CINEMA AND DREAMS IN THE HISTORY OF CINEMA AND FILM

THEORY

The negative and the camera awake to a new darkness born with the arrival of the light.
The spectators lay comfortably in their seats, relieved by the spot of light that keeps
their nightmares away. They are entering a world of dreams, or the dream of the
cinema.

The similarities between the Lumiere brother’s invention and the dream world have
been widely acknowledged by theorists, filmmakers and spectators throughout the film
history. Because of its essentially visual nature, the cinema is the perfect medium for
portraying the reality of dreams, which are also composed by images.

In the daybreak of the cinema, Meliés sent the mankind to the moon, awakening the
dream and the fantasy. The dreams of this first magician were created using mainly
theatrical devices and optical tricks1. The skeletons and the devils2 represented in the
magic cinema of Meliés opened the gate to the nightmare world that would later acquire
shape with the German Expressionism.

During the dark years that the Weimar republic suffered between the two World Wars,
the German cinema tried to create films guided by the subjective point of view of the
characters. The cinematic space would become the inner dark landscape of a subjective
vision, so that the film image would become graphic art 3 . The Robert Wiene’s The
Cabinet of Doctor Caligary is just the dream or the insane vision of a demented man
who is confined in a mental institution4. The dream reality is created by unexpected
camera angles, sharp contrasts of dark and shadow, totally stylize sets (symbols of
emotional states), theatrical acting style and heavy make- up5.

At the same time, and following the ideas of the psychoanalytical theory, the French
Surrealist movement tried to depict the essence of the dreams. The eyelids of cinema

1
Dreams and films- Bergman.
2
Webpage: ribbon of dreams.
3
http://courses.washington.edu/crmscns/FilmExpressionismHandout.pdf
4
Ribbon of dreams.
5
http://courses.washington.edu/crmscns/FilmExpressionismHandout.pdf
shiver in Man Ray’s films, undecided about where the dream- world ends and where the
reality begins. The surrealists created a universe of dreams where the logic became non-
logic, and where the repressed unconscious desires of the human beings were hidden
under different symbols that due to the great legacy of this movement would become
part of the standardized film- dream vocabulary. The influence of surrealism is clearly
palpable in many Hitchcock’s and David Lynch’s films.

After the Second World War, The influence of German expressionism arrived to the
United States and a “dark, oneiric, strange, ambivalent and cruel” film genre was
created: the film noir. Even if these movies don’t include the fantasy or dream in their
plots, a dreamy atmosphere, created by the tone, the mood and the visual style, unifies
them. As it said in The Maltese Falcon: “it’s the stuff that the dreams are made off”6.

In the last decades, Holywood’s blockbusters have also incorporated their impressive
and expensive visual effects to the art of representing dreams. We can see really well
accomplished examples in the Wachowski brothers The Matrix and in Christopher
Nolan’s Inception. This last film disintegrates the boundary between dreams and reality,
offering to the viewer a confusing experience, that following the Jungian7 idea of the
inconclusive character of dreams lacks a proper ending or solution.

It must be said though, that despite of all this attempts of portraying dreams on the
cinema, the filmmakers that got closer to the cinematic representation of the dream
experience were authors like Buñuel, Alan Resnais, Tarkovsky or Ingmar Bergman.

Even if cinema is the most appropriate art form to represent dreams, it is still difficult to
reproduce them if we have to be (accurate) faithful with the latest scientific discoveries
that have been made in the dream field, and to recreate the physiological and
psychological responses that the dreamer experiences while dreaming.

Many film dreams provide the same exact aesthetic experience that we have when
reading a book that conveys a dream or some oneiric experience. This means that the
recreation of dreams in the cinema is mostly achieved from a thematic point of view.

6
Riboon of dreams.
7
Films and dreams
The identification of a certain sequence (or a complete film) as a dream is signalized by
narrative or structural means and so the cinematic distinction between oneiric and
realistic sequences is not emphasized 8 . For example, the audience can identify a
sequence as a dream if it has been introduced by some sort of narrative commentary (a
dissolution, a close up to the face of an sleeping man, a visual distortion, a symbolic use
of sound…) or by the inclusion of elements that interfere with our ideas of reality
(characters who we know that are dead talking in the screen), but then the essence of the
dream is not conveyed by cinematic means.

The Surrealist representation of the dream world has been criticized for this same
reason. The surrealist filmmakers rely too much in the use of symbols for the portrayal
of dreams. As Bazin stated, dream imagery and dream symbols don’t create “dreamlike
expressions”; they just enhance the metaphorical meaning of the film and increase the
poetic impact of the photographed object9.
The surrealists believed that dreams were contrary to reality, and dedicate their efforts
to make things strange creating “unreal” symbols. The imagery is presented in non-
ambiguous way, and this means that the symbols could be easily deciphered if the
spectator was provided with the adequate keys for it. This lack of ambiguity blocks the
dreaming capacity of the spectator.
The surrealists, who wanted to liberate themselves from the “slavery of reason”, ended
up creating irrationality by means of the same reason that they were trying to confront.
The employment of symbols to create a dream language made the surrealist dream
become a “rational construction” 10 . Nevertheless, his doesn’t mean that they didn’t
contribute to the improvement of the representation of dreams. Is widely known that
films like Un chien andalou were a great advance in the aim of getting closer to the
logic of dreams.

