wh y is vamp yr a challenge? - university of washingtoncourses.washington.edu/crmscns/vampyr.pdf ·...
TRANSCRIPT
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Why is Vampyr a challenge?
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Vampyr’s Challenges
• “Manner” of representation confronts us investigators of cinema
• Plot and story
• Film displays only part of the cause and effect chain that motivates the material shown on screen
• Communication of plot through associations
• Discontinuity
• Conventional forms of cinematic narration coupled with subversion of viewer expectations
• Dreyer’s Method
• Materiality
• Abstract, spiritual questions
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Preliminary Observation: Dreyer Warns us Not to Trust Our Assumptions
• Abandon expectations of plot and story
• “Don’t trust your eyes”
• Motif of obscured vision
• Gray’s arrival at Inn, looking through windows
• Continually obscured vision
• Turn to dreams and the shadow world
• Plot initiated by a dream?
• Insight through dreams
• Follow the shadowsGray searches for Gisele
Gray arrives at Chateau
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Editing, framing in windows, and discontinuity undermine our confidence in what we see in opening sequence
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Plot and Story
• Omission of narrative causes
• What does Vampyr omit?
• Discussion of conflicts
• Options of response
• Decisions
• We see actions whose motivation remains for us uncertain, as in Marguerite Chopin and the Doctor’s meeting
Why does the Doctor ignore Gray, when they first meet in the stairway?
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Vampyr Program (1933)
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1. Setting• Rural village Courtempierre
(France)
• Village ruled by Marguerite Chopin, a vampire
• Her servants are a doctor and a soldier
• She has also targeted Léone, and is seeking to suck her blood and induce her suicide
• Léone’s father is Lord of a local Chateau
• Léone’s sister is Gisèle
• When Allan Gray, obsessed with vampires, arrives the Lord of the Chateau entreats him to help
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• Gray leaves his hotel in search of the Lord
• He gets lost en route to the Chateau, and finds Doctor’s lair, where Chopin and her shadows are present
• Chopin orders soldier to kill Lord of Manor, so she can seduce Léone
• Gray finds his way out of Copin’s lair and hurries to manor
• Gray witnesses murder of Lord
• Lord affirms love of Gisèle in death Coachman goes for police
2. The Lord’s Murder
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3. Vampire attacks, and is revealed
• Chopin seduces Léone into the forest
• Gisèle and Gray save her
• Gray begins to read the book the Lord left him, “in case of his death”
• Coachman returns dead
• Léone worsens, nears death
• Doctor arrives, to help Léone, but tries to induce her suicide
• Gray volunteers to give blood to help her recover
• Servant picks up Gray’s book, and Chopin’s methods and name are revealed
• Gray dreams and servant awakens him to save Léone from posoining herself
• Doctor flees
Under the spell of Marguerite Chopin, Leone nears death
Gray’s dream reveals association between suicide and Chopin, the skeleton
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4. Recognition and Resolution:Life and Death Struggle • Gray runs after Doctor
• Servant sets out to Chopin’s grave
• Gray’s dream reveals what he saw early in the film!
• He was among the dead,
• His funeral shows where he was
• The Doctor and the soldier work for death
• Chopin is their master
• Gray awakens and realizes he must help destroy Chopin
• Chopin destroyed, curse lifts
• Lord of the manor avenges his death by haunting soldier
• Servant smothers Doctor in flour mill
• Life on the water had displaced death
Allan Gray leaves his body during his second dream, which allows him to see
the truth of his earlier experiences
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Example: Vampyr (1932) and Dracula (1931)• What information does the
opening sequence give us?
• Vampyr
• What is Allan Gray trying to achieve?
• Is there a threat?
• Who is involved?
• Dracula (1931)
• Tod Browning
• Universal horror cycle of 1930s
• Questions about the opening?
• What is Redfeld trying to achieve?
• Is there a threat?
• Who is involved?
• Dreyer cues us not to expect the plot to be communicated clearly, but gives us associations to follow
Contrasting images of the
Vampire
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Tod Browning’s Dracula (1931) was the first of many horror films produced by Universal Studios in the 1930s
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Clarification through Association
• Motivations are clarified by associations
• Reasonable assumptions based on cultural knowledge
• “Mannner” of representation creates consistent associations
• Some key associations
• Water and isolation
• Styx
• Shamanism
• Dream provides insight into spiritual realities
• Death is a world of shadows
• Skeleton, skulls, with vampire Marguerite Chopin
There are shadows everyewhere in
Courtempierre…
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Gray sees shadows at the lake
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Soldier’s Shadow
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Doctor Arrives at the Chateau
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Note use of montage editing and mise-en-scene to underscore Chopin’s association with skeletons
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Discontinuity• What is continuity?
• System of rules about action in the frame and editing of shots that stabilizes image of space for the viewer
• Emphasizes matching across shots in a sequence
• Dreyer continually violates the rules of continuity
• Lack of establishing shots
• Unreliable point of view
• Continual movement outside the frame that are relevant to plot
• Confusing spatial markers
• Unconventional system forces us to accept Dreyer’s system of representation
Vampire looks into Gray’s coffin during last dream sequence, but
where did she come from?
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Gray enters room, looks right, but no establishing shot
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Camera appears to match Gray’s look in pov shot, panning L⇒R
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Camera notices skeleton icon, which will mark a later location
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Gray reenters frame from right, indicating we haven’t seen pov, moves into next room
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Gray enters new room (Doctor’s laboratory with bottles), matching on action, and invoking
continuity
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Clip of Allan’s exploration of Doctor’s lair -- look for the sign “medecin/docteur” on the floor
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Instances of continuity
• Sequences of continuity editing stand in contrast to the discontinuity that characterize the film
• Shot-reverse-shot editing in dream sequence from Gray’s perspective in the coffin
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Vampyr dream sequence -- note shot-reverse-shot continuity
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Dreyer’s Method
• Disorienting method compel us to look for points of reference
• The face, gesture, and the set establish contrasts that offer handholds
• Extreme method acting
• Prominence of the face and gesture in Dreyer’s cinema
• Lack of makeup
• Indexical emphasis
• Casting
• Set
• Paradoxical naturalism
Strange gesture
Stress indexcicality
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Preben Lerdorff Rye on Dreyer!s casting for The Word
(1955), where he studies a character with Christ mania --
extreme method acting
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Léone being examined
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Léone near death
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What is the cause of Léone’s illness?
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Non-professional actors and strange sets
• Habit of casting non-professional, elderly actors
• Vampyr’s cast
• Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg as Allan Gray
• Mother of an actress, Marguerite Chopin
• Ralph Holm discovers Hieronimko, the Doctor
• Creating the Doctor’s Lair with the help of the neighbors
Doctor…
and poet
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Heavy cobwebs
Dust-caked furniture and bottles
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Dreyer’s MethodParadoxical Naturalism
• Dreyer attempts to represent material, worldy experience as visible to us
• Paradoxically, our experience of everyday life is motivated by beliefs and meanings, which have no “appearance”
• How can film capture this paradox?
• Salient conundrum, which Dreyer explores with a different style in each film, depending on material
What is it to experience a world of death?
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Summary
• Why does the film challenge us as investigators of cinema?
• Plot and story
• Discontinuity
• What evidence can we prioritized in figuring out Vampyr?
• Associations
• The face
• The set