201 - Vampyr (The Dream of Allan Gray), 1932, Germany, France. Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.

Thursday, July 20, 2017

201 - Vampyr (The Dream of Allan Gray), 1932, Germany, France.  Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer.

Carl Theodor Dreyer has some range.  This is our third of his films to watch, and all of them could have been made by a different director.

Master of the House (1925) was a chamber drama with a moral.  It was filmed on a sound stage with a built house with removable walls.  Watching it was like watching a play.

The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) was a biographical drama of a Christian martyr, filmed in style unique to itself.  It was like watching a surrealist fantasy in close-ups and Dutch angles.

Vampyr (1932) is a horror film playing with reality and subjectivity.  It was filmed on location.  It is like watching a story that moves back and forth between a third-person and a first-person narrative, between objective reality and subjective daydreams, without its always being clear which is which.

Dreyer was prepared to release Vampyr nearly a year before he did, but producers delayed it in order to release a couple of popular American films first: Dracula and Frankenstein.  Dreyer was reportedly not happy, as he felt those two films took away some of his audience.

In our story Allan Gray takes a room at the inn.  He has studied the occult, so his mind is susceptible to what is about to occur.

He sees strange things happening at night as he attempts to go to sleep.

Then a strange man enters the room and leaves him with a mysterious small bundled tied up with string.  And he writes, "Open upon my death."  And he leaves.

Later Gray finds himself walking in the half-light.  A shadow will move on its own.  Then it will attach itself to a person that it matches and follow that person as we would expect it to.

Gray follows.

He meets an old woman.  We might learn later that she is a vampire.

He meets an old man.  We might discover him to be a doctor.  And for that matter, he might be a vampire too.

He will at least ask for Gray's blood.  In a transfusion.  To save a woman's life, of course.  And Gray will give it to him.

Was that a good idea?

Oh, there will be a showdown.

Have you seen Peter Weir's film Witness (1985), starring Harrison Ford and Kelly McGillis? Consider the ending of that film, and consider that it may have happened here first.

Dreyer once said, "All good films are characterized by a rhythmic tension."

He described one type of rhythmic tension as that which happens when a character moves, and one changes either the lighting or the camera or both.  The background itself moves as when we watch a real person moving and we follow him with our eyes.

He described another kind of rhythmic tension as a "succession of images," as with that which happens during a stage play when stage hands move sets around and there is as much action off stage as on.

And here, he will do things off-screen, especially sounds.

But what will happen to Allan Gray?

Will it be good?  Or will it be bad?

Let us find out.

And please bring your iron stake with you.