The philosopher Thorsten Botz- Bornstein also criticizes the expressionist depiction of
dreams. The expressionist way of representing dreams is based in stylistic devices such
us strange angles, contrasts of lights and shadows, and photographic distortion. These
devices seem adequate for the reproduction of subjective views of reality, but could

8
Films and dreams. Bergman.
9
Films and dreams. Bergman.
10
only be appropriate for portraying dreams if they were an entirely subjective
phenomenon; and according to Botz- Bornstein, dreams employ the both: objective and
subjective elements11.

So instead of trying to recreate dreams externally through symbolism or distortion, or

remaining the thematic or literary level, the essence of the dream- world should be
conveyed by cinematic representation (the way the images and objects are presented in
the screen) 12 . Some film directors like Buñuel, Dziga Vertov or Tarkovsky have
employed cinematic devices to generate an oneiric impact on their films, even when
their scenes or sequences weren’t directly related to the dreams or subjective states in
plot terms13.

For understanding how these cinematic devices work is necessary to talk about the
similarities and differences between the experiences of dreaming and film viewing.
The dreaming state is characterized by the block of the motor system, and it has been
largely discussed that this same phenomenon happen to the film viewer, so that the film
is experienced with a high intensity in his mind14. But in the first case the abreaction to
stimulation is impossible because of the motor block 15 , and in the case of the film
viewing the abreaction is possible because the motor block in this second case is just
voluntary. Apart from that, in contrast with the experience of film viewing, while
dreaming, the dreamer isn’t exposed to a strong hearing and sight stimulation.

Continuing with the similarities, both dreaming and film viewing take place in the
darkness, while the dreamer and the spectator lay down in comfortable seats. After the
film is over and the light evaporates the darkness, is difficult for the spectator to
remember specific details of the film, and after awaking is almost impossible for the
dreamer to retain the dream in his or her memory or even to verbalize it.

Besides, dreams and films are essentially visual, being the images their basic and more
important element. But contrarily to the logic of the dreams, where the action just

11
Films and dreams. Thorston.
12
Films and dreams
13
Films and dreams. Bergman.
14
Grodal.
15
Grodal.
moves forward, films can move forward and backwards, or even remain frozen in a
certain image.

Dreams are characterized for the “delusional acceptance of the dreams as real”16, and
even if in the case of films that acceptance is usually weaker, we still watch them as real
during the screening supported by the “ontological authenticity of the motion picture
image”17.

But the most important similarity, because is the one the makes the cinema an unique
medium for the representation of dreams, is its capacity to activate the sensory motor
centers in the viewer in a similar way to the stimulation that occurs while dreaming18.
Following Hobson’s theory19, dreams are physiological phenomena, and this means that
“sudden scene shifts are triggered by turns of stimuli in the giant cells of the sleeping
brain”. In accordance to that, the images that we perceive during film viewing
“stimulate the viewer’s neural centers independently of the film plot and its meaning”.
And while the movement of the dreamer across the space is one of the most powerful
feelings in dreaming, “the strongest sensory- motor activation of the viewer occurs in
sequences executed by the camera’s gliding, craning, elevating and descending”, or
which is the same: penetrating through space.

This is the reason why the portrayal of dreams employing cinematic devices becomes
really important; only this way it’s possible for the viewer to relate to the film both
psychologically and physically. The following techniques are the ones that must be
followed for increasing the oneiric impact of the film in the viewer: camera movement
trough space (deep focus); illogical combinations of objects, characters, settings (bizarre
imagery); dynamic montage; dissolution of special and temporal continuity; ontological
authenticity of motion picture photography; etc.

DREAMS IN DANISH CINEMA

16
Films and dreams. bERGMan.
17
Films and dreams. Bergman.
18
Films and dreams.
19
Films and dreams
After this introductory consideration, it seems appropriate to give a brief summary of
the representation of dreams in Danish cinema, mentioning some films of different
periods that included and developed dream sequences.

August Blom’s Atlantis was the first Autorenfilm (first feature film) of the Nordisk
Films Kompagni. Based on the novel of Gerahard Hauptmann (that some people
considered “prophetical”), the film was released in 1913, one year after the sinking of
the Titanic, and can be acknowledged as one of the first wrecks (both literally and
metaphorically) of the world’s silent cinema. It is possible to talk about a metaphorical
wreck in this case, because it has been claimed that even if the movie was profitable, it
“led to the artistic and financial crisis of Nordisk Film and marked the beginning of the
end of the golden years of the Danish silent cinema”. In this film, while the ship begins
to sink, the spectator rests in the dreams of one of the passengers, while he walks
triumphantly with a friend through the sunken landscape of the mythic Atlantis. The
dream is introduced by showing Dr. von Kammacher going to sleep and a caption that
announces that he is walking with his friend Dr. Schmidt through Atlantis. A
superimposition of the sleeping doctor is left in the right corner of the screen during the
dream, in order to signalize the images belong to the dream imagery and avoid possible
confusions in the spectators20.

In 1956, Erik Balling’s film Kispus (Hide and Seek), the first purely Danish film in
color, shows another theatrically decorated dream sequence. Designed to make the most
of the innovative use of color, the film develops a plot centered in the world of parties,
design and stylish colorful dresses. A designer discovers the protagonist while she tries
on different dresses without permission. The designer impressed by her graceful
appearance wants her to model for him through the night. Without sleeping, the young
protagonist goes to work next morning and falls sleep. The spectator is introduced in the
visually unreal world of dreams, where the characters are dressed with strange costumes
and sing, surrounded by theatrical scenery, where even the cartoon looking two
dimension images are accepted.

20
Atlantis : movie // Historical dictionary of Scandinavian cinema
Another interesting depiction of a dream can be found in Tomas Vinterberg’s Festen.
Being the first film that followed the Dogma 95’s “Vow of Chastity”, it has been
criticized for the belief that the inclusion of the dream sequence was going against the
rule that restricts the action to the “here and now”. But it can be successfully argued that
the dream is not confronting this principle because it is actually taking place in the here
and the now of the action that is being represented (is not a flashback). The dreamy
atmosphere is created by the flame of the lighter illuminating her face, without the need
of the prohibited artificial lightning.

To conclude this brief summary is necessary to mention the use of dreams in the cinema
of the other founder of Dogma 95. In many Lars Von Trier’s movies the integral reality
that is presented also includes the evanescent reality of dreams.
His first feature film The Element of Crime is situated “on the edge between hypnosis,
dream and reality” 21 . Apart from that, his controversial Antichrist has been widely
considered a discomforting nightmare (and more specifically the director’s nightmare;
supported by the well known depression that the filmmaker was undergoing at that
moment) that shows the world that we acknowledge as real dialoguing with an irrational
and horrifying reality of dreams, where the apparently threatening nature hides the real
source of the evil: the She.
Finally, in Lars Von Trier’s approach to the musical genre Dancer in the dark, the
protagonist shifts continually into the dream world (the dream sequences in this film
could be better be considered “daydreams”) to scape from the unbearable reality. These
dreams appear to the viewer as a musical universe characterized by saturated colors.

CARL THEODOR DREYER’S VAMPYR

Now that we have some basic references about the relationship between cinema and
dreams, and that we are already centered in the universe of Danish cinema, we can
proceed to study how Carl Theodor Dreyer developed the representation of dreams in
film through the innovative use of cinematic devices.

21
Historical dictionary of Scandinavian cinema.
After having a great success with Jeanne d’Arc, Carl Theodor Dreyer founded his own
production company financed by the Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg and focused in the
production of his visually and thematically most subversive and unusual film: Vampyr.
It has been described as a “glimpse into a twisted, mystical, confused world of evil and
corruption that is bizarre in the fullest sense, both in content and execution”. From the
surface, this film seemed a negation of all the principles that had characterized Dreyer’s
cinema until that moment. Even himself accepts that he had just made Jeanne d’Arc and
that he wanted to do “the exactly opposite”, and “ break a new path for film”
To begin with, the attraction of the author for the world of the dark fantasy wasn’t really
noticeable in his other films, maybe yes in terms of the stories he choose, but not int the
point of view that he adopted for dealing with them. When examining this films closer
we can see that they are someway related to the supernatural: Jeanne d’Arc claimed that
the saints spoke to her, witches are present in Day of Wrath and in Ordet the audience
witness of a miracle. But as it has been mentioned before, it is also true that in all these
films he was mostly interested in the human component, and not in the mystic aspects
of the plot, which are secondary. Even if we give that for granted, we can still perceive
an appeal for the occult in his oeuvre. As it has been noted in his biography, he read her
grandmother’s occult books when he was a kid (that were forbidden for him) and
probably he became intrigued by them22.

Apart from that, instead of a construction of a solid, deep and alive world, we find a
world characterized for its “undead” nature that lacks the both: life and dead.
Vampyr lead the spectator into a universe were the anxiety and dread prevail, and were
his habitual “celebration of love” is missing. Furthermore, some critics considered that
even one of his most sacred principles, the search of authenticity, was replaced by the
depiction of the universe of the dreamlike and the fantastic.

Anyway, the denial of that last principle can be easily challenged arguing that Dreyer
wasn’t renouncing to the authenticity by representing the fantastic; he was trying to
portray authentically an integral reality that fuses together the inner and the outer world
of the human beings. And for achieving that authenticity in the representation of the
dream world, he would open new ways for the portrayal of dreams in cinema by

22
My only great passion. Carl Theodor.
effectively employing cinematic devices that stimulate the physiological stimulation of
the viewers, bringing them closer to the dream experience.
Due to this fact, even if the plot is really improbable, the director has achieved “an aura
of unreal, dreamlike evil (…) ---[that] the improbability of the plot is forgotten in the
mastery of the treatment”.
We could talk in this case about a “realistic approach to the fantastic”23. Instead of using
studio settings he decided to shoot on location, under the idea that for an audience so
used to the films realized in studios it would look more unusual and strange. Apart from
that, he was so obsessed with the realistic details that he even filled a house with
cobwebs by releasing many spiders in the inside.

