Saturday night at the festival was anniversary night. This early horror double feature were the films that first caught my eye when the CIFF programme was first released, since i am very interested in the early versions of well known stories. Nosferatu I had seen a couple of times already, Vampyr I had just heard of. Both films are European black and white exploring the legend of vampires, the blood sucking living undead.
Nosferatu (1922)
This German Expressionist staple was originally released in 1922 making it a full 100 years old. This predates the first 'talkie' so any dialogue is shown in text in title cards instead of subtitles or spoken dialogue. Silent films do naturally rely more on the visuals for effective storytelling and lasting effects, something Nosferatu does exceedingly well.
The story is interpreted from the original, universally known Bram Stoker's Dracula novel, so I won't summarise that. The primary memory from watching the film is the image of Max Schreck in costume as Count Orlok (the character more commonly known as Count Dracula) He is tall, slim, bald, with wide dark eyes, long claw like fingernails and the obligatory vampire teeth. Not the stereotypical fangs interestingly, but Count Orlok has 2 oversized sharp central front teeth, not too dissimilar from a rat. The other image that lasts longest in the memory is the most famous moment in the film (and one of the most famous from any horror) of Orlok's shadow climbing stairs to reach Ellen Hutter (Mina Harker in the Dracula films) It is so much more effective than showing the character itself, it is a moment of timeless genius filmmaking.
It should be seen by everybody, especially those who are fans of other vampire films.
Vampyr (1932)
The second film of the night was Carl Theodore Dreyer's Vampyr, which turned 90 this year. We follow Allan Grey, fascinated by the occult, who arrives in a small village and starts having visions of seemingly impossible events. I think its fair to say the film is light on actual plot, it's perhaps more an experiential watch. There are passages of the extreme and surreal, the feeling of which reminded me in bits of Lynch's wonderful Eraserhead and the famous Salvador Dali dream sequence in Hitchcock's Spellbound. There is an unforgettable POV image of our main character in a coffin with the lid being secured. At this point and others, I found myself praising the sound design especially.
Although this was made after the 'talkie' revolution, it still has the visual feel of the silent era, using camerawork and especially lighting to help tell the story. I noticed some very inventive (for the time period) techniques including reversing shots, super imposed imagery and stop motion. It has a palpable moody feel from the very start, helped by lighting and shadows (not unlike Nosferatu), in fact, there is a great shot where somebody's shadow acts independently from them, which has since been done in other Dracula films, especially Coppola's 1992 retelling.
This was a film that I will have to see again, and I will jump at the chance next time it's being shown on a big screen near me.
To experience films like these nowadays, you realise just how much these seminal works influence those that came after. There is something satisfying about noticing things that are now commonly referenced, it's one of the joys of early cinema.
N.B. I have had Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre on my list for years. (It stars his frequent collaborator Klaus Kinski, together they made two of the very greatest - Aguirre, The wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo) I haven't come across it yet but I can only imagine that it would draw inspiration from both of these, especially given the title.
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