and the Vampire"…
This was my favorite essay, mainly because of my background as an English major. Essentially it is a history of the genesis of the vampire itself, and how the novel was brought to the screen taking Carmilla and the history of the trope into consideration. Really enlightening and added a lot to the experience of the film and the novella.
Koerber's "Some notes on the Restoration..."
I mean, interesting considering the fact that huge chunks of the film are missing and the audio did not match up with what they had. What I found really crazy as I watched was the fact that some of the restoration work made the film look significantly newer than it is. Quite an achievement.
Weinberg and Weinberg's "interview with Baron Nicolas de Gunzberg" ...
This was also my favorite part as I learned the most from this essay. This includes the insane filming schedule, the casting choices, how the film was funded, and a lot of other really cool facts about the film through the mouth of one of the central characters of the film even happening. Again, a really fascinating read.
June 30, 2024
Came for Carmilla, stayed for Vampyr!
February 17, 2016
This edition includes the screenplay the the film Vampyr (1932) by Carl Theodor Dreyer and Christen Jul, and the short story Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu. I only read Carmilla and plan on reading the screenplay after I watch the film.
I haven't read many vampire stories but this is definitely one I'll remember- particularly the ending. It is a short story so there's not a whole lot to say about it. The writing was easy to read, the language was interesting. At first I didn't know whether the narrator was a male or female until her father says "my daughter" and it only mentions her name once- Laura- a little more than halfway through the story. Overall it was quite engaging and I very interested in seeing how this story inspired the film Vampyr. I think it's one that everyone should read, especially those who like vampire and/or horror-esque stories. Plus it's only a little over 100 pages so it really takes no time to read it!
I haven't read many vampire stories but this is definitely one I'll remember- particularly the ending. It is a short story so there's not a whole lot to say about it. The writing was easy to read, the language was interesting. At first I didn't know whether the narrator was a male or female until her father says "my daughter" and it only mentions her name once- Laura- a little more than halfway through the story. Overall it was quite engaging and I very interested in seeing how this story inspired the film Vampyr. I think it's one that everyone should read, especially those who like vampire and/or horror-esque stories. Plus it's only a little over 100 pages so it really takes no time to read it!
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews