Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, best known for making The Passion of Joan of Arc, made one of the earliest talking versions of a vampire tale in his Vampyr: The Adventures of Allan Gray. What is most remarkable, outside of the title character not being based upon Stoker’s novel (instead, it is a loose adaptation of LeFanu’s In a Glass Darkly), is that it is little known because, in some critics eyes, the work is more powerful and effective in creating a mood than Murnau’s Nosferatu. Dreyer took a tale of the supernatural and presented it in an ambiguous style which is akin to a dream but, considering its subject matter, presents itself more readily on the screen as a waking nightmare.
The film begins reminiscent of Dracula in that a well-groomed male, Allan Gray (Julian West), enters a castle and takes board there as he is eclipsed by several locals, which seem to display no concern for anything outside their present, undisclosed preoccupations. Unlike Stoker’s main character, Jonathan Harker, our protagonist is a student of the occult, looking to further his studies. Shortly after his arrival, the lord of the manor (Maurice Schutz) appears with a package with the inscription that its contents are not to be revealed until after the lord’s death. After the man departs, Gray follows him only to witness the man’s murder by a soldier. He returns to the castle and we watch as Gray becomes involved with two sisters, perhaps the daughters of the recently deceased. One is Leone (Sybille Schmitz), who is bedridden and ailing from a threatening illness of vague origins, the other is Gisele (Rena Mandel), who is being held captive for similarly nondescript reasons. The sisters’ plights are due to the malicious influence of both Marguerite Chopin (Henriette Gérard) and the village doctor (Jan Hieronimko, a Mark Twain facsimile). Gray then walks into the courtyard of the hotel and, upon sitting on a nearby bench, his soul severs from his body as it encounters a funeral procession shortly thereafter. He peers in the casket to discover his own body. Next, apparently again at a time prior to Gray’s death–with the assistance of the hotel’s servant (Albert Bras)–Gray exhumes Chopin’s corpse, who apparently died sometime off screen, and drives a stake through her heart as instructed by passages from the book, “Vampire History” by Paul Bonnard, enclosed in the aforementioned package left to him. Inconclusively, Leone dies afterward (instead of being released from Chopin’s spell, as we, and Gray, are given to believe is the cause for her illness, thus, we assume that Gisele is the vampire in question and the one who had bitten her sister, thereby accounting for her incarceration). Then, after Gray frees Gisele, the couple is seen crossing a fog-laden river. We then return to the hotel, where the doctor enters the basement and, upon initiating machinery laden with vast gears, he dies of suffocation from the sifting of decades of dust before the machine comes to a halt.
I will state that this interpretation of the plot is merely hopeful at best because it does not lend itself to narrative cohesion in the slightest degree. Are we to believe that, since Leone didn’t recover after Chopin’s death, if the manner in which the images were presented is chronological at this time, Gray is the vampire responsible for the girl’s ailment (instead of Gisele)? If so, did he will the death of the Lord by the soldier’s hand or was he directly responsible and, due to his guilty conscious, merely suffering from temporary insanity (as would be the viewer as a consequence of the subjective camera)? I don’t think repeated viewings would avail the plot to anymore clarity (I would also suggest that reading the original work which the film is based would be of little or no relevance). The ultimate question which serves as the crux of one’s narrative interpretation depends upon if, and when, Gray dies during the course of the film. If one decides that he does not, then there are two instances where the character sleeps and, as a consequence of the imagery, the person could easily argue that a portion of the film is Gray’s dream incarnate. Regardless, this isn’t the point of Dreyer’s vision. Rather, the ambiguity of evil is presented in the manner in which we often witness it in reality: vague, illogical, but nonetheless present and potentially threatening. As such, the audience is left feeling hopeless to function within the confines of the movie. The dreamlike presentation is masterful in this respect because it serves as a metaphor for the lurking evil which resides in each viewer’s subconscious.
The work, a non-linear presentation of subjective, impressionistic images which suggests events more than dictates them, contains several shocking scenes, such as the severance of an elongated shadow from a character’s body, Leone’s face as she turns and smiles malevolently while bearing her teeth as she lies on her deathbed shortly before her passing, and Gray peering into a coffin as the viewer is abruptly met with the character’s corpse from the impossible POV of the dead as well as the living. The production value of the film only adds to the atmosphere of the movie in that the cinematographers, Rudolph Maté and Louis Née, created the hazy, dreamlike setting by exposing the film stock to a low light prior to shooting. The dialogue spoken by some of the ingeniously underdeveloped characters, achieved by the casting of most unprofessional actors with no screen experience, is uttered phonetically in order to create a mood of instability. The tale is further bombarded by eeriness because, though the film is a talkie, Dreyer rarely allows conversation, instead opting for long periods of silence. As such, the audience is continually anticipating dialogue and we are repeatedly left empty-handed as a result, thus forcing us to resign and be depend upon what is being issued to us onscreen.
Vampyr would be of interest to anyone who is a fan of Buñuel’s short film An Andalusian Dog, the movies of David Lynch (especially Lost Highway), or the works of the Chilean director Alejandro Jodorowsky.
-Egregious Gurnow
- Interview with J.R. Bookwalter - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Andrew J. Rausch - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Rick Popko and Dan West - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Director Stevan Mena (Malevolence) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Screenwriter Jeffery Reddick (Day of the Dead 2007) - January 22, 2015
- Teleconference interview with Mick Garris (Masters of Horror) - January 22, 2015
- A Day at the Morgue with Corri English (Unrest) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Writer/Director Nacho Cerda (The Abandoned, Aftermath) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actress Thora Birch (Dark Corners, The Hole, American Beauty) - January 22, 2015
- Interview with Actor Jason Behr, Plus Skinwalkers Press Coverage - January 22, 2015