Aside from that, many other elements present in Vampyr link this cinematic jewel to the
rest of his oeuvre. We can clearly see the influence of the German Expressionism and of
the surrealism in the imagery and lighting. This influence is especially present in his use
of contrasts between lights and shadows, even if in this case the shadows stand out
because they are not casted by objects and because they have a stunning independent
existence 24 . Anyway, it must be stated that although this influences are undeniable,
Vampyr’s look is still extremely unique and personal.

The expressionist influence is also present in the depiction of the faces that reflect the
evil or the innocence of the soul. In this film the importance of the faces is not as
essential as in Jeanne d’Arc and they can’t match the idea of “nude landscapes shining
with inner light”. The main characters face is even characterized by his lack of
expression that can be justified by his non- actor nature and by the fact that he wasn’t
even chosen by Dreyer: he pay for the film with the only condition of acting on it. But
the great master of cinema even managed to make use of that absence of emotion in one
of the greatest scenes of the film: the journey of the main character’s corpse to the
grave.
So we can still consider that the facial expressions are really important in the movie.
Contrarily to what happens in other horror films, in Vampyr the violent incidences take
place off screen, and due to that, the faces of the witnesses have to act as messengers of
what takes place out from the view of the spectators.

23
Casper Tybjerg
24
Casper T.
The importance of the face as a reflection of the human soul is also present in one of the
most beautifully disturbing scenes of the film. After the encounter with the vampire in
the garden, Léone has been brought to her bed again. When the housemaid tries to heal
her neck’s wound Léone slowly awakes with a lyrical expression in her face: staring
vacantly into an uncertain point in the space, her mouth slightly opened, in a semi
conscious state. Her face goes darkening shot by shot, showing the spectator her inner
desolation. She covers her face and cries desperately. Gradually, her expression goes
turning into a disturbing smile, as she stares towards the ceiling. The disquieting smile
goes transforming her expression into a personification of the dementia. Still smiling
she turns her head in her sisters and the spectator’s direction, and while she is staring at
us, her face darkens25.

Previously, we have already talked about “the realistic approach to the fantastic”, but in
this case, it seems more appropriate to define it as a “human approach to the fantastic”;
a so human way of portraying the vampire state. Dreyer couldn’t feel satisfied by
creating a vampire based in fake teeth and wardrobe scenery; the vampire nature had to
be constructed through acting skills, dealing with the naked landscape of the face26.

Even if Dreyer choose to incorporate sound in this film, the silence prevails beneath the
dialogue, as a reflection of the directors will to undress the images of all the accessory
elements that weren’t essential to show the inner imprescindible meaning that remains
under the artistic forms.

We also notice that instead of relying in darkness for creating the horror landscape,
Dreyer uses white for creating uneasiness in the viewer27. As in films like Jeanne D’
Arc, Day of Wrath or Gertrud, the director seems fascinated by “the simplicity of black
against white”. Apart from that and as I am going to explain later, here the whiteness
prove to be a really effective tool for the depiction of the dreamy atmosphere.

25
Libro de la filmoteca.
26
Libro de la filmo.
27
My only passion
Another last characteristic that shows this film as a continuation of Jeanne D’Arc, is the
intensification of the fracture of the sense of “physical continuum” that binds the
features and events that the spectator see to create “a moral space”28.

VAMPYR AS A DREAM

As we have stated before, even if Dreyer had already dealt with topics related to the
supernatural in other films, in Vampyr he approaches the fantastic in a more explicit and
direct way. The boundaries between the awaken state and dream universe become weak,
and the viewers enter a world dominated by the logic of dreams, but where there are not
unambiguous clues that allow us to be certain about the dream nature of the images that
appear on the screen.

With Vampyr I wanted to create a daydream on film, and I wanted to show that the
sinister lies not only in the things around us but in our subconscious. If we are, trough
one occurrence or another, brought to a state of great tension, there are no limits to
where fantasy can lead us or what strange meanings we can ascribe to the real things
towards us29. Imagine that we are sitting in an ordinary room. Suddenly we are told that
there is a corpse behind the door. In an instant the room we are sitting in is completely
altered; ev- erything in it has taken on another look; the light, the atmo- sphere have
changed, though they are physically the same. This is because we have changed, and the
objects are as we conceive them. That is the effect I want to get in my film.

With this statement Dreyer himself opens the door for the interpretation of Vampyr as a
dream, and this has several implications. First, he states that the fantasy of his film is
created through our imagination, and this would be really coherent with the realistic
approach to fantasy that we have defended before. If this were the case, both fantasy
and the supernatural would have a certain source, and as we all have already
experienced the incredible creative power of our imagination it seems credible to think
that the supernatural elements of Vampyr come from the subconscious. At the same
time, by these means, Dreyer could be defending that the images that we create with our
28
My only passion.
29
My only passion
subconscious when we are dreaming or daydreaming, should be considered part of the
integral reality 30 ; because for comprehending the reality in all its complexity is
imprescindible to understand that inside of it both the conscious and unconscious
dimensions of the human beings must be included.

But whose imagination, dream or subconscious are we entering in Vampyr? Not just the
statements of the director about his intentions, but also the prologue of the film give the
viewer the answer to that question.

