Le vampire (1945)

Director:

Jean Painlevé

Genre:

Short

Also Known As:

The Vampire (International: English title) (informal title)

Runtime:

9 min

Country:

France

Color:

Black and White

Movie Connections:

Features Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens (1922)

Interesting round-about approach.

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

This is a documentary of sorts, though it's largely fantastical in elements. It was done by a French surrealists, so it preoccupies itself with juxtaposing things to create quite odd effects.

The first part of it is sort of an overview of the general weirdness of the animal kingdom. "What poetry, what art inspired your terrifying form?" the narrator says as some sea creature creeps creepily along the floor of the ocean like something out of a German expressionist film.

Then the film gets a little into Murnau's classic Nosferatu, which eventually leads to discussion about what vampire bats are like, illustrated with a live Guinea Pig. The approach is quite interesting along with being somewhat self-aware. Jazz music scores it to bring us back to the sort of New Orleans voudou tradition of vampires.

It also has stuff that speaks subtextually about Nazi Germany and the like. Thus, for a documentary titled "Le Vampire", it certainly covers a lot of different types of horrors of the world. It's quite fantastic.

--PolarisDiB