Vampyr

“Didn’t you hear?”; “Silence!” Dreyer punctuates the already sparse dialogue of his first sound film with various exhortations to listen more carefully or, better still, to remain silent. While the viewer might feel called to order unnecessarily, these commands are actually directed at the various protagonists of this classic of the horror genre, such as the young student Allan Gray, who encounters supernatural goings on in a village and does everything in his power to save Gisèle, the daughter of a lord of the manor, from the clutches of a vampire. Beyond the dialogue, the film is accompanied by a continuous soundtrack which becomes repeatedly interrupted by dissonant noises and passages of total silence, forming the experimental soundscape of one of film history’s great nightmares. (mg)