Vampyr

Another look at the Carl T. Dreyer , 1932, film
Dreyer's camera movements are remarkable; tiny little, slightly jerky ones, with a remakably free camera (it feels almost 'Regle Du Jeu; like at times...) pushing us around. We seem to never have a full establishing shot, so people, or even just hands, pop into the frame out of nowhere. The lighting is also distinct; with a, for significant parts, without dominant key lights. In fact, the head is sometimes the darkest part of the room. The space of the film surely can't quite make sense; we don't get jump cuts, but I am sure that the geography doesn't quite work. It is too elliptical... and perfect for the film. The confusion is what takes place off screen, something is happened, not quite right.
I can barely remember conciously noticing so many eyeline matches in a film. This moves questions of subjectivity, of mystery again, and the overall thematics of the film.
Dreyer's actual graphics are often mildly, not radically, decentered. Within his shots, Dreyer still finds time for his close-ups, the still, wonderfully naturalistic, compelx skin shades that he was famous for. Let us notice the shadows too; the flesh, the substantial is again not there, we only have the strange trace, but this takes on an autonomy and life of its own. As too do the clear black sillouhettes, so simple, but at the same time taking on a bizarre difference from their surroundings.
The sound further enhances the deliberate decentered nature, the creep outside the camera. The sound, the dialogue when we can't see the speaker, is precicely this.
The exterior shots are most reminscent of other Dreyer work, notably 'Day Of Wrath'. The soft, bright, perhaps overexposed, with presumably gauzes, long shots of people going through scrtachy long grass, diffused lighting twinkling sleepily from every point.
The acting, indeed every element, adds to this theme; another example of form following content. The actors appear purposeful, but we have no idea why. They do strange things, the world does strange things. The candles are lit in the daytime, and seem to give off no light.
This film operates with outside and inside, the house itself a coffin. We don't just look through glass in that one famous sequence; but also throughout, at Gray at the start, and often in the background. Stark, but rich.