Tockinit not horrible nor great

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

CommentsXp Best movie ever!

Deanna There are moments in this movie where the great movie it could've been peek out... They're fleeting, here, but they're worth savoring, and they happen often enough to make it worth your while.

lasttimeisaw Dreyer's first sound feature, VAMPYR is an archetypal induction of the blood-hankering undead onto the celluloid screen (but not in its stereotyped appearance), made in a time when the story is foisted to unspool predominantly through title cards with minimal dialogs (sound recording is still a nascent embryo in Europe then), the film's chiefly non-professional cast serves as props rather than fully embodies flesh and occurrences are sometimes painstakingly tardy in their paces. Yet, Dreyer's modus operandi prospers in the somber, eldritch and never-wracking mise-en-scène, dispersed with thanatological symbols (the Grim Reaper in the beginning betokens its mythos), enhanced by a dream-like soft-focus tactility, and most extraordinarily, Dreyer's legerdemain of coaxing shadow and light into his narrative, a coup de maître where a soldier emerges with his seemingly discrete shadow denotes the mystic separation and unification of body and soul. During the thick of its vampyr-myth debunking sequences, our protagonist, the spiffy young man named Allan Gray (played by the French scion and later illustrious magazine designer Nicolas de Gunzburg under the alias of Julian West, who invests the movie with his own money to secure his dabbling into filmdom, which is his only screen credit) is afflicted by an out-of-body experience and witnesses a burying ceremony of his own body, swapping between camera's (subjective/objective, body/soul) viewpoints, the film reaches its most eerie, preternatural actualization of a blurred vision between real and unreal. German actress, Sybille Schmitz, whose real-life tragedy inspires Fassbinder's VERONIKA VOSS (1982), leaves behind an indelible image as the mostly bed-ridden vampyr-bitten girl, by dint of Dreyer's stock-in-trade expressive close-ups. Poetic justice prevails in its simplistic ending (why the girl's father who is in possession with the book doesn't try to extirpate the scourge if he is assumedly equipped with the know-how? A title card explanation would be apposite), but the scene where the evil village doctor impelled to receive his comeuppance potently flags up Dreyer's ingenious flight of fancy, and this time, without being curtailed in the religious solemnity and rigidity, Dreyer's VAMPYR surges with its top-drawer German expressionist idiom and avant-garde techniques that have timely reappraised the cachet of a film maudit.

a_chinn German expressionist vampire picture is not as great as Murnau's "Nosferatu," but it is far more surreal, atmospheric, and creepy. This was director Carl Theodor Dreyer's first talkie and is for the most part a silent film with a few moments of dialogue. Dryer still primarily uses title cards to and visuals to tell his story of a man who discovering a vampire is stalking a small town. The plot is rather thin, but in terms of style, the film is a visual feast. Some of the film surrealness includes unsettling reverse film shots, shadows not corresponding to their corporeal bodies, frightening dream sequences, astral projections, POV shots from a dead man, strange looking actors talking directly to the camera (ALA David Lynch), and many many more. The film's undoing is heavy handed symbolism and the lack of a strong plot, but I'm not sure that was really the focus of the filmmakers. Photographed by Rudolph Maté, this is a must see for fans of German expressionism.

Nigel P How to go about talking about Vampyr? This is a film that was made in 1932, but could almost be ten years older – it is mainly silent, with sparse moments of dialogue. Sometimes events seem deliberately obfuscated. There are also inter-titles that relay moments and goings-on that might otherwise not be clear.But little IS clear. The main character is either referred to as David or Allen Gray. He is played by Julian West, who bears a resemblance to HP Lovecraft and is really named Nicolas de Gunzburg. The film's critical mauling on release (after the more successful and sophisticated 'Dracula' and 'Frankenstein', both 1931) caused Director Carl Dreyer to suffer a nervous breakdown. And yet what might he have expected? The picture is surely a deliberate exercise in weirdness.It is an unrelenting cacophony of suffering, dying, silhouettes, grainy rooms, and creeping grotesques. Gray's role is seemingly to wander through it, reacting to all that goes on around him. He is me, he is you and he is caught in a spiralling nightmare. That's what this picture is – the most genuine depiction of a nightmare.Played by Sybille Schmitz, the character of Léone's apparent transformation into a vampire is eerily effective - simply a lowering of the eyebrows and the curl of an evil smile. This causes her sister, lovely Giséle (Rena Mandel) to elicit Gray's help, and courtesy of a book called Vampyrs, he identifies her symptoms.Gray himself appears to either be a ghost, or dreams he is a ghost, leading to another of the film's frightening highlights. As a ghost, or an astral projection, he observes himself lying in a windowed coffin, apparently dead. We see him in the coffin staring up as other sinister observers peer in.The eccentric doctor who has been observing proceedings comes to a horrible end, suffocated in a flour mill. Dreyer's camera is preoccupied with this, and returns to his hopelessly flailing body and reaching hands long moments before he finally dies.It isn't always easy to stay glued to this because not only does it not really follow a pattern, but the style of weirdness gives no assurance that events are ever going to become any clearer. And yet the imagery rewards – the one-legged policeman, the inexplicable deformed old man, the scythe-wielding peasant (Death?) on a ramshackle boat, and Gray and Giselle scampering through the sepia summertime. It is horribly haunting and not easily forgotten.

Theo Robertson When you hear the word " masterpiece " you often have to take cover to the hyperbolic superlatives aimed at that film . Has there ever been any film released that hasn't had someone screaming " MASTERPIECE " . I think someone have said WORLD WAR Z was a masterpiece of Zombie horror . Someone said TRANSFORMERS is a masterpiece of explosions and CGI whilst someone else said PACIFIC RIM was a masterpiece in toilet cleaners . Maybe and why not ? VAMPYR by Carl Thedor Dryer is another film considered a masterpiece in 2013 but a quick internet search will inform you that the film was booed by everyone who saw it 80 years ago and it's easy to see why when you stop to think about it Picture the scene . It's 1932 and you're sat in the cinema a cigarette in one hand and a bag of pop corn in another . Sound is a recent invention and you're still reeling from James Whale's FRANKENSTEIN from the previous year and this film promises to match if not surpass the spine chilling shock of Whale's movie . The film starts and you notice something very strange - hardly anyone talks . Protagonist Allen Grey walks around and insert cards inform us he's an expert academic in the undead . Hold on wait a minute didn't we get caption inserts in silent movies ? Surely we've moved on ? As the story continues we get spooky images of ghost like figures . Slightly impressive but didn't we get that from that French bloke Georges Melies ? What's happening now ? More caption inserts where nobody says anything . Whoa you expect us to pay for a cinema ticket at 1932 prices and what you're doing is showing us a film that looks like it was made 20 years ago ! Surely there is a consumer protection act here somewhere that states if you spend money on a cinema ticket in 1932 then you're entitled to see a film that looks like it was made in 1932 . Pop corn is then thrown at the screen . All together now " BOOOOOOO " When you watch this in 2013 you'll almost certainly be in two minds about it . One is you'll be impressed by the atmospheric mood of VAMPYR that is truly expressionistic . However that's perhaps the only impressive aspect to the film where everything else is lacking . The narrative has an implausible structure , things go unexplained and after the story reaches its natural climax there seems to be another ten minutes added that seem to have come from a different film . The lighting in the film is good but apart from that the camera-work is rather static . No doubt this is a film that is essential viewing in film classes but apart from that you can understand why some people had a very negative reaction to it in 1932