Vampyr with live music from Not So Silent Cinema

Not So Silent Cinema returns with a screening of the 1932 Danish horror film Vampyr, accompanied by Brendan Cooney’s original score performed by a live ensemble. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1932 Vampyr is a film brimming with oddities, eccentricities and an unsettling sense of other-worldly horror. It is not so much the story itself but the manner in which the story is told that creates such a unique impression of unease and horror. The intentionally washed-out film lulls the viewer into a hazy hypnotic dream world where unattached shadows scamper and dance before our eyes, translucent souls step out of their worldly bodies, and the simplest patterns and landscapes combine to convey a sense of foreboding and mystery. It is Dreyer’s experimental license and intuitive knack for evoking unsettled emotional states that have made Vampyr an art-house classic, presaging the later work of Hitchcock and David Lynch. Not So Silent Cinema’s score is a moody, surreal mix of acoustic and electronic elements. Violin, clarinet, piano and bass combine to evoke the old-world, Eastern-European soundscape used on their score to Nosferatu. But this is combined with analog electronic textures, giving the score a dark, transcendental element.