Vampyr DVD (Criterion Collection) (NTSC Region 1)

With Vampyr, Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer's brilliance at achieving mesmerizing atmosphere and austere, profoundly unsettling imagery (as in The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath) was for once applied to the horror genre. Yet the result—concerning an occult student assailed by various supernatural haunts and local evildoers at an inn outside Paris—is nearly unclassifiable, a host of stunning camera and editing tricks and densely layered sounds creating a mood of dreamlike terror. With its roiling fogs, ominous scythes, and foreboding echoes, Vampyr is one of cinema's great nightmares.

Special Features

- SPECIAL EDITION DOUBLE-DISC SET FEATURES:
- New, restored high-definition digital transfer of the 1998 film restoration by Martin Koerber and the Cineteca di Bologna
- Optional all-new English-text version of the film
- Audio commentary featuring film scholar Tony Rayns
- Carl Th. Dreyer (1966), a documentary by Jörgen Roos chronicling Dreyer's career
- Visual essay by scholar Casper Tybjerg on Dreyer's influences in creating Vampyr
- A 1958 radio broadcast of Dreyer reading an essay about filmmaking
- New and improved English subtitle translation
- PLUS: A booklet featuring new essays by Mark Le Fanu and Kim Newman, Martin Koerber on the restoration, and an archival interview with producer and star Nicolas de Gunzburg, as well as a book featuring Dreyer and Christen Jul's original screenplay and Sheridan Le Fanu 1871 story "Carmilla," a source for the film

About the Transfer

Vampyr is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.19:1, an early sound format that is narrower than a 1.33:1 image. The black bars along the side of the screen, called "pillarboxing," are normal for this format, and will be even more pronounced on widescreen televisions. The narrowness of this format is due to the variable-density soundtrack, which was positioned to the left of the picture area. This new high-definition digital transfer was created on a Spirit 2K Datacine from a 35 mm fine-grain master positive. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, and scratches were removed using the MTI Digital Restoration System. To maintain optimal image quality through the compression process, the picture on this dual-layer DVD-9 was encoded at the highest-possible bit rate for the quantity of material included.
The soundtrack was mastered at 24-bit from the restoration digital master, and audio restoration tools were used to reduce clicks, pops, hiss, and crackle. The Dolby Digital 1.0 signal will be directed to the center channel on surround sound systems, but some viewers may prefer to switch to two-channel playback for a wider dispersal of the mono sound.