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Scandinavian RealismFilm 17 of 19
Vampyr
Vampyr - Der Traum des Allan Grey
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Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1932, a French-German production (Tobis-Klangfilm), after Sheridan Le Fanu's In a Glass Darkly. Allan Grey (Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, billed as Julian West) arrives in a village where a manor family is under a vampire's hold. Rudolf Maté shot much of it through gauze and against the light, so the image looks half developed. Dreyer recorded sound in three languages and kept the talk thin. Not German Expressionism: a Danish director, French money, a dream logic closer to Joan than to Caligari. The burial reel is the point.
In three programmes
Dreyer with sound and almost no talk. Shot through gauze so the image looks half developed, and the shadows go where they like. The burial seen from inside the coffin, a glass window and sky, is the moment. Not Expressionism: a Dane with French money and a dream's logic.
The Supernatural and the Occult
Sounds wrong on purpose, looks half developed on purpose. Maté shoots through gauze; shadows go where they like; the doctor serves something you never see. The burial from inside the coffin, glass and sky, is the sequence. Not Expressionism. A dream with a Danish director.
Voices from the wrong place. Dreyer recorded in three languages, kept the talk thin, and let sound drift in from somewhere the image cannot account for. Where Lang used a whistle for precision, Dreyer uses a murmur for doubt. Sound can lie. This is the demonstration.
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