VAMPYR: The Genre Film as Experimental Film
Vampyr
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14m
Observations on Film Art No. 34
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.
Up Next in Vampyr
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Guillermo del Toro on VAMPYR
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Carl Th. Dreyer
Jørgen Roos, one of Denmark’s preeminent documentarians, directed this account of the career of Carl Dreyer in 1966.
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Casper Tybjerg Video Essay
In this 2008 program, Casper Tybjerg, a Carl Dreyer scholar and professor at the University of Copenhagen, shows the research and influences Dreyer drew upon to create VAMPYR. Using archival still images, clips, and scenes censored by the German authorities, Tybjerg elucidates the inner workings ...
