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Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr and the World of Dreams

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The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire
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Abstract

Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 film Vampyr was an abject failure upon release. Parts of the film have been lost, and Dreyer heavily reedited it due to censorship. Thanks to recent restorations, we now have a high-quality version that is at least a facsimile of Dreyer’s work. But assessing the film is not easy because it is so unusual; the moment one grasps the story or its characters, they seem to slip away in the dreamlike mist that suffuses every frame. Strongly influenced by visual art, Vampyr is a work of startling beauty and maddening mystery; it is a vampire film like no other to date.

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© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

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McIver, G. (2024). Carl Dreyer’s Vampyr and the World of Dreams. In: Bacon, S. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of the Vampire. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-36253-8_15

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