VAMPYR: The Genre Film as Experimental Film

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s haunting 1932 masterpiece VAMPYR has long occupied a singular place in film history, resting somewhere at the intersection of horror, avant-garde cinema, and waking nightmare. In this episode of Observations on Film Art, Professor David Bordwell explores how Dreyer managed to honor the conventions of horror cinema while at the same time breaking the boundaries of the genre wide open through his experimental use of sound, shadows, and camera movement. In doing so, Dreyer created a mesmerizing, one-of-a-kind work of dreamlike dread that paved the way for generations of innovative independent horror films to come.