A classic

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but since it was included in the ‘1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die’ list, I was really eager to check it out. To be honest, I have to admit that I had a rather hard time to get into this movie. Maybe it had to do with the fact that it was very late when I watched it so I might re-watch it at some point. Well, even though Carl Theodor Dreyer himself was Danish, this movie really felt like it belonged to the German expressionism. It was also pretty obvious that it was produced at the end of the silent movies era as there were very few sounds and dialogues and most of the story was told through some (rather massive) cards with caption and some whole pages of a book dealing with vampires. I don’t know, maybe the damned thing was too random for my taste but there is no doubt that the atmosphere was grim and quite mesmerizing at the same time. Indeed, it’s rather difficult to imagine a vampire movie nowadays without either a rather heavy script or some huge action scenes. This one was actually much more straightforward and, when you think about it, really simple and, yet, its stripped-down aspect was really intriguing. Concerning the actors, they were apparently almost all non-professionals but even though they all had a striking look, I had a rather hard time to connect with any of them. It probably had to do with the fact that most of what we learned about them was through some title cards and not through the dialogues or their performances. Anyway, to conclude, even if I wasn’t completely sold, it was still a solid watch and it is definitely worth a look, especially if you like the genre.