Vampyr - Der Traum des Allan Grey (Not Against the Flesh) (A...

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Vampyr - Der Traum des Allan Grey (Not Against the Flesh) (Adventures of David Gray) (Castle of Doom

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Vampyr - Der Traum des Allan G...

Henriette Gerard, Jan Hieronimko, Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel

A mysterious, somnambulistic young man wanders into a village where a castle owner's daughters are endangered by an elderly vampire and her associates.

Id: 11059123

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Vampyr - Der Traum des Allan Grey (Not Against the Flesh) (Adventures of David Gray) (Castle of Doom Recent Reviews

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Recent Reviews

Vampyr - Der Traum des Allan Grey (Not Against the Flesh) (Adventures of David Gray) (Castle of Doom Recent Reviews
  • webalina
    October 14, 2009
    webalina
    This is without a doubt one of the coolest films I've ever seen. Carl Dreyer weaves a film that seems more dream -- or more likely nightmare -- than film. A loose storyline about vampirism ties together visuals that are mesmerizing. Included are a shadow that walks around without...( read more) its owner, and a POV shot of a man's funeral -- from INSIDE the casket. Dreyer is one of the great directors and this film is evidence. Not to be missed.
  • columbiatch
    August 18, 2009
    columbiatch
    Probably my 2nd favorite Dreyer, this succeeds where Nosferatu kinda falls flat in creating this morbid, dreamlike atmosphere through all these strange editing and ethereal lighting and awesome dolly shots and crazy POV shots and doppelgangers and Keatonesque performances, not to...( read more) mention the mostly silent film aesthetics with very little dialogue in which the horror plot is secondary to its mood and texture.
  • ceWEBrity
    October 27, 2008
    ceWEBrity
    Perfect Halloween-time viewing for the patient film fan. This is as thematically complex, artistically ambitious, and visually gripping as anything made in the last decade. It's obviously very aged, but so rich and unique that it doesn't matter much at all. A real hidden treasure.
  • bort16
    September 12, 2008
    bort16
    CT Dreyer was one of the masters of impressionistic and art cinema. His Passion of Joan of Arc is widely considered to be the first film made as art for the sake of art. Owing a debt of course to the Eisenstein montage, his style and use of non-sequential cutaways has been highly...( read more) influential on countless filmmakers. His sense of style and imagery exuded a sense of dread and menace preternaturally. It seemed only fitting that Dreyer would tackle a horror film. So, in 1932 (though shot in 1930) he released Vampyr. A very loose adaptation of a novel by Sheridan Le Fanu, Dreyer set out to implement a terrifying story, but a terrifying atmosphere. The plot is a loose one, and alone not necessarily anything special. It has holes and uncertainties, and existed merely for a vehicle for Dreyer's imagery. Allan Grey, a believer in the supernatural who blurs the line between reality and lore, arrives in a small village. Immediately upon arriving, no time is wasted on getting down to creepy business. Shadow's move independently of their casters, a strange man holds a scythe and rings a bell. An old blind man lurks the hallway, and strange voices argue in the distance. Grey discovers the local doctor's bed - a coffin. On his first night at the inn, a man comes into his room telling him not to die, and leaves him a package to be opened upon his death.
    Grey, impulsed to help this man without knowing why, goes to his mansion home, where he lives with his daughters - one of whom is very sick, possibly the victim of a vampire - and a few servants. Grey witnesses the old man killed by what appears to be one of the shadows. He opens the package, and finds it is a book on vampires.
    As the house is stalked by shadows, Grey and an old servant discover the town's history of a vampire, and that they will attempt to have their victims commit suicide.
    This is all captured in what is essentially a a silent film with fleeting moments of dialogue. Most of what we need to know we learn from title cards or reading the pages of the vampire book. The look of the film is dark and shadowy, with occasional flashes of white - the color of the body drained of blood. The film was shot on location, places Dreyer found while scouting. Today the print is fairly poor - even on the Criterion and Masters of Cinema editions. But that is likely the best it will ever be seen give the damage that has accumulated over the years. Another reason why the picture looks rather strange is that Dreyer had the filmstock flashed before shooting to give it a hazy dreamlike look. (For anyone who doesn't know what flashing is, this just means that it was first exposed to low levels of light).
    What many may take for granted today is that Vampyr was quite a remarkable special effects picture for when it was shot in 1930. Not necessarily difficult effects, but extremely clever. The dancing shadows that appear on the wall during a tracking shot are quite interesting for example - captured actually not in a single shot but by 2 shots with a hidden edit. Another interesting trick in the film involves a sequence during which Allan Grey is split into three subjective realities: 1) sitting on a bench falling asleep; 2) a ghostly haze emerging from the sleeping Grey, who wanders; and 3) Allan Grey in a coffin, discovered by the ghostly wandering Grey. Dreyer reportedly simply used gauze filters on the camera and then some editing magic to capture the scenes.
    The end result is one of a stunningly haunting and menacing imagery. Dreyer's cutaways frequently have nothing to do with plot, but merely serve to enhance the frightening atmosphere. When discussing the film in preproduction with cinematographer Rudolph Mate, Dreyer reportedly said (I'm paraphrasing here) "Imagine we're standing in a room, a normal room like any other. Now imagine someone tells you there is a corpse hidden behind that door. You can't see it, but the room has somehow changed. That's the feeling I want to capture."
    Vampyr at times suffers from its plot. Moments seem arbitrarily tacked on at times, and the end feels like it may have been rushed. For these reasons I struggled with how to rate the film. I had a similar dilemma with Robert Bresson's L'argent. With both films I eventually decided that what the film was trying to say and feel was the important factor. Just as L'argent was a photo essay on the evils of money, Vampyr is about expressing menace through image, not story. And it does feel like there is a corpse hidden somewhere in Vampyr.
  • jplong39
    August 23, 2008
    jplong39
    Captivating dream--like film that completely discards reality and convention. Nearly every shot is breathtaking in atmosphere and originality, every character is mesmerizing, and every gesture and camera movement memorable.
  • beachpeach
    December 2, 2009
    beachpeach
    Not for the avid vampire lovers of today. This one is far more symbolic and suggesting. The plot is very simple and the storyline jagged as much of the film has been lost. There are no OBVIOUS vampires for the modern eye to feast upon such as in the Lost Boys or Van Helsing or Tw...( read more)ilight. This story is set mostly in an old home with overly furnished rooms (which are very cool), it is very silent and creeping with little excerpts of reading from an ancient text about the nature of vampires. This is a more traditional look at vampires and while it is interesting to see for once, i would recommend nasferatu instead.
  • dfduncan
    November 17, 2009
    dfduncan
    This is a brilliantly conceived horror film that was beautifully executed within the limits of the medium back in 1932. Filmed at the end of the silent era it contains the stilted, posed style of acting that was the accepted standard of that time. The story is slow by modern stan...( read more)dards and is frequently hard to make sense of -- I have no idea what some parts of it meant. But it is a very creepy story that constantly maintains suspense without recourse to any trite gimmicks.
  • BillyRevenge
    October 24, 2009
    BillyRevenge
    Creepy and very very very weird!! Doesn't make any sense! But that's whats good about it. It's like watching a dream. Or did I mean nightmare....
  • sleepykiss
    September 19, 2009
    sleepykiss
    One of my faves. Very suspenseful for a 1932 vamp flick.
  • enduringkubrickfan
    September 6, 2009
    enduringkubrickfan
    Not as atmospheric as I thought it would be. And a little more complex than I thought this would be (and this movie is not complex). Still a masterpiece in any light and years ahead of its time in vision and direction. SEE IT!
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