dir:  Carl Th. Dreyer
pro: Nicolas de Gunzburg, Film-Production Carl Dreyer
sc: Carl Th. Dreyer, Christen Jul      
ph:  Rudolph Maté  
mus: Wolfgang Zeller
ed: Tonka Taldy    
cast: Julian West (alias Nicolas de Gunzburg), Henriette Gerard, Jan Hieronimko, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel, Sybille Schmitz
dis: Dansk Kulturfilm (DFI)

A young man, Grey arrives one night at the village of Courtempierre. His sleep is disturbed by ghostly apparitions and he wanders out into the luminous, misty night. Grey follows the shadows to a nearby castle, where one of them shoots the castle’s lord. The old woman, a vampire, bites Léone, the eldest of the lord’s two daughters, while the youngest, Gisèle, is seduced by the vampire’s helpers. Falling asleep, Grey witnesses his own funeral…

Principal photography took place between March and October 1930. The film was shot without sound, and the actors spoke their relatively few lines in French, German and English, so that their lips could be matched to the soundtrack which was added later. Practical problems delayed the film’s release, not least because Dreyer as an independent producer had a hard time getting access to the necessary sound technology and distribution. The film was generally rejected as avant-garde and weird when it finally premiered, but it has since found a place among the most original works in the horror genre.

Vampyr – Der Traum des Allan Grey / Adventures of  David Grey,  (FR-DE) 1932 b&w 73 min.