Vampyr
(Carl Dreyer, 6 May 1932)
“What was going on? What terrifying secret was unfolding?”
As the title card informs us, Dreyer’s meditative masterpiece is the strange and esoteric tale of Allan Gray, who “immersed himself in the study of devil worship and vampires. Preoccupied with superstitions of centuries past, he became a dreamer for whom the line between the real and the supernatural became blurred. His aimless wanderings led him late one evening to a secluded inn by the river,” and it is a tale recognized as only the third major film in the history of cinema to feature the cavorting creature of the night “whose terrible deeds in life,” the film tells us, “deny them repose in the grave.”…