The film was shot in three different languages at the same time31: German, English and
Danish. Depending on the version that we are working with the title of the film changes.
Even if this information doesn’t seem relevant to the topic that we are discussing, this
perception changes when we realize that the use of these different titles slightly modify
the meaning of the film. One of the versions receives the name of The strange
adventure of David Grey and in the first intertitles that appear on the screen the main
characters is described as one of those: “beings whose very life seem bound by invisible
chains to the supernatural. They crave solitude. To be alone and dream- their
imagination is so developed that their vision reach beyond that of most men”. This title
and prologue could lead the viewer to not consider the supernatural as part of the main
characters imagination. We are just being witnesses of his adventures, and even if it is
mentioned that he has a tendency to dream and imagine, in this case it just seems that
thanks to that he has developed a special sensibility for perceiving the supernatural, and
therefore the fantastic elements don’t have to be creations of his mind necessarily.

On the contrary, the title of a German version is The dream of Allan Grey and the
protagonist is described as “an aimless dreamer whose studies in devil worship and
vampire terror have dimmed for him the boundary between the real and the unreal” 32.
This title referrers directly to the film giving for granted its dream nature, and even if it
can has several interpretations, we could defend that the boundary between the real and
the unreal has just been dimmed specifically for him, and thanks to that we as viewers
can accede the world of the supernatural trough his dream.
30
From this point on we are going to understand for “Integral reality”, that reality that
comprehend the complexity of the concious and the unconcious.
31
Libro de la filmoteca- Drayer
32
Libro de la filmoteca. Debo mirar disitntos títulos y descripciones para asegurarme.
For being able to pursue an all-embracing research of the dream creating devices used
in Vampyr we will depart from the consideration of the film as Grey’s33 dream.
We are going to defend that the director introduces the spectator in the dream universe
by two different paths that work together at the same time to transform the film into a
real dream for the viewer’s eyes.

On the one side, we find a thematic representation of dreams. Apart from the
introductory prologue that we have already cited, there are other direct references to
sleeping and dreams through the movie.

To start with, it is noticeable that in his approach to the supernatural, Dreyer mixes
myth and dreams. On the one side he introduces us in the vampire mythology that
frightens the human beings from the ancient times, fused together with the universe of
dreams. Jung defended that the myths were the “dreams of the cultures”, and so
following that idea we could defend that when including the world of the myth in
Vampyr we still are in the ambit of dream. Apart from the obvious vampire mythology
that appears in the film, we can also track other subtler references to the world of myth.
For example, the scythe man that appears in the beginning of the film could be
considered the clear Caronte of Vampyr’s universe, about to take the ferry to cross the
Estigia lake; a Caronte lost in this dreamy world were his duty of carrying the death to
the other side seems absurd, because the reality of the death (or the undead) and the
living are already mixed34.

In the very beginning of the the film (or dream), Grey, having recently arrived to
Courtempierre and already feeling that “the unveliable had taken possession of him”35
lies in bed trying to rest, but as the intertitles state, the fear and the horror persist in his
sleep. Here we encounter the first dream inside the dream: if the entire movie is Grey’s
dream, here we see him going to sleep inside his own dream. It can also be argued that
the introductory images weren’t part of his dream, and that is now when the dream

33
No nombro David/ Allan por al discrepancia que existe entre las distintas versiones.
34
Blog.
35
Intertitle
really begins. But as it will be defended later, the sequences that are situated before this
scene have already an unequivocal dreamy quality.

Grey opens his eyes and sees how the locked door opens mysteriously. An unknown
man enters the room while the protagonist stares at him astonished. Later the man gives
Grey a package, where it is written that it should opened after his dead. The ambiguous
way in which Dreyer constructs the film doesn’t make clear whether the man is a
dream, a ghost, an apparition or part of reality. The package that the man gives to Gray
could be a proof of the materiality of the visitor, because later we will see that Grey has
the package and that he make use of it; but as we are departing from the consideration
of the film itself as Grey’s dream, it wouldn’t be illogical to have the package delivered
by a character who belongs to a dream or by a ghost. Both the package and the man are
part of the integral reality that we were talking about before.

Later in the film, already in the chateu where the mysterious man of the apparition lives,
we see him looking after his daughters, who appear sleeping in their own beds. One of
them is resting peacefully, but the other sister seems to be tormented by strange bloody
dreams. She is the victim of the vampire, and in another scene she will scape to
encounter the creature in a kind of a sleepwalking trance, somewhere between the
dream and the awaken state.

We have two further examples of dreams inside the main dream. The first one occurs
after the doctor has taken blood out from Gray. The protagonist falls into a brief sleep
where he sees a skeleton’s head and a skeleton’s hand holding a bottle of poison. Is a
premonitory dream, because even if the skeleton belongs to this dream inside the dream,
on the contrary the poison is material and seems to belong to the ambit of the main
dream, putting Léone in danger of poisoning herself with it36.

