Complete credited cast: | |||
Julian West | ... | Allan Grey | |
Maurice Schutz | ... | Der Schlossherr (The Lord of the Manor) | |
Rena Mandel | ... | Gisèle | |
Sybille Schmitz | ... | Léone | |
Jan Hieronimko | ... | Der Dorfartz (The Village Doctor) | |
Henriette Gérard | ... | Die alte Frau von Friedhof (The Old Woman from the Cemetery) (as Henriette Gérard) | |
![]() |
Albert Bras | ... | Der alte Diener (The Old Servant) |
![]() |
N. Babanini | ... | Seine Frau (His Wife) |
![]() |
Jane Mora | ... | Die Krankenschwester (The Nurse) |
Rest of cast listed alphabetically: | |||
Georges Boidin | ... | Limping Man |
Allan Gray arrives late in the evening to a secluded riverside inn in the hamlet of Courtempierre. An old man enters his room, puts a sealed parcel on the table, blurts out that some woman mustn't die, and disappears. Gray senses in this a call for help. He puts the parcel in his pocket, and goes out. Eerie shadows lead him into an old house, where he encounters a weird village doctor. The doctor receives a bottle of poison from a strange, old woman. Through the window of an old castle Gray recognizes the old man from the inn. A shadow shoots the man, who drops dead. Inside the house Gray finds his two daughters, Gisèle and Léone, and some servants. He opens the parcel, and finds an old book about vampires. Léone is seriously ill after being bitten by a vampire. Instead of helping her, the village doctor places the bottle of poison at her bedside table, and then abducts her sister Gisèle. An old servant starts reading the old book, and finds out that the vampire in Courtempierre is a ... Written by Maths Jesperson {maths.jesperson1@comhem.se}
Brilliant! Breathtaking! This film was worth the long wait I imposed on myself to see it. It is not the most cohesive narrative about, but it has images that linger with you....haunt you. The film is basically a silent with some speaking. It tells a story about Allan Grey and how he was introduced into a vampire's conspiracy to kill two sisters. Grey is brought in for aid by their father who dies while trying to fight the infection coursing through his daughter's veins. What then follows is pure cinematic magic as Grey...opening a book that the father wrote was to be opened upon his death...begins reading the book on vampires whilst it is going on right around him. The mixture of action and the text from the book create a wonderfully eerie atmosphere and convey a feeling of dread and despair. There are many scenes in Vampyr, directed with fluidity by Carl Dreyer, that are incredibly well-done. The dream sequence in particular explores various camera angles, hitherto not used. As I said before, it is not the tightest story and it has some gaping holes in the plot that are never explained, but that really is not very important because the film succeeds as a film of haunting imagery...fear based on illusion and shadows.