Vampyr - The dream of Allan Gray
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Vampyr - The dream of Allan Gray |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1932 |
| length | 73 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Carl Theodor Dreyer |
| script |
Christians Jul , Carl Theodor Dreyer |
| production |
Carl Theodor Dreyer , Julian West |
| music | Wolfgang Zeller |
| camera | Rudolph Maté |
| cut | Paul Falkenberg |
| occupation | |
| |
Vampyr - The Dream of Allan Gray is a German - French horror film by the Danish film director Carl Theodor Dreyer , which was produced from April to October 1930 and shown for the first time in Germany on May 6, 1932 . It is loosely based on the novella Carmilla by Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu .
action
Allan Gray is a young passing student obsessed with thoughts of the supernatural . One evening he stops at a lonely inn near the French town of Courtempierre . During the night, Allan is suddenly woken up by an old aristocrat who enters his room: the old man desperately asks for help and leaves Allan a package with the label "To be opened after my death". The old aristocrat then disappears. Allan goes on a search for the secret of the village: First, shadows lead him into a mysterious castle, where he meets a one-legged soldier, an old man and an old woman (as it later turns out: the vampire Marguerite Chopin). Allan leaves the castle and follows the shadows on to a generous castle owner. The old aristocrat and castle owner lives here with his two daughters. Gray witnesses how the old castle owner is shot from behind.
Allan Gray stays overnight as a guest at the castle, especially since he has fallen in love with his daughter Gisèle, who asks him for help: Her older sister Léone seems to be under the influence of a mysterious illness. Allan finds Léone lying in the park with fresh bite wounds on his neck and carries her back to the castle. Meanwhile, Allan remembers the package the old castle owner had given him and opens it. Inside is a book with accurate, cruel accounts of vampires. Through the book, Allan learns that Léone has fallen victim to a vampire and is apparently under their spell. In the meantime, a coachman from the castle is killed. The village doctor arrives to treat the sick Léone. Allan recognizes the old man in the village doctor who was present in the mysterious castle. The village doctor announces that only a blood donation can save Léone's life - Allan donates his blood and then falls into a deep sleep. When he wakes up, Allan can just prevent the sinister village doctor from poisoning Léone. The doctor kidnaps Gisèle and escapes from the castle.
Allan follows the doctor, but is plagued by terrifying visions; among other things he has to go through his own funeral. He manages to free Gisèle, but the doctor is still on the run. Meanwhile, the old castle servant finds Gray's vampire book and learns that you can kill vampires if you stick an iron rod through their hearts. Allan and the castle servant exhume the body of the vampire Marguerite Chopin, who was identified as the mastermind behind the crimes, and kill her in the manner specified in the book. Marguerite's assistant, the village doctor and the one-legged soldier, can be located and rendered harmless. The village doctor is buried in a mill under loads of flour. With the destruction of the vampire, Léone also recovers. Gisèle and Allan walk through a light forest at dawn.
background
Although Vampyr was Carl Theodor Dreyer's first sound film , it is still very much based on the silent film : It contains numerous subtitles , which function as explanatory as in silent films; sometimes exaggerated body-hugging representations of the actors and relatively little spoken text. The simple plot and the short dialogues of the film take a back seat to the visual expressiveness.
Dreyer created an eerie and dream-like atmosphere through the use of special camera filters (partly made of gauze ) and sophisticated lighting technology (the exterior shots were shot at dawn and dusk). The innovative special effects that were remarkable for the time (shadows lead a lively life of their own, Allan sees himself lying in the coffin, scenes run backwards) contribute a further essential part to the eerie and surreal effect of the film.
