Vampyr

Julian West in his coffin

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr was the first psychological vampire movie, or so some of the books say. Cut to FW Murnau in the wings asking forlornly, “So what was Nosferatu?” made ten whole years earlier in 1922. How about Vampyr being the great Dreyer’s first sound movie? There is no doubt about that, even though Dreyer is working as if he’s still making a silent movie, right down to the use of intertitle cards. Really, this is a silent movie with added sound. Murnau stole the Dracula story from Bram Stoker but Dreyer bases his film on In a Glass Darkly, an earlier collection of gothic shockers by another Irish author, Sheridan Le … Read more