The second of Gray’s dream it can be admired as the “most audacious concept in film
history”, for successfully representing Gray’s dream, where he is shown lying in his
coffin as he is borne into his own grave. David Rudkin37 says that “every time [he]
comes to this sequence, [he] begins to feel a deep and shaking sorrow”. This dream

36
Libro de la filmoteca.
37
Libro de la filmo
sequence begins with Gray sitting on a bench. Suddenly, his physical body seems to
stay on the bench while a “sleeping self”, a transparent (it is possible to see through
him) version of himself is disjointed from his material body. His dream self walks
inside a room where a coffin is placed. Filled with curiosity he removes the sheet that
covers the coffin and finds his own corpse in the inside. The shock that the appearance
of a death self causes is increased by the fact that in this case the death self seems more
real that the evanescent dream self38.
Shortly after, Grey sees through the window of a door the captive Gisele on the other
side, her hands tied. He tries to open the door to save he, but his evanescent hands aren’t
able to open it.
As the doctor appears on scene, the dreaming Gray hides beneath a trapdoor, and here is
when the magic happens.
We observe the kaporal covering the coffin with the lid, and suddenly we find ourselves
looking at the scene from within the coffin. Gray’s dream self is now united with the
dead self and with the audience’s sight (our sight). By this technique, the sequence is
not anymore Grey’s journey to the grave, but our own journey to the grave. And at the
same time, we still see Grey’s corpse looking up from within the coffin. We could
interpret that that perspective is provided by the kaporal’s point of view, but when we
perceive through the corpse’s eyes, we notice that the kaporal doesn’t seem to see what
is inside the coffin. On the contrary, later on, when the vampire looks down at the coffin
we can feel that she is able to see Gray, as if the fact of being dead would allow her to
see through the wood. And in the opposite case, when we are placed in Grey’s point of
view, we can see the world through a kind of window above us that allow the viewer to
see the trees, the sky and the church as we are approaching to the grave from this
subjective point of view.
As we have stated before, in this sequence is specially enriching to be aware of the way
in which the director managed to make use of the absence of emotion and the “acting
emptiness”39 of the main character that without the ability of Dreyer would have been
one of the weaker aspects of the film.

After this review of the thematic appearances of dreams in the film, we are going to
focus in how the dreamworld is created cinematically and in the devices that Dreyer

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uses for this purpose. This analysis is interfered by the principle difficulty that the film
critics have suffered at the time of studying this film: due to the dubious state of prints
of Vampyr, is difficult to distinguish between the techniques Dreyer used consciously
for creating a dreamy atmosphere and the effects that are just caused by the damages (or
missing scenes) of the prints 40 . Anyway, and even if we are going to mention this
ambiguity at the time of analyzing the scenes, whether they were created consciously or
by chance, they contribute to the construction of the dream and that is enough for
considering them relevant.

Following David Rudkin’s classification there are three different problems that help to
create the dream atmosphere: the poor sound quality, the variable quality of the acting
and the overall sense of technical inadequacy.

At the time of looking for the reasons that could lead to a poor sound quality, it must be
understood that this was Dreyer’s first sound movie and that he choose to shoot it in
three different languages, which made all the process more difficult. But the truth is that
the imperfect sound and the sparse dialogue emphasize the dreamlike character of the
film: the “fragmentary conversation of characters, delivered in a expressionless fashion,
heighten the dream effect”41 and “the trance- like images could stand on their own as a
visual poem in which the anchor seem to take place on the cusp of dreams and
reality”42.

This first problem could also be associated to the lack of acting skills of the actors. We
have already explained how Dreyer made use of the absence of emotion of the
protagonist for creating a glorious sequence. Because of his search of authenticity
Dreyer preferred to use non- actors in his films, and probably the expressionless
interactions are a consequence of the director’s principles. Dreyer decided to shot
around Gisele, avoiding close facial expressions and the use of her voice. So following
this idea, we can also infer that the poor acting skills could also have provoked the
decrease of the dialogues between the characters. But surprisingly, these apparent
imperfections contribute to the dreamlike style of the film.

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When trying to convey the technical inadequacies of the film, we are also going to
mention other elements that work along with the disjunctions to emphasize the eerie
aesthetics of Vampyr. To properly face this purpose is necessary to begin specifying
how improbable is to associate these inadequacies with Dreyer’s lack of ability. Even if
it seems fair to maintain the benefit of the doubt, the truth is that this absence of
technical knowledge is inexplicable for a genius like Dreyer; and as Rudkin has
suggested a “student of film school would have been more accurate”. So with this in
mind, we have to follow the hypothesis of the conscious desire to create an unclear
reality or follow the logic of dreams.

The dysfunctional grammar is highly noticeable from the begging of the film. We can
say that in this film Dreyer “shrugs off conventional linear narrative and takes an
experimental approach”. In some cases, the camera movements tend to bind the features
we see creating a more coherent space, but shortly after, the time and space become
fragmented again. The disjunction of time and space could be aimed to difference the
moments where the world of the supernatural is taking possession of the screen and
when it’s power upon reality is weaker. For example, when Gray arrives to the Chateu
and the humans are still governing that environment, the “flowing camera is enfolding
and integrating each with those in their care”43, but after the father is shot by a shadow
that binding camera movement that connect people together starts to fracture and
disintegrate.

The discontinuity of time and space, and the difficulty to build special coherence arises
from the fact that every succeeding image frustrates our expectatives. It is so difficult to
understand the coherence of the space and the narrative; and at the time of trying to
create sense, the feeling experimented by the viewer is so similar to the sensation that
we undergo while dreaming44. There are no establishing shots; the camera alternates
randomly from Grays subjective view to objective points of view, and the space and
angles are disjointed from shot to shot and within the shot itself.

