The Criterion Collection will shortly be releasing a two-disk version of the 1932 black and white classic horror film by Carl Theodor Dreyer, Vampyr. I first watched this film about twenty years ago, on a VHS release, and, unlike many others, immediately recognized it as a supernal piece of cinema. Then, I did not have the critical knowledge to discern why, but I do now, and will explicate.
This film was the first sound film released by the Danish filmmaker, and perhaps the last film in the vein of silent German Expressionism. That stated, it is a very different form of vampire film from the then contemporaneous Dracula, made by Tod Browning, for Universal Studios in America, as well the earlier explicitly Expressionistic take on the film, 1922’s Nosferatu, by F.W. Murnau. While the two other horror films have risen to the stature of iconographic symbols of evil and fear (as well a bit of hokum, with the passing of decades), Vampyr has not; although it still retains a creepiness that, to modern eyes, makes it a more unsettling experience than the two other films, great as they are.
The primary reason for this has not to do with blood and gore, nor even with mood, mis-en-scene, or the like, but with the fact that Dreyer and cinematographer Rudolph Maté do not merely make the viewer observe what is going on, but also feel it, by using narrative and filmic devices that elicit empathy from the viewer, by emotional and intellectual means.
As example, characters are frequently entering the frame from odd angles—sometimes they seemingly walk around the back of the camera; other times the camera pans to a place, to make the viewer believe a character will enter, only to have the character enter the frame from where the camera just left. Also, there are dolly shots (and reverse ones) where the point of view morphs from the presumably subjective to the demonstrably objective, as the character whose point of view we presume we are seeing then includes said character. At other times, two differing points of view are used.
Then there are the more manifest devices: the use of shadows that seem detachable from their material casters, or those that seem to have an ability to act upon the material (a shadow that seemingly murders a man), or images that have no logical place in the narrative, yet whose appearance enhances it greatly in a Keatsian Negatively Capable way (a shadow that seems to not be digging a grave, but filling one up, as dirt seems to flow into its shovel at its apex, or odd characters who grimace and stare at the camera, but whose presence and/or import to the tale are never explained).
The film’s hero, too, is often seen glaring through things—windows, openings, holes—to see the world framed in a way different from reality. Yet, we also see him framed obversely through the frames; thus we empathize with him, even as we realize the limits he may not, just as the viewer is limited by what is in the frame. Also, some of the later outdoor scenes were filmed through filters which give the film a blanched quality that Dreyer strove for to give a more shroudy appearance (rather than merely foggy), yet which lends the film a dreamy quality that visually is unmatched, even by many later film advances in obfuscation via special effects.
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