Vampyr

What strikes you immediately is Carl Dreyer's visual sense.  Be it THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC, ORDET, or 1932's VAMPYR, the mastery of imagery as storytelling is evident in every frame.  The astonishing use of shadow and light serves for more than their own existence.  This was the co-writer/director's first film to utilize sound, but dialogue is minimal, which is the right choice.  As I catch up on early twentieth century cinema I increasingly realize how intrusive words can be.  Film is a medium of pictures, framed artfully (in gifted hands) and with purpose.  Maybe just for theme, often to propel a (dreamlike) narrative.  Dreyer executes both in this seventy-three minute horror piece, an homage of sorts to Edgar Allan Poe and the short stories of Sheridan Le Fanu.    

Allan Gray (Julian West) is a student of the occult.  His visit to a small French village will feed his fascination and horror on such matters.  Strange people at his inn act forebodingly and soon a litany of shadows direct him to an ancient castle where the village doctor (Jan Hieronimko) tends to the very ill Leone (Sybille Schmitz), apparently the victim of vampire bites.  Leone's sister Giesele (Rena Mandel) wonders why the doctor only makes house calls at night.   She will later be kidnapped by him.

Meanwhile, Allan is convinced by the doctor to donate life saving blood to Leone, before slipping into some kind of dream/hallucination that he is being buried alive.  A castle servant reviews a book about vampires, and how to dispatch them.  Useful to ultimately confront that old woman called Marguerite Chopin (Henriette Gerard) who seems to have much of the village under her demonic spell. 

Some of the events in VAMPYR are baffling.  We're never sure why the doctor is attempting to poison Leone, for one.  It becomes clear early on that the film is acting on "dream logic", which in turn reminded me of several works by David Lynch.  As Allan wanders through rooms and encounters odd individuals, I thought back on Twin Peaks and the Black Lodge.  Also, the use of reversed film, here most memorably with the gravedigger.  The presence of a boatman with a scythe is imagery that should be fairly obvious.

Dreyer has quiet command of his film.  Rudolph Mate's on-location photography, soft and fuzzy (an effect created by shooting through a piece of gauze), is perfect for events that never quite seem real.  Had the entire thing been done in silhouette I would've been pleased.  I must again mention the deft choreography of shadow, hugely influential.  Many films of the 1930s are, but VAMPYR, while often slighted in favor of NOSFERATU or DRACULA, is a stunning bit of mood cinema that really stands on its own.