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For example, just in the first sequence of Vampyr the audience can feel that it’s entering
a world that conveys a dreamy reality because of the technical dysfunction that affect
the shots. Gray appears from the left side of the screen and we never see his feet as if he
was “suspended between the earth and the sky”. The distance is also subverted, and
when looking to the scythe man from Gray’s gaze we see him closer and closer, as if he
was coming towards us, when following a coherent space construction he should be
situated further (he was taking a ferry that was supposed to take him away from the
camera, not towards the camera). Apart from that, the camera pans in the direction of
Gray (and in different scenes in the direction of different characters) and in the direction
of what he is looking at, so that the viewer believes that the camera is adopting his point
of view, but suddenly, instead of seeing what he sees the image flies to a different space
that can’t be seen through Gray’s eyes. This arbitrary alternation between the subjective
and the objective point of view creates a feeling of displacement in the viewer. That
displacement is also caused by scenes where for example the characters appear upstairs
without going up, or when they don’t look in the correct angle to see the elements that
appear in the following shot.

To finish with the structure means that help to create an eerie atmosphere, its important
to mention the mastery of Dreyer to pursue a dynamic montage 45. This is especially
evident in the sequence in which the vampire is killed or in Gray’s journey to his own
grave. In the first one the killing of the vampire is shown counterpointed with images of
the sky that goes getting darker and darker, and in the second one the expressionless
face Gray’s corpse is contrasted with the view that he has from inside the coffin (the
church, the trees…).

It is also important to mention other elements that help in the construction of the dream,
like the visuals, the light and the disembodiment.

The whole dream of Allan Gray happens trough the night, but we find a pallid daylight
enveloping the film. It seems contradictory to represent the night accompanied by the
whiteness of daylight, but Dreyer has his own argument to defend his choice:

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 The night is only black in comparison with the daytime; in the night, the relation
between light and shadow is roughly the same as during the day, and when the eye has
become used to the darkness, the night is indistinct in a muted watery way.

And independently of whether we accept or not this argument as valid, this unusual
representation of night gives the viewer a sense of unreality that helps in the creation of
a dream effect. In addition to this, the power of the light in the recreation of the eerie
visuals doesn’t stop here. Because of the night being shown covered by daylight, the
artificial lights that we witness throughout the film don’t cast light. Therefore, the
candles and the lamps acquire an unreal nature when creating dark shadows without
providing light. In the first sequence of the film, we already feel that the use of light is
going to be focused in the underlining of the irrational: Gray knocks a lighted window
for getting an answer from the inside and reversing our expectations the light turned off
(usually the lights turn on when we knock the window or the door of a house) 46. Also
the function of the light can be considered reversed, because instead of illuminating, it
creates problems to visualize the images of the screen. This is especially remarkable in
the garden scenes, when Léone has run to the encounter with the vampire. The light is
reflected into the camera and the images appear blurry, foggy and obscure, denying our
perceptibility. This effect was created by filming in predawn hours 47 and shooting
through a layer of tulle placed over the lens48. As Rudkin says, as well as the vampire is
denied of what she most needs (blood), the viewer is also denied of visibility.

In the same exact way that happens with the construction of the space and the coherent
film grammar, the denial of visibility makes the impression of being underlined in those
moments where the world of the supernatural takes possession of the screen. While we
see the figures of Gray and Gisele tenuous and illusory while they stay in the side of the
river that is related to the universe of the undead, once they cross the water they become
substantial again.

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This substantiality links the function of light with the question of the disembodiment,
which is another essential element in the creation of the dreamlike atmosphere. Through
the movie we are witness of disembodied figures moving autonomously without the
need of their material bodies. One of the most stunning and beautifully composed
scenes in this sense is the one that welcomes us to the world of the unreal through the
landscape of the wicked disused factory, where the shadows live independently from
their owner’s bodies.
In a discrete homage to the cinema’s ancestor, the shadow play, Dreyer experiments
with the fascination that shadow and light create when projected in the whiteness of the
wall. And the charmed spectator, captivated by the magic of the black against white,
realizes that that’s mainly what cinema is about: a romance between light and shadows.
The world of shadows is entered by following the reflection of a peg legged figure, that
moves on the screen independently from the human being that casts the reflection. Then
we spot the shadow of a gravedigger who is unmaking a grave “in preparation for the
resurrection of the undead”49. We follow the peg legged shadow, which now is holding
the shadow of a rifle, upstairs; and there we find the real peg legged man sitting on a
bench, with his identically shaped shadow sitting next to him.
Later on, we observe shadows dancing to the music of a “little waltz [that] goes
darkening to a valse macabre” 50 and the “shadows of cartwheels (…) leaping and
spinning in a demonic abandon of themselves.
And as we enter de world of the shadows, they also can interfere in the live of the
living, as the protagonist finds out when the owner of the Chateu is shoot by a shadow
and dies.

Apart from the visual disembodiment caused for the light, other two literal examples of
disembodiment occur provoked by Gray’s last dream. When Gray is shown falling
asleep in the bench, a transparent insubstantial self leaves his material body literally to
follow the path of his dream. This scene unavoidably reminds us of that previous image
in the disused factory where the man with a rifle is sitting down in a bench with his own
shadow placed sitting besides him.
Inside this same dream, we find the most striking example of disembodiment, but also
of re-embodiment: the already disembodied dream-self of Gray watches his own corpse

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that lies inside a coffin. The re-embodiment takes place when the dream-self suddenly
becomes united with his death self and also with the viewers sight51.

