Horror film genre and characteristics

Vampyr (1932)

Critical Review of Carl T. Dreyer's Motion Picture Production, "Vampyr" (1932)

People today love to get scared, at least in a controlled fashion, and the popularity of various early horror stories and motion pictures is evidence that Americans in the first half of the 20th century were no different. One of the early such motion picture that has had an enormous impact on the genre but was not a popular hit at the time, though, was Carl Theodore Dryer's 1932 production, "Vampyr" (Nowell-Smith 102). This paper provides an overview of the 1932 production, Vampyr, to include an analysis of the influence of German expressionism on the work. In addition, this paper provides an examination of Dreyer's usage of techniques such as minimal dialogue and plot, and innovative light and shadow to maintain the feeling of an "art film" throughout. In addition, a discussion of the intent of psychological disturbance possibly inspired by Gothic ghost stories and an assessment of the underlying forbidden themes of sexuality is followed by a summary of the research in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

According to Holte (1997), "Vampyr" by Carl T. Dreyer featured Julian West and Henriette Gerard, "This film is an effective and atmospheric horror classic. Dryer's direction is outstanding" (142). In his book, a History of Narrative Film, Cook (1996) reports that, "Dreyer also made his first sound film in France, the hauntingly atmospheric Vampyr (1932), shot on location in the village of Courtempierre by Mate. Designed, like La Passion, by Hermann Warm (who had also designed the sets for Caligari, Der mude Tod, and other Expressionist works), Vampyr seems less distinctly Gallic than La Passion, perhaps because its soundtrack was postrecorded in Berlin" (373). In fact, Sarris (1998) suggests that, "The Hollywood horror film might be designated as the misshapen offspring of German Expressionism and Gothic fiction F.W. Murnau's (1888-1931) Nosferatu (1922) and Carl Theodor Dreyer's (1889-1968) Vampyr (1932) have been acknowledged as the genre's high-art classics" (79).

According to Glover (1996), "Dracula's continuing circulation in contemporary popular culture depends upon and sustains a powerful representation of the past as a domain of scandal and error, awaiting exposure by a franker, more enlightened gaze" (2). The manner in which the horror elements are presented in films also reflects the changing styles by which the unspeakable is represented. For instance, Andrew (1984) reports that while Hollywood in the classical era of the 1930's and 1940's primarily relied on makeup and model work to depict monsters incarnating whatever horror the film could evoke, the European cinema of the 1920's frequently used other elements such as camera movement and optical effects as used by Carl T. Dreyer in his 1932 production of "Vampyr" (164). Unlike many of the other permutations that would grace the nation's movie screens in the years to come, though, Dreyer's "Vampyr" was not based on Bram Stoker's character, "Dracula," but was rather inspired by "Carmilla," as discussed further below.

Citing Nina Auerbach, Sayers and Williams (2000) report that Dreyer's "Vampyr" has been described as, "[T]he first canonical vampire film not based on Dracula; it claims to be, instead, a loose adaptation of 'Carmilla' [from Sheridan Le Fanu's Through a Glass Darkly (1872)]. Despite its source, Vampyr scrupulously avoids not only erotic intimacy, but all contact between its characters, whether they are human or preterhuman; its key images involve a solitude so solemnly intense that it is scarcely a vampire film at all" (56). Furthermore, Heldreth and Pharr (1999) suggest that "Carmilla" represents an important transition point between earlier and later uses of the social context in which these themes were used: "No single Victorian tale of supernatural horror captures every element of that subgenre. But Sheridan Le Fanu's 'Carmilla' comes as close as one might wish to being a model of the differences between the new context and earlier uses" (25).

The use of "Carmilla" as a source of inspiration for "Vampyr" provided Dreyer with some powerful themes that were not based on the traditional concepts of hideous vampires rising from their coffins after sunset, but were rather based on the emerging sexual themes of the day. For instance, in his chapter, "Carmilla and the Gothic Legacy: Victorian Transformations of Supernatural Horror," Geary (1999) points out that:

