Movie Details
| Title: | Vampyr | |
| Director: | Carl Theodor Dreyer | |
| Year: | 1932 | |
| Genre: | Vampire | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 11.05.06 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (0)
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 11.05.06 | DVR | This Screening is part of event: DVRfest 2006 My plan was to put this at the very very end. Hopefully I'd be so blitzed on movie-watching and it'd be so late that I would enter this film in a near-hypnotic state. I read about this being genuinely scary and from what I remember of Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc with all the crazy close-ups and whatnot I have high hopes. The combination of the movie's deliberate pacing, near-complete lack of dialogue, haunting strings, and my heavy eyelids had a nice effect, eliciting a near dreamstate experience of this film. I think the story's about a guy who goes... to a place and finds that there's a vampyr there. At one point he takes a little double-exposed dream journey and maybe helps someone kill the vampyr and a spirit chases a doctor who may have helped the vampyr until he ends up buried alive in a grain silo... or something. Yeah, I know. but I don't really care too much about what happens in this movie. The mood and atmosphere are so strong and the primitive sound mix so impressionistic that it all seems like a dream anyway. Plus Dreyer plays around a lot with shadows... lots of neat little tricks and treats. Even though the closest we come to any sort of conventional vampire mythology is a skull with elongated canines and a shot of the vampyr sucking blood, it's all very fitting. Kind of like the B-side to Nosferatu. The print was in pretty tough shape though, and whoever put the english subtitles on REALLY liked this one particular gothic font. The print was so big that two lines covered half the screen. Luckily, there's really not that much dialogue at all.. it's mostly a silent movie with a soundtrack. It made a very fitting end to my weekend. Now it's all over: my DVR's wiped clean, my eyes are shot, and my bed is calling. DVRfest is officially over. Until next year, that is! Who knows, maybe someone else will sit in for a few movies next year. Here's to another year of keeping my journal even when I don't feel like writing any inane notes. Two years down, 15 to go! I'm gunning for you, Bogdanovich! You're in my sights! |
