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Director
Carl Theodor Dreyer
Year
1932
Country
France, Germany
Runtime
75 min

Also released as

  • Castle of Doom
  • Not Against the Flesh
  • The Vampire
  • Vampyr, la bruja vampiro
  • 뱀파이어
  • Вампир: Сон Алена Грея
  • Vampirul
  • Wampir
  • 吸血鬼
  • Βαμπίρ
  • Vampyr, ou l'étrange aventure de David Gray
  • O Vampiro
  • Vampiro
  • Vampyr - Il vampiro
  • The Strange Adventure of David Gray

Filed under

Vampyr

Dreyer shooting through gauze at a plot that barely exists. Closer to a bad dream than a film.

Dreyer's first sound film, barely has a plot, and is one of the most unnerving things ever shot.

A young man arrives at an inn in a French village. There is a girl with a wasting illness, a doctor, an old woman, and shadows that move independently of the people casting them.

The soft, milky look was achieved by shooting through a piece of gauze held in front of the lens, discovered by accident when light bounced off a mirror during a test. Dreyer kept it for the whole film.

The famous sequence is a burial from inside the coffin, with a glass panel over the face, the ceiling and treetops sliding past. Nobody had filmed a point of view like that before.

It was financed by a Dutch baron on the condition he could play the lead, which he does, badly, under a pseudonym. It does not matter at all.

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Trailer

The sleeves

The same film, sold as a different film in each territory. Click any of them.

poster
EN · poster
EN · poster
EN · poster
PT · poster
FR · poster
DE · poster

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