In 'Carmilla,' for instance, the sinister lesbian eroticism is (considering the times) startlingly explicit. But if 'Carmilla' and other vampire tales are more than half-disguised explorations of forbidden sexual themes, then their place in the Gothic tradition must be examined, especially the decisive and successful changes authors such as Le Fanu wrought upon the legacy of the defunct Gothic supernatural. Such an explanation can clarify not only the lineage of the vampire story but also its kinship to other Victorian and twentieth-century tales of supernatural dread. For this purpose, Le Fanu's 'Carmilla,' the first really successful vampire story, is ideal; for it stands as a paradigm of the transformation of the incoherent numinous elements of the faded Gothic into the enduring form of the modern supernatural horror story. (19)

Certainly, most modern audiences would likely cite Lon Chaney and Boris Karloff as the classic images of movie monsters, with Stoker's Dracula as an excellent case in point. By sharp contrast to these grisly tales and as noted above though, the inspiration for "Vampyr" is widely regarded as more being more sublime. In this regard, Twitchell (1981) reports that, "As a vampire story Carmilla is less diffuse than Dracula, less frothy than Varney, less dull than the Vampyre; it is, in fact, a masterful little tale" (129). There have been countless movies inspired by Stoker's character, but the inspiration for Dreyer's production has been highly influential in this line of vampire productions as well:

For Carmilla is the story of a lesbian entanglement, a story of the sterile love of homosexuality expressed through the analogy of vampirism. And as such, it has become the copytext of a subgenre in the cinema that rivals Dracula in numbers if not in redundancy. From Carl Dreyer masterful Vampyr (1932), there has been a spate of female vampire movies: Blood and Roses, the Vampire Lovers, Lust for a Vampire, Twins of Evil, and others -- all based on Carmilla (Twitchell 129).

According to Holte (1997), "Vampyr tells the story of a young man's encounter with a female vampire who is menacing a small European village. Dryer and cinematographer Rudolph Mate use the basic elements of Carmilla to create a hauntingly atmospheric tale of terror. Dryer, drawing on his expressionistic background, employs a subjective camera to pull viewers into the film" (105).

In fact, modern audiences might not recognize these masterful elements in these early productions, but when they were used effectively, perhaps they were not supposed to be able to discern them at all because they are too busy being scared. In fact, this author suggest that one of the most effective uses of these techniques by Dreyer was a scene in which the viewer sees the action from inside a coffin: "The result is a film that, despite a lack of visual horror, captures the atmosphere of unease at the heart of the best vampire films" (Holte 105).

As a result of the physical confinement he used to enforce solitude in his dramatic products, Dreyer was accused of theatricality by some critics; however, Dreyer's subject in his productions was actually pure human emotion, albeit suffering more often than not, and his ability to evoke spiritual intensity from his audiences through concentration and confinement was one of his most substantive contributions as a film artist (Cook 373). In this regard, Cook notes that to help ensure the "art film" quality of his productions, "Dreyer's work is characterized by extraordinarily complex camera movement and luminous photography expressive decor, antitraditional editing, and a totally radical construction of narrative space. His painstaking production procedures and his fierce artistic integrity led him to make only fourteen films in a career that spanned forty-five years" (373).

In reality, though, even this perfectionist level of attention to detail was not an absolute assurance of financial success in Dreyer's works. For example, "Vampyr" fared poorly at the box office for various reasons, some of which remain unclear. According to Nowell-Smith (1997), "Using only non-professional actors, Vampyr is one of the most disturbing horror films ever made, with a hallucinatory and dreamlike visionary quality intensified by a misty and elusive photographic style. But it was badly received, and Dreyer found himself at the height of his powers with the reputation of being a tiresome perfectionist despot whose every project was a failure" (102).

Notwithstanding these criticisms, though, modern reviewers are consistent in their praise for Dreyer's movies in general and "Vampyr" in particular. According to Sayers and Williams, "The poetically austere Vampyr (1932) is about the strange adventures of young Allan Gray who is inspired by studies of devil worship and vampire terror in earlier centuries, mist similarly pushes the image to the limits of decipherabilty" (40). To accomplish this level of surrealism in an early black and white production, Dreyer pioneered the use of a number of cinemagraphic techniques that were highly regarded by contemporary as well as modern critics. For example, "Out on the lake, for example, calling and voices are heard within the mist almost detached from Gray and Gisele. The mist dissolves all boundaries between themselves and the point of landing, creating a space which seems infinite but in which one is contained. As viewers, we, too, become contained within this space and share the characters' experience of blocked vision and of doubled and repeated echoes" (Sayers & Williams 41).