Vampyr
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Vampyr is a French-German film by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, released in 1932. An art film, it is short on dialogue and plot, and is admired today for its innovative use of light and shadow. Dreyer achieved some of these effects through using a fine gauze filter in front of the camera lens to make characters and objects appear hazy and indistinct, as though glimpsed in a dream.
Plot
The plot is credited to J. Sheridan Le Fanu's collection In a Glass Darkly, which includes the vampire novella Carmilla, although, as Timothy Sullivan has argued, its departures from the source are more striking than its similarities.
The actual events are rather obscure and dominated by a weird, dream-like atmosphere. Allan Gray (despite the film's German title), a youth travelling in the French countryside, puts up at an inn in the surroundings of a solitary castle, near the village of Courtempierre. He begins to see strange sights that are impossible to explain (notably shadows leading a life independent from that of their "owners").
Having been asked for help by the Lord of the Manor, Allan visits the castle and becomes involved in the tragic events that are befalling the family. Leone, the daughter of the Lord of the Manor appears to suffer from anaemia, but her father already suspects that her illness is caused by a vampire. The Lord of the Manor dies, seemingly of natural causes, but actually as a result of the actions of the servants of the undead. As Allan reads an old book about vampires, he learns more and more about these creatures, while the fiend continues to assault the young woman.
The vampire turns out to be an extremely evil old woman, Marguerite Chopin, who died in mortal sin and caused a similar epidemic a quarter of a century ago. She is conspiring with the village doctor who helps her to gain access to her victim; her ultimate objective is to cause the victim to commit suicide and thus deliver her to the devil. Eventually, Allan and an old servant stake her, and her servants also die. At the end, Allan is seen leaving together with Leone's sister, Gisele.
