Whether or not it was originally conceived as a silent film, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Vampyr is ideally suited to a re-score, especially one involving the combined forces of Stephen Horne and Minima: years of film accompaniment experience between them encompassing digital and analogue, piano and percussion and a mutually-impressive range of textural expression.
In his introduction, Stephen said that when he had met
Minima founder Alex Hogg at a BFI panel on silent scoring, the two were viewed as being from different ends of the spectrum but rather than
two worlds colliding these two found much common ground. For Mr Horne it's an
opportunity to share his sonic pallet with other musicians and for Minima the
chance to meld their alt-rock stylings with an unique one-man band playing piano,
flute and accordion.
A group develops its own dynamics during improvisation
and to share this process with another arch improviser must have been a
fascinating process when the third party, Dreyer’s film, is so… unpredictable. Stephen’s
piano acted not so much as a bridge between the source material and Minima’s
more modern sound but a launch pad for an exploration of musical sentiments that
are closely aligned.
Minima and their shadows? |
As a musical mix it worked very well, growing in strength
as Dreyer’s uncanny film developed its out of body, mind and spirit, narrative.
Minima’s post-rock drive pushing on as well as working with practiced piano lines all wrapped carefully
around the minimal dialogue and the gaping holes left deliberately in a story
reliant on the deus ex machina of a dream saving reality…
Vampyr is one
of the most unnervingly detached
horror films and with events contained within open to so much
interpretation, the accompaniment needs to both reflect this and emphasise the
areas of more defined meaning: a challenge for one let alone five pairs of
hands but one which Hornima passed
with flying colours.
As Guillermo del Torro says in one of the excellent
Eureka! commentaries, this is one of the few films to go back to the original
ideas of the legend, with the vampires being "hungry shadows" who
feed on the living... the young, the weak-willed and the vibrant. Throughout
there are shadows detached from their corporal owners, dashing along with no
solid partners to block the sunlight and living separate after-lives – no strolling
together along the avenue for them!
The film is very, very, loosely based on In a Glass Darkly by Sheridan Le Fanu
with the French film commentator, Maurice Drouzy, going so far as to suggest
that this was a smokescreen to hide what was a very autobiographical work for
Dreyer: a story founded in his lost childhood and adoption. Maybe... but it’s
dreamy detachments make it hard to be certain of anything other than what we see
on screen and what the director shows us is not intended to be easily “read”.
Nicolas de Gunzburg aka Julian West |
The young hero Allan Grey – played by the film’s money
man Nicolas de Gunzburg who adopted the name of Julian West for his self-funded
big break – is a student of the occult who enters the village of Courtempierre
with a fishing rod and high hopes of a more supernatural catch. He stays at a
local inn and is visited by a man pleading with him to save his daughter. The
man leaves him a book on vampires, to be opened on his death.
Dreams and reality converge and the narrative follows the
logic of dream as Grey drifts to the man’s house only to see him shot by a seemingly
insubstantial sniper. Gray
stays on as a guest of the house, as the man's eldest daughter Léone (Sybille
Schmitz) begins to turn ill and is confined to her bed by a mystery ailment.
Henriette Gérard and Jan Hieronimko |
Julian West’s acting “style” truly comes into its own in
this sequence but, for those concerned with the sense of it, all looks bleak
for the fearless vampire hunter…
Rena Mandel waiting for a hero |
The cinematography of Rudolph Maté deserves special
mention here as he is able to translate his director’s vision onto screen just
as he did on Joan. He also shot Prix de
Beauté.
To accompany such a film without being giving too much specific musical narrative takes some doing and to do it as an ensemble would appear even more challenging. Styephen, Minima and their notable shadows did so exceptionally well and I would heartily recommend the result.
Comparisons with Wolfgang Zeller’s original score are
possible if you get the Eureka! DVD – available from the BFI online shop. Maybe
future editions could include the alternative music?
The band gets set |
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