Vampyr (1932)

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. Starring Nicolas de Gunzburg, Jan Hieronimko, Rena Mandel, Sybille Shmitz, Maurice Schutz, Henriette Gérard, Albert Bras.

Spine-chilling, largely silent horror picture, slim on plot but high on atmosphere. The curse of a vampire afflicts denizens of a rustic village, which student of the occult Gunzburg tries to lift. Remarkable photo-illustration of figures in shadow and reflection; bizarre camera angles and soft-focus photography emphasizes the hallucinatory nature of the vampire’s spell. Dreyer’s transition from silent films to sound had its cumbersome moments—an overuse of intertitles and close-up shots of book text hampers the already deliberate pace—but the emphasis on mood, mystery, and terror gives it a creeping, clammy quality largely absent in other movies about demons and bloodsuckers. The cast is largely composed of non-professionals; Gunzburg (a baron of Russian descent) went credited as Julian West. Excoriated by most critics when it was initially released, now reappraised and considered an undervalued classic of the genre.

85/100