Meanwhile, the handyman has tracked down Chopin’s grave, unsealed it, and stakes the old woman as Grey watches. The vampire turns into a skeleton, and Grey goes on to find Gisele, as Leone recovers upon the vampire’s death. Earlier, there was a seminal scene of her slowly being perverted by the evil, but now she is relieved, although weakened — a direct contradiction to the ease and strength that most vampire victims feel when released in other films. Grey tracks down Gisele, and they head through fog out on a boat, to cross a river.
The handyman, meanwhile, pursues the Doctor and Pegleg. Some mysterious force, not the handyman, seems to kill Pegleg. Moments earlier, we see a scene where the huge face of the murdered father of Gisele and Leone fills a window, and this seems to panic the Doctor and Pegleg. It is clearly not a ghost (at least not as depicted in most films); more likely a shared vision heralding the death of the vampire Chopin, but it does seem to have some power, as the Doctor is locked — by the same mysterious force that doomed Pegleg — in a cage at the flour mill, where the machines start without the help of the handyman, who watches the Doctor dies by smothering under tons of the stuff. When the Doctor has died, the machines turn off.
Notably, all three of the villains are dispatched in ways wholly antithetical to the Christian mythos that drenches the vampire genre. This is particularly telling since much of Dreyer’s work is connected to Christian spirituality. Gray and Gisele, meanwhile, make it across the river, through a small forest, and out toward where the fog gives way to sun. The film ends, in a sense, tritely, save for the fact that there is no real resolution, and both the physical movement of the characters and its lack of resolution would be picked up later, and slightly expanded upon by Marcello Mastroianni’s anomic character in Federico Fellini’s great La Dolce Vita.
The DVD package by Criterion is first rate. The first disk has the film in a 1.19:1 aspect ratio, and the audio commentary by Rayns. He is one of the better commentators out there, for he does not go too far afield in his views, and usually sticks to explicating scenes, rather than expounding on inconsequential trivia. I mentioned the excellent cinematography, but the score by Wolfgang Zeller is very good, never veering into melodrama, and always assisting the images in inflicting dread.
The film also comes in a version with German intertitles and English subtitles, or an English text version for the intertitles and book sections. It, too, has subtitles. However, since many of the scenes are in bright whites, some of the subtitles are difficult to read. Fortunately, since dialogue is minimal, this is no great problem. I’ve long suggested that Criterion follow other DVD companies by making golden subtitles de rigueur with black and white films. Also, as the film was originally to be shot in English, it would have been a great bonus for an English dubbed soundtrack to be included. Also, Criterion has restored many films to quite high quality, but this film has some reels that are excellent and others that are still streaked with dirt and blemishes; and I’m not talking about the blanched look of some of the outside scenes meant to imply fog.
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