Vampyr - Criterion Collection

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Actors: N. Babanini, Albert Bras, Baron Nicolas De Gunzberg, Henriette Gerard, Jan Hieronimko
Studio: Criterion
Category: DVD

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Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars 36 reviews
Sales Rank: 14721

Format: Black & White, Dvd-video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Ntsc
Languages: German (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Rating: Unrated
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 2
Running Time: 75 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.7 x 1.7

MPN: IMEDCC1757D
UPC: 715515030427
EAN: 0715515030427
ASIN: B00180R06I

Theatrical Release Date: 1931
Release Date: July 22, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
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Vampyr - Criterion Collection

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3 out of 5 stars S.O.S. - Style Over Substance    December 29, 2008
Music Fan
After reading all the hype surrounding this film, I couldn't wait to see it. Criterion has done a masterful job with the restoration, and the packaging is sumptuous. Full marks!

The film itself, sadly, is a disappointment. It was so disjointed that the accompanying audio commentary is a real boon. Even then, it becomes apparent that Vampyr is a "triumph" of style over substance. The conclusion of the plot, such as it is, has holes big enough to drive a truck through, and the whole thing seems like Dreyer simply wanted to make art for art's sake - much to the detriment of the story. Film students may appreciate Dreyer's philosophy as revealed through his technique, but the rest of us really need to watch it three times to make any sense of it: first, without the audio commentary; second, with the audio commentary; and third, again without the audio commentary. Even for a 73-minute film, that's simply too much of a commitment to make.

That leaves the fear factor, of which there is basically none. Vampyr may well have been frightening to audiences of the day - although I can't even see my grandmother being moved by this, back in the day - but it's far from spine tingling 75 years on. The whole thing is rather like a disjointed, vaguely unsettling dream. That's the effect Dreyer was aiming for, but his success is our loss.

Four stars for the job Criterion has done, two for the film itself.


2 out of 5 stars Revyw!    December 12, 2008
Craig Edwards (By the sea in NC)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

Vampyr (1932) While I enjoy a lot of movies both new and old, sometimes there are films that I watch and end up appreciating more than enjoying. This is one of those films. Director Carl Theodore Dreyer wanted to experiment with light and shadow effects in a film to create an atmosphere of dread. The movie that resulted is more visual than aural; a nearly silent affair with only some synchronized sound. For his story Dreyer credits the vampire tale Carmilla, but what's onscreen bears little resemblance to that novella. Instead we get young Allan Gray (Julian West), a kind of a supernatural investigator whose delving into the netherworld has left him in a tenuous state between the real world and the world of dreams and nightmares. He comes to the small town of Courtempierre at the request of the village's lord of the manor to see what has befallen the lord's daughter. Her health is draining away, and our hero discovers the entire village is awash in evil all tied to an ancient vampire lurking there. However, I've actually lent this plot more coherence and credence than even the film does as the viewer is quickly swept up in a series of nightmare images and effects that were obviously far more important to the director than story or character. And there are some truly striking visuals, with a constantly moving camera and wild ideas like shadows that move independent from their casters. These are all the more impressive when you consider how big movie cameras were at the time and how much light was needed for even the most basic movie scene. And that is why I appreciated the movie more than I enjoyed it. It's only 73 minutes long, but with no real story to follow, just scene after scene of Allan Gray wandering around seeing weird stuff it seems longer and kind of wears out its welcome before the end comes around. Interestingly audiences at the time of release agreed with me and did not much enjoy the movie. It ended up being considered a failure, both artistically and financially. It has been rediscovered since then and is now regarded as a masterpiece. However, I find it more than a little hypocritical that the same critics who call this a masterpiece and forgive the movie's complete lack of logic and plot and character development in the interests of visual effects will rail at every single movie that comes out of Hollywood now that is effects driven, whining like little girls that those effects come at the cost of plot or character development. I am going to need a lengthy essay from each and every one of them telling me the difference. While I'm waiting, I'll wrap this up-if you're a true student of cinema I would recommend this as an important touchstone in the development of the art, everyone else, not so much.


5 out of 5 stars The vampire is the asocial woman    December 8, 2008
Jacques COULARDEAU (OLLIERGUES France)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful

1932, just before the beginning of the dramatic Nazi nightmare. Another vampire film. Yes indeed. But this one has something special, an ambiance that is more modern, that is different. What is it? First the rhythm is slow, a lot slower than usual in such films. No haste, no running, no hectic chase or race. Just the slow time of a village, and yet that village has something mysterious, people going around in the dark, bells ringing to call the ferry boat that is going to take the farmer and his scythe to the other side of this Styx river. Death seems to be everywhere and the director is mixing the technique of the silent film with pages of written explanations, and a little bit of the talkie already, here and there, but so little, though the camera is definitely the modern camera of the time and it provides a very good picture. The most surprising element is here that the vampire is absolutely unseen, unknown of anyone, invisible and well hidden, and that vampire has an obvious servant, a ghoul in the place. And the whole story turns around some old book given to the young Allan Gray by some old man before dying. The book that is so important in so many of Dracula's tales, films or other, though it is not that important, at least less important, in the archetypical book by Stam Broker. And the vampire hunters come to the idea that the vampire is some old woman who was a monster when alive and was refused any Christian rite when she died. The vampire is thus the asocial person, the one who was rejected and rejectable in her or his, its life time. And they will go on changing things to make them nearly more normal and no wood of any sort will be used to hammer through the heart of that vampire, but an old good iron stake and that vampire is a woman with the "predestined" name of Marguerite Chopin that has no connection, close or distant, with Dracula. And the ghoul, utmost surprise, is the local doctor who is putting to sleep the victims of the vampire, so that she can come in the middle of the night and find no resistance. And here again his end is funny: he gets drowned in flour in a watermill. But the film has one more characteristic that makes it different. The characters are speaking little but they are expressing a lot more than you could imagine with their body language and their facial language. It's beautiful and at the same time so natural in its artistic way, less demonstrative than Fritz Lang and yet just as expressive. Obviously the conventions were changing with the arrival of talking films, of another level of expression. It is true that it owes a lot to Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg's performance in the film but it also explains why Hitchcock considered it as a masterpiece of his time, one of the films that had made him what he became. A true classic in one word.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines



2 out of 5 stars um, weak    December 4, 2008
David G. Apetz (NEW YORK, NY USA)
0 out of 6 found this review helpful

I was recommended by none other than the Wall Street Journal recently that this was the "scariest movie ever". Not. Want scary? Avoid this over-hyped trash with all its subliminal scary faces and rent "The Exorcist". Or, go to youtube and watch the Mumbai attacks for real fear. This movie is not scary! It is stupid. Even "Dracula" wth Bela Lugosi was at least far more interesting. Put a stake through this one's heart.


5 out of 5 stars Not Nosferatu but still scarey...    December 1, 2008
Steve Reina (Troy Michigan)
Just like Japan gave us great Godzilla movies Germany was tops in developing the Dracula lore. First of course was F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu and then there's Vampyr...different but still scarey.

It's a different movie because its more stream of consciousness so there's this dreamy feel (nightmarey feel?) to it as the main character visits a town that turns out to be vampyr central.

Some of the best devices in this are where you see the guy being buried from his perspective and one of the vampyrs dying at the end of the movie (in a scene so gruesome its removal was demanded by a censor).

But even in the so called throw away scenes there's mood development.

So for those interested in a good Dracula story, watch this one along with Nosferatu...but do it during the day so you don't get too scared. True story: after I finished watching this, one of our cats jumped on the counter while I was getting a snack out of the fridge and I almost had a heart attack.