Vampyr: The Strange Adventure of Allan Gray. 2008. GB. DVD (Region 2 PAL). 72 minutes. Eureka £19.99
About the reviewer: Dr Stacey Abbott is Reader in Film and Television Studies at Roehampton University and the author of Celluloid Vampires (University of Texas Press, 2007), Angel (Wayne State University Press, 2009) and, with Lorna Jowett, TV Horror: Investigating the Dark Side of the Small Screen (I.B. Tauris, 2013). She is the Series Editor for I.B. Tauris' Investigating Cult TV series of publications.
In 1932, ten years after the release of Murnau’s Nosferatu and one year after Tod Browning’s Dracula, the renowned Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer released his first and only entry into the fantastic genre -Vampyr: The Strange Adventure of Allan Gray. While the success of Browning’s film fuelled the development of the American horror genre of the 1930s, Dreyer’s film – a box office failure at the time - had a profound influence upon the cinema in the decades that followed and stands as a unique example of the cinematic vampire genre. Rather than locating the horror within the narrative of a vampiric attack, Dreyer embeds his tale within a haunting and spectral atmosphere, taking Murnau’s memorable use of expressionistic shadows and optical trickery in Nosferatu to the next level through his vision of a ghostly world of dancing shadows and ethereal visitations, all largely achieved through in-camera optical trickery. The film is a masterpiece of photographic special effects. In fact, it is the film’s highly cinematic and experimental aesthetic qualities that make it so memorable and disquieting. Shot largely as a silent film, with the sound post-synchronised, the film uses a roving camera, the disjunction between sound and image and unsettling compositions, to create a disturbing and dream-like atmosphere. In this film, the line between dream and reality is not blurred but invisible.
For many years Vampyr was only available in rather murky copies that did not fully capture the film’s original visual beauty. Now the Martin Koerber/Cineteca di Bologna restoration has been released on DVD by Eureka as part of their Masters of Cinema series. The DVD is a loving tribute to this masterpiece of horror and art cinema and it is Vampyr’s position as a cornerstone of these genres that makes it distinct. While some critics argue that Dreyer’s artistry transcends the perceived limitations of genre, scholars and enthusiasts of horror have described this film as a pinnacle of what the genre can achieve. This dual approach to the film is cleverly acknowledged within the DVD through the two excellent audio commentaries it contains. The first, by authoritative film critic Tony Rayns, addresses the history of the film’s production and the significance of its stylistic break with cinematic convention through experimentation with film form. Rayns offers a highly insightful analysis of how the film’s distinct cinematography and editing created its dream like atmosphere and has contributed to the film’s standing as art. The second commentary is by critically acclaimed Mexican filmmaker Guillermo Del Toro whose own work (including Pan's Labyryth, 2006) has often walked the line between art and genre cinema. His enthusiastic commentary makes a claim for the film’s significance in terms of the horror genre and he convincingly argues that this does not counter Vampyr’s validity as art cinema. Instead, when a film marks the conjunction of the horror genre with a master filmmaker like Dryer, the results are sublime.
The film is a masterpiece of photographic special effects
The DVD contains additional special features including a documentary about Dreyer, a rather eccentric tribute to the star and the film’s patron, Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, and an articulate visual essay by Casper Tybjerg. These along with the essays contained in the DVD booklet make this an informative release for educational purposes. It is, however, the audio-commentaries that penetrate the heart of the film’s success by demonstrating how Dreyer’s film exists to this day as a wonderfully inspiring experiment in the art of cinema and a fantastically disturbing horror film.
Dr Stacey Abbott