NEW DVD OF CARL THEODOR DREYER’S VAMPYR (1932)
DVD The Criterion Collection, 2008.
David Rudkin. Vampyr. London: British Film Institute, 2005.
Jean Drum and Dale D. Drum. My Only Great Passion: The Life and Films of Carl Th. Dreyer. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2000.
(ISSN 1932-9598)
I first read about Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 film Vampyr when I was in my teens in Carlos Clarens’ 1967 ground-breaking book An Illustrated History of the Horror Film. An entire chapter, titled “The Dead Next Door,” was devoted to the film. I was fascinated, but I did not see the film until I purchased an 8mm. silent print (this was in the days before home video) and I was enthralled. At that point in my life, I had never heard mention of J. Sheridan Le Fanu (or his novella “Carmilla” upon which Dreyer based his film) until I read Clarens’ history. I came across by accident a copy of Le Fanu’s Carmilla and The Haunted Baronet in a cheap paperback at the drug store. Thus began my lifelong interest in Le Fanu.
It is easy to see what Dreyer saw in the Le Fanu: both dealt with religion, and the overall mysticism of Dreyer’s film can be found in Le Fanu. They were kindred spirits. Dreyer’s career as a director (who made what are sometimes called “art films”) can rest on only thirteen films. Yet they are all masterpieces (spanning both the silent and sound eras) of film, his most famous film being the silent film The Passion of Joan of Arc. He made so few films because he had difficulty obtaining financial backing, so unique was his work.
One young and wealthy film enthusiast Dreyer met was Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg. He backed Dreyer’s Vampyr on the condition that he take the lead role under the screen name of Julian West. Considered a financial flop on its premiere (the Berlin audience actually hissed and booed during the showing), Dreyer could not get backing for thirteen years until he managed to find a producer for Day of Wrath. Nonetheless, Vampyr has since been regarded as a masterpiece of the horror film. There have been quite a large number of studies of Dreyer’s films in both English and foreign languages, and also a number of doctoral dissertations. His importance in the history of film cannot be overestimated.
The Criterion Collection, a DVD producer that specializes in obscure--mostly foreign--films, has brought out this new DVD of Dreyer’s film made from the best quality French and German prints available—originally a project of German and French film institutes in 1998. The original camera negatives for Vampyr were long since lost, so it has been available only in poor quality prints. Criterion has done the best it could with this limitation. They have also provided a pamphlet of essays (one by the film critic Mark Le Fanu—a distant relative of Sheridan Le Fanu) that includes an interview with Gunzburg. Kim Newman, a well-known critic on the horror film, offers an essay, “Vampyr and the Vampire.” An essay by Martin Koerber relates the process by which the film was restored in 1998. Also provided is a paperback of the original screenplay by Christen Jul and Dreyer and a reprint of Le Fanu’s “Carmilla.” The screenplay differs from the screenplay translated by Oliver Stallybrass and published in Four Screenplays by Indiana University Press in 1970. Criterion’s editors have attempted to produce a version closest to Dreyer’s intentions.
The DVD set includes a visual documentary by Jorgen Roos and translated by Casper Tybjerg at the University of Copenhagen. In addition, there is a radio broadcast of Dreyer reading an essay on film that discusses Vampyr and was presented on the radio program The Film Art. Criterion has also presented a running commentary on the film by British film critic Tony Rayns. All of these facets enhance the Criterion print, which has a digitally improved version of the sound track.
In the past thirty to forty years, criticism and scholarship of Dreyer’s works has increased. S.S. Prawer provided a study of Vampyr in his book Caligari’s Children: The Film as Tale of Terror published by Oxford University Press in 1980. Also valuable is David Bordwell’s study of all of Dreyer’s films The Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer published by the University of California Press in 1981. Two recent books have built on their work: Jean and Dale D. Drum have produced the first critical biography of Dreyer in English and David Rudkin gives a close reading of Vampyr.
Rudkin’s short book presents a brief biographical and critical survey of all of Dreyer’s films and then moves into a shot-by-shot analysis of the film. Rudkin writes with genuine enthusiasm and love for the film. He bases his study on two prints of the film, one owned by the British Film Institute and one produced by Jorgensen and Gloria Film. The Criterion print was in process as Rudkin wrote his book.
Particularly valuable is Rudkin’s discussion of the ten minutes Dreyer cut from the film. What became of these scenes is not known. However, Rudkin surmises that there were scenes between Allan Gray and Gisele, the younger sister of the vampire’s victim, that show a hero and heroine relationship with a projected love interest. Rudkin emphasizes the dream death of Allan Gray and his experience of being carried off in a coffin, and regards the film as a long meditation on death. This theme can be found in the Le Fanu original In a Glass Darkly, on which Dreyer based his film. Rudkin’s book is essential for anyone studying Dreyer.
Also indispensable is Jean Drum and Dale D. Drum’s critical biography of Dreyer. The book is largely based on the correspondence that Dale D. Drum had with Dreyer from 1952 until Dreyer’s death in 1968. Both authors learned Danish to write the book, but they noted Dreyer was fluent in English and actually typed the letters to Drum in English himself. One of the flaws of the book is that they distort or make errors in their summaries of the film plots.
Taken as a whole, these two books and the new Criterion DVD are milestones in the study of Dreyer’s film and will be of great interest to Le Fanu scholars. I highly recommend them.
Gary William Crawford