It is also appropriate to mention the sensation of disembodiment caused by “a strange

sibylline conversation, almost poetic in its confusion of cross purposes” between Gray
and the doctor. The doctor asks Gray if he has heard something, and when he answers
that he has heard kids screaming and dogs barking, the doctor just replies, “there are not
children or dogs here”: we have the barking but with have no dogs; we have the yelling
but no kids. The incoherent conversation enhances the dreamlike quality of the images
and contributes to the overall dream logic.
In recent times, thanks to the restoration of some film negatives of Vampyr, it has been
discovered that the movie as we know it is missing one shot passage where wild dogs
obeying to the orders of the vampire follow and catch a young shepherd boy52. This
explanation seems to suppress the dreamy appealing of the dialogue, but the truth is that
Dreyer himself could have chosen to don’t include those images because he preferred
the ambiguous environment created by the uncertainty.

Also related to the appearance of irrational elements, the unmotivated focus on strange
details must be highlighted in the analysis of the filM: a locked door is opened from the
outside; we stare at a blind old man going down the stairs, and we never see him again
later; a dying man gives a locker to Gray, but this detail has nothing to do with
Vampyr’s plot53. Even if these elements could also be related to other missing scenes,
but their usefulness for emphasizing the dream quality of the film is undeniable.

To finish with, and related to the importance of light discussed before, is important to
remark the significance of the “whiteness” in the film. Shortly after Dreyer’s dead,
Francoise Truffaut wrote and article discussing the prevalent use of white in the
director’s ouvre, mentioning among other films elements the whiteness of the mill
sequence in Vampyr.

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The night in this film is not just an illuminated night, but it is also a night of “white
discomfort and uneasiness” 54 . The white color acquires the feelings that are usually
associated to the darkness, and the light doesn’t provide a sense of safety.
As we notice in the walls of the factory where the shadows perform their dances, many
of the film’s backgrounds are totally white; Rudkin55 underlines that the color of the
drained victims of vampires are also white; and the doctor of Vampyr dies buried in an
avalanche of white flour. In Rudkin’s words: “the flour cascading whiteness also
visually suffocates” and “the darkness of death here is deadly white”.

CONCLUSION

In the introduction of this essay we have gone through a summary of how the dreams
have been represented across the history of cinema, and then we have criticized some
approaches to the portrayal of dreams following the ideas of some theorists and
philosophers. We have talked about the undeniable similarities between cinema and
dreams, and how those similarities make the cinema the most suitable art for
representing dreams.

The discoveries in the scientific understanding of dreams lead to more complex and
proximate portrayal of dreams, surpassing the merely thematic or symbolist approaches.
But even if we agree on the importance of the advance in the scientific field, it is also
true that is the intuition of filmmakers like Dreyer what has allowed the cinema to find
its own path and cinematic devices for the depiction of dreams.
These directors have pursued this goal following their own conceptions of reality and
dream, and if these ideas changed through time, the way for representing the dreams is
also modified. Indeed, we can notice that the illustration of dreams change
significatively within different films of a certain filmmaker. For example, in his film
Persona Bergman abandons the Freudian and narrative depiction of dreams that we find
in the first dream sequence of Wild Strawberries to be more faithful to the dream logic.

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In addition to that, we need to have in mind that aside from the scientific and
philosophical theories that influence the filmmaker’s approaches to dreams, what
essentially justifies the different ways of creating them is the filmmaker’s subjectivity,
which impregnates his own representations.
When representing dreams, we are confronted with the same paradox that we face when
trying to apprehend reality.

“Even when photographers [or filmmakers] are most concerned with mirroring
reality, they are still haunted by tacit imperatives of taste and conscience. [...]
Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not
just interpret it, photographs [and films] are as much an interpretation of the
world as paintings and drawing are.

The reality of the dream, and the dream as we remember it are not the same thing; and
furthermore, the reality of the dream and the dream as we represent it are even further
between each other. The first source for the depiction of dreams is the fragmentary
memories of dreams that remain in the filmmakers mind, because the real dreams
disappear as soon as our rational mind awakes when opening our eyes.
The decision of choosing between portraying the dreams as we experience them while
sleeping and as we remember them when we wake up provoke essential differences in
their representation: representations that are composed of clear or blurry images;
respecting the time and spatial coherence or avoiding them; creating or not the links
between the sequences that our rational mind constructs once we are awake…
Therefore, the use of elements like distortions or filters to difficult visibility as Dreyer
does, can be considered a good method for constructing dreams as we remember them,
not as their really reproduce in our minds.

Nevertheless, this consideration don’t lessen the admiration that Dreyer deserve for
perfecting the ways in which dreams are represented, and the cinematic depiction of
dreams that other filmmakers have achieved nowadays owes much to the Danish
master. The proficient portrayal of dreams that we find throughout the films of a genius
like Bergman owe much to Dreyer’s influence; and therefore, this same influence
arrives to other geniuses of the cinema and dreams like Tarkovsky, aroused by their
fascination with Bergman.