He once described the horror that Dreyer wanted to create with Vampyr in the following words: “Imagine we are sitting in an ordinary room. Suddenly we learn that there is a corpse behind the door. Suddenly the room we are sitting in has completely changed: everything in it has a new meaning. The light, the atmosphere have changed, although physically they are the same. The reason is that we have changed. "
Dreyer mainly relied on amateur actors for the cast , only Maurice Schutz as the old lord of the castle and Sybille Schmitz as his daughter Leone were professional actors. Dreyer found it difficult to find investors for his projects after the financial failure of his previous film The Passion of the Maiden of Orléans . Vampyr was ultimately funded by donations from French banker heir Nicolas de Gunzburg , who was a great film enthusiast. As a patron of the film, De Gunzburg was allowed to take on the leading role of Allan Gray under the pseudonym Julian West.
The work on the film was extremely international: the director Dreyer came from Denmark, the producing film studio Tobis Klangfilm was German, while in France it was shot with predominantly French actors. The film was shot during the summer of 1931 in the small towns of Senlis and Montargis near Paris . The film was shot in three different languages: German, French and English. Nicolas de Gunzberg later recalled that they had to shoot each scene with dialogue passages three times. The actors then moved their mouths phonetically to match the words in the script in each language. The sound, including music and dialogues, was only added after filming in the UFA studio in Berlin.
Today Vampyr is considered an early classic of the horror genre and a milestone in film technology.
criticism
When it premiered in Copenhagen in 1932, the film was still very popular. But while it was being released in France and Germany, Vampyr received mixed to consistently negative reviews from critics. A film critic for the New York Times wrote: “Whatever you think of director Carl Theodor Dreyer, nobody can argue that he is different . He does things so that other people will talk about him. You may think your films are ridiculous - but you won't forget them. Although in many ways it was one of the worst films I've seen, there were scenes that were brutally direct. "
At the box office, Vampyr was a failure, and Dreyer wasn't to direct his next film until eleven years later. For a long time, Vampyr was considered one of his weaker films.
Meanwhile, Vampyr is considered in many circles as one of the best horror films of all time. At the American film critic portal Rotten Tomatoes , for example, all 29 reviews for the film are positive. The Lexicon of the International Film wrote: “The subtle lighting and barely noticeable shifts in accent create a climate of inconceivable threat in which dream and reality permeate each other in constant change. In a sophisticated way, the film evades both the expressionistic norms of the fantastic and the naturalistic-artificial representation of horror. "
See also
literature
- Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu : Carmilla, the female vampire. A vampire story. (Original title: Carmilla ). German by Helmut Degner . With drawings by Edward Ardizzone . Diogenes, Zurich 1979, 121 pages, ISBN 3-257-20596-1 .
- Christa Bandmann and Joe Hembus : Classics of German talkies 1930-1960. Munich 1980, pages 55-57.
- William K. Everson : Classics of Horror Movies. (OT: Classics of the Horror Film ). Goldmann, Munich 1982, ISBN 3-442-10205-7 , u. a. Pp. 70-77.
- Jacques Aumont: Vampyr de Carl Th. Dreyer. Editions Yellow Now, Crisnée 1993.
- Marcus Stiglegger : A dream within a dream. Carl Theodor Dreyer's Vampyr - The Dream of Allan Gray (1932). In: Stefan Keppler: The Vampire Film. Classics of the genre in individual interpretations. Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2006, pp. 73–84.
Web links
- Vampyr - The Dream of Allan Gray in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- Vampyr at Bloody-Disgusting.com
- German viewing of the film
- Vampyr at Det Danske Film Institute
Individual evidence
- ↑ "Vampyr - The Dream of Allan Gray" ( Memento of the original from June 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ "Vampyr" at Turner Classic Movies
- ^ "Vampyr" at Turner Classic Movies
- ^ "A Dreyer Duo — Day of Wrath at the IFC and Vampyr on DVD"
- ^ "A Dreyer Duo — Day of Wrath at the IFC and Vampyr on DVD"
- ^ "Vampyr" at Turner Classic Movies
- ^ "Vampire" at Rotten Tomatoes
- ^ "Vampyr" at two thousand and one
