Dir. Carl Theodor Dreyer
Germany
Film #18, of Thursday 18th October, for Halloween 31 For 31
I don’t want to kick Vampyres (1974) any more while it’s on
the ground, after doing so in the first review for the whole season (here). One
cannot help though, as the only other film yet to be mentioned in these reviews
to deal with the myth of vampirism, to admit that comparing it to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr is to compare a plain, dull sky,
regardless of my thoughts on the other film, to a cosmic total eclipse. I was
curious how such an emotionally charged, spiritual director like Denmark’s Dreyer would have tackled pure horror
cinema, an inkling to it through Day of
Wrath (1943), where witchcraft is portrayed in as a real tangible entity by
the end of its drama but subtly within the characters’ behaviour. With Vampyr I encountered one of the least
conventional and original horror films I have seen.
A traveller Allen Grey visits an
old inn only to encounter evidence of the supernatural. Everything beyond this
is the breaking down of a horror story into an almost purely visual
abstraction, compiling together the short stories of J. Sheridan Le Fanu's In a
Glass Darkly in one single work, in which Grey, a figure who mostly watches
the proceedings around him, is faced with the effects of a vampire and her
human minions. The work of Dreyer decided
to take with this is the complete opposite of the films I have seen of his in
tone – his later, minimalist evocations such as Ordet (1955) – influenced by Un
Chien Andalou (1928), the projection of spiritualist and the eerie nature
of horror fiction played out without the hesitating plot structures that still
undermine films today. This first viewing is still one of immense surprise at
the results of what I have seen, to which I intend to rewatch this film as soon
as possible for my benefit, but without leading into pointless vagary Vampyr felt like a full, perfect
construction rather than a failed one.
It took until near the end of the
film for me to realise and ‘get’ its design, a film of intentional tangents and
loose ends where we are in the middle of the ever changing events as Allen Grey
is, his mind hallucinating images of death, including the most startling of
horror cinema involving a casket. From a stripped down story, Dreyer instead
attempted to convey it as a purely visual work, the scenes of the bodiless
shadows that Grey sees move on their own free will establishing his intentions
early. That the film ended up having dialogue, to concede with the push for
sound cinema in the era, creates a further air of the abstract; a film that
feels like a silent work in its emphasis on the visuals, and because of its
dialogue being post-dubbed into multiple languages, creating an state of
half-life and half-intangible reality to the whole picture. Attempting to
explain the rich, dreamlike state of films like this, especially when only
viewed once, is difficult but there is at least a sense I can grasp that Dreyer
wanted to push the idea of art – clear as he directly took inspiration from
painters such as Francisco Goya – that by using visual motifs and
space on his ‘canvas’, he could encapsulate the terrors of the unknown in the
viewer through this indirect evocation. Shadows are not only individual beings
but also flux in shape and pass through the narrative without being involved in
it, the sets are decorated with objects to illicit emotion and are filtered
through three dimensional shape, and the camera follows its own course in and
out of the world on its own whim. So many plot strands and images are
completely unexplained, and there is too much information for me to try to
understand now, but it is the same as Kenneth
Anger’s Inauguration of the Pleasure
Dome (1954) in that, unless one starts to dissect and decode the pieces
slowly, one has to describe the immediate reactions one feels as you view it
instead. Visceral imagery usually denotes gore or car explosions, but it
probably closer lies to films like Vampyr.
And thinking about Vampyr it fully links to Dreyer’s films from what I have seen,
not just for the potential religious ideas – and yet there are no crucifixes in
the film, completely remove a basic tenement of vampiric lore – but that from
this to his last film Gertrud (1964)
he believed in portraying emotions in their fullest depth by what he used light
and visuals and dialogue for and how, a specific style of his which could link
to Ingmar Bergman as fellow
Scandinavians but clearly following a quieter and subtle expansion of thoughts opposite
to Bergman’s more literary and
full-front expansions of the emotions. Even the upfront and stylistically bold Vampyr is quiet and subdued to what
Bergman would do in films like Hour of
the Wolf (1968), and other baroque horror films and experimental work in
the ages, directing itself to tackling the concept of unknown fears methodically
as a film like Gertrud and its view
on the pains of wilting love. And the more I realise it too, despite the vast contrast,
the more I see how striking and rich the later minimalist films are visually
but through different ways, only in them the changing expressions of the actors’
faces being far more emphasised as being as deep as the settings around them. I
wonder as The Passion of Joan of Arc
(1928) finally is available in the United Kingdom by the end of the year,
how the silent visual techniques of Vampyr
and the emotions of the human face meld and I can finally see Maris Falconetti’s Joan and her face in
its fullness outside of still images. This year has been, amongst other
bookmarks in my cinematic interest, the one where I properly introduced myself
to Dreyer’s work, outside of seeing Ordet years ago, and the backwards
drift into his silent films will build the foundations from how Vampyr and Getrud can exist in his same crafting hands as they already have
been proved to be.
When I finally ‘got’ Vampyr it also became a true horror
film, my heart pounding and a sense of unnerved energy to the film taking over.
Dreyer just want to make a vampire
film because he could, and the idea of a future auteur praised by critics willingly,
and with great interest, stepping his toes into a much spat-upon genre and
working at his hardest as with his later dramas is a wonderful image. That it
is made by Carl Theodor Dreyer at his
most experimental means that, even if the characters are surface level only,
most of the baggage that ruins genre’s purity is obliterated as he instead
provides a full depth to the proceeding’s images. A talented director of light
and space, the environments fill in the depth just as much, the continuation of
what Robert Wiene did in The Hands of Orlac (1924) (review here) in
using places around the human (or unhuman) figures and making them as much part
of the characters. Like German Expressionism, I cannot fathom a Dreyer film in colour even if it could
be exquisite. In beautifully startling black and white, the damage and scratches
dealt to Vampyr by history and
terrible fate, only surviving in German and French language prints, does not stop
its visuals from being overwhelming. Said damage could also add to the film;
its mist and fogged atmosphere the result of an accident with the film that
inspired Dreyer to thread the choking
greyed look of the film. Again, this first viewing is clearly not enough for me
to fully comprehend what I saw, but I feel that it’s a film of true worth,
certainly for the season of written reviews the kind of discovery one hopes for
as well as the reliable favourites you rewatch. I will have to deconstruct and
enjoy the film further and see if I will write a deeper review another day down
the line.
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