The Grim Cellar

1932, Germany/France, Directed by Carl Dreyer

Black & White, Running Time: 73 minutes

DVD, Region 1, Criterion, Video: Pillarboxed 1.19:1, Audio: Dolby Digital Mono

For a few years my acknowledgement of Vampyr as a possible classic grew through reading various articles, though the film itself evaded me until a trip to Holland where I stumbled across an art house cinema projecting the movie for a late’ish showing. The dialogue, or what little of it there is, was in German (it was also shot in French and English in 1931 as alternate takes) and it was subtitled for the screening in Dutch (obviously) but it was just a blessing to finally see something I’d only previously read about, perusing the strange stills that accompanied such texts and formulating an idea in my mind regarding what the film might be like. You can’t imagine what Vampyr is like until you actually see it, and I’ve since found my lack of comprehension over the actual plot was only marginally due to my limited understanding of German - the narrative structure is surreal and deliberately disjointed to say the least and even viewing it with English subtitles keeps you guessing about what’s really going on in the film. The story introduces Allan Gray, a man who’s become obsessed with his studies in and fears of the occult as he wanders across the country. Coming across an isolated inn he takes a room for the night but is immediately struck by the uncanny nature of the location, something which unnerves him to the point of disturbed slumber. Around this point onwards we’re not quite sure what is real and what’s not as Gray receives a visitation in the night by a man who predicts doom for himself and an unnamed woman, probably his daughter given the events later on. Gray follows disembodied shadows to a house where lives the physical manifestation of the man who gave him the prophetic message and Gray learns of cursed creatures that rise from graves to take blood from living bodies: vampyres (to quote the book from which he reads). After the prophesised death of the old man one of his daughters is found in the woodland with holes in her neck, though still living but now damned and fully aware of it - Gray is being sucked into the very nightmarish world of his ongoing obsession with the supernatural.

It’s tempting to systematically go though a scene-by-scene description of Vampyr, such is the visually poetic and alluringly indistinct nature of the images that flash before our eyes. Things occur in an apparently logical order that refuses to make 100% sense, thus it reminds me of David Lynch’s work in some respects - if he’d been making films in the thirties they might have looked and felt like this. We’re drawn into the same nightmare, or one similar, to Gray’s and it’s precisely whether it’s a nightmare or not that keeps us in a land of uncertainty. Perhaps what we witness is only in the mind of Gray, or at least the personal responses to the surroundings produced by it, or maybe we’re even in the mind of the daughter who seems to be needing someone to rescue her from a family that’s crumbling at the feet of the devilish curse, or it could be a glimpse into some ethereal dimension that prevents conventional rationalisation. That’s the beauty of Vampyr: ambiguity, mystique, otherworldliness, an uncomfortable sense of foreboding dread. The compositions are quite unusual, not just for this era but for any: often characters are captured merely in the corner of the frame, the rest being used by background information that wouldn’t normally be deemed relevant enough to offer so much space to. The wallpapers attract much more camera attention than we might expect and you can’t help but think there’s something there we should be noticing. Maybe these compositional techniques are there to throw the viewer off guard, maybe they’re there to redirect the eye to other things, or perhaps Dreyer simply had a distinctive eye for visuals. Another aspect that sincerely contributes to this film’s creeping effect is the sound design, comprising of music which sounds like it was played in some dark, damp underground chamber, constructing a perturbing environment which is simultaneously alien to the viewer and familiar in the sense that we’ve probably experienced something similar to the sinister progression of nearly incoherent occurrences in our own nightmares on occasions. There are quite a few reviews of this movie online now but I’ve tried not to read too much of them (aside from responses to the new transfers prior to buying) because it’s too easy to either unconsciously or otherwise adopt the opinions of others, particularly if they’re well founded and perceptive, and once of the primary attractions with Vampyr - as well as other films of this kind - is the food provided for subjective response and interpretation. The film functions supremely as both an unusual cinematic technical achievement that begs to be deconstructed shot by shot for analysis, and as the mysterious world of shadows that sucks you into its ethereal fog to be succumbed by terror and disorientation. In comparison to what studios like Universal, Paramount and RKO were doing with the genre at the time Vampyr is completely unique, inspired and creatively astute, therefore it must be considered simply the best horror movie to crawl out of the first couple of decades following cinema’s transition to talkies.

Image put the film out on DVD in the US after a restoration took place in the late nineties - the picture was blurred and indistinct but it was the best way to see it in the home for a few years. After a long wait Criterion and Eureka (US and UK respectively) have both put supremely commendable efforts into unleashing a new definitive version of Vampyr upon us lucky movie collectors, but there are differences between them. On the plus side for Criterion there is a marginally sharper image (and I do mean marginally - I was looking hard for differences between screen captures and they’re barely noticeable), they’ve produced optional new intertitles in English matching the font and style of the original German cards, though the latter is still present with English subtitles if one so wishes. There’s also a 35 minute spoken essay that’s well put together with contextually relevant stills and clips making it more of a documentary and certainly more interesting that what we’d get elsewhere, i.e. pages of text as one extra and a stills section as another. Finally the packaging simply kicks Eureka’s butt it has to be said, with a fold-out digipack containing the discs and a booklet of essays as well as a 220 page book featuring the printed screenplay alongside the Carmilla story that partly influenced Dreyer in writing the film (it was actually based on different elements of a book featuring several short stories). The Eureka, however, has an additional commentary featuring director Guillermo del Toro, a second audio track containing unrestored sound (e.g. hiss, crackles, everything that signifies an old film - something for purists and not entirely unwelcome) though the ‘clean’ soundtrack is still present. Common to both sets is a superb commentary by film historian Tony Rayns, something which I really enjoyed listening to and again I did so after I’d written most of this review so that I wasn’t too influenced by his opinions. His perspective is informed, articulately expressed, and an indispensable companion despite moments of unavoidable speculation. On both sets too is a half hour documentary rescued from the sixties where Dreyer discusses all of his films (his last movie was Gertrud in 1964 - he wasn’t a prolific man following Vampyr); Dreyer is revealed to be a man very intense about his art. People used to modern DVD featurettes may find this surprisingly academic in tone. Neither set has a consistently stellar image on the main feature it must be noted, this being due to original negatives no longer existing and elements that have worn badly over the years, however, efforts to present the movie as well as possible have clearly been made - just be aware the picture quality is rough, though this doesn‘t necessarily detract from uncanny material such as this. To summarise, both companies have put a great deal of work into these sets and while Criterion has a slight edge on the picture, Eureka wins out with bonus audio options, whereas extras have some variations where the superior is difficult to choose. Criterion easily wins out on packaging so the choice is ours, either way this could well be the most important release of a vintage horror film for home viewing we’ve ever seen.