"Some notes on the restoration of Dreyer's Vampyr (1932)"

by Martin Koerber, 2003

[This is the first English publication of this article. It has been revised by the author in 2003 since it was first published in Danish (2000) and Italian (2001)]

Almost every time one takes a closer look at a film that is world-famous one has to face the sad fact that the film does not really exist in a form that seems acceptable. This is true also for Dreyer's Vampyr. The original elements (ie. camera negative for the image and sound negatives for the three original soundtracks in German, French, and English) are lost, as far as can be established by tracking the existing prints back to their sources. There are a number of original prints left (ie. nitrate prints of the German and French versions struck in 1932 from the original negatives), but wear and tear of several decades of use have made them incomplete and quite damaged. Worse, most of them show subtitles, very much against Dreyer's concept - he produced the film with three different original soundtracks to ensure widespread distribution without the need for words disrupting the flow of the images. The duplication that has been done in the past decades does not do justice to the extremely delicate sfumato images and to the con sordino sounds captured on the variable density track. Some of the existing prints (nitrates or safety duplicates) are "bastards", representing not one integral version, but a mix of two, or even three of the original versions, compiled in a desperate attempt to somehow "restore" the complete film out of elements that don't really belong together. Nothing seems to remain of the English version, except for the part of it that was used in the compilation of all versions that Raymond Rohauer distributed as "Vampyr", and that is still available from the organization that now runs his estate.

Dreyer shot the film in France, edited it and then brought it to Berlin, where it was to be post-synchronized in German, French, and English. Though shooting silent, he had made alternate takes of the few scenes with dialogues with the actors speaking in the three languages, so that these scenes could be lip-synched later. From what we can detect from the few surviving original prints, there was only one original image negative, which was printed, and then changed by cutting out the dialogue scenes of the first language (presumably German), splicing in the alternate takes, then printing again, and so forth until a sufficient number of prints was produced in all languages. Obviously, this archaic technique, probably due to the extreme poverty of the production company (Dreyer himself, financed by his lead actor Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg), presented problems whenever a new print had to be made. Any change in the image negative presented a risk to lose the synchronism with not only one, but three sound negatives. Probably for this reason Dreyer and his editor Paul Falkenberg tried to keep the necessary cutting to a minimum. Sometimes when the lips of actors are not visible the same take was used, and sometimes even though lip movement is quite visible the same image was used with different soundtracks. For instance this is the case in the first shot we see Allan speaking. He is sitting up in his bed asking "Wer sind Sie?" (Who are you?), lips saying it in perfect synchronism in the German track, but saying "Qui etes-vous?" in the French soundtrack. Further compromises had to be accepted because the alternate takes would most certainly be different in length, due to different behavior of the actors. Consequently there are a number of scenes in which the French version shows a few frames of black spacing, filled in to keep the shorter take in synch with the music track. Paul Falkenberg told me in the early 1980s what a nightmare it was to put this film together, not only because of the different versions, but also because at that time Tobis had no sophisticated equipment for mixing. There was a very primitive machine for mixing two optical tracks that somehow would marry music, words, and effects, but basically the editors would rather avoid using it. This explains the bizarre fact that the vampire stops the music in the dancing sequence with the German word "Ruhe!" (Silence!) in all three versions of the film. Obviously this exclamation was composed by Wolfgang Zeller as an integral part of his music, and thus was recorded on the music track, of which only the German version made it into the final choice of takes to be used.

More difficulties were at hand when more substantial changes had to be made to the film, because the German censor demanded certain scenes to be cut. The censorship card B31508 states that the film was 2.271m long when approved on May 2, 1932, after two cuts had been made: The killing of the vampire had been abridged by 15m (it was forbidden to show how David and the servant drive the pole into the body), and the suffocation of the Doctor had been abridged by 39m. Assuming that the requirements of the German censor asked for a new mix of entire scenes, as it would have been impossible to pos-cut the images without destroying the music track, one may speculate that Dreyer and Falkenberg re-arranged reel 9 of the German version, after the prints for the other languages had already been struck. This is likely because the surviving prints of the French version have the scenes that never made it to the German screens, but it is impossible to re-insert them into the German version, because the continuity of images and sounds is different in the two versions. Thus it was decided to keep the versions as found, but to preserve the French ending on a separate reel, so that the differences can be studied.

Many questions about the integrity of the surviving versions remain, however. If we take the 2.271m of the German version as a fact, how come none of the existing versions run nearly that long, and even the longest one (the safety print of the German version coming from Gosfilmofond) is only 2.004m? Comparing the metrage of the 9 reels with what is documented as the reel lengths when censored, every reel is missing footage between 20 and 30 m, adding up to the amount of almost an entire reel missing. There is dialogue between Allan and Giselle documented on the card, of which no trace can be found in any of the surviving prints, no matter what version. Why then does the film still seem complete, after one has put all scenes together to a maximum version, as we have done now? My personal opinion is that Dreyer reworked the film entirely after he had to go back to it to fulfill the censor's requirements. Most likely larger pieces from the previous editing and mix were kept, and that would explain why some of the music-changes are rather abrupt, and occur in all versions at the same point. Another possibility is that entire scenes from all reels of the finished film were chopped out after Dreyer was unhappy with the reactions of the audience in Berlin. There is an article in the Berlin trade paper Filmkurier suggesting that such an operation has taken place as early as after the first two showings on May 6, 1932.

Having said all this, and having thus pointed out the rather thin ice on which any philolological speculations about Vampyr have to be made until we find better primary or secondary sources, the actual restoration work was pretty straight forward. After we had established what the best surviving elements were, the photographically best and most complete and undamaged versions of every shot were chosen, duplicated and assembled into a new image negative. Similarly for the sound: it was transferred from the various sources we had, and was newly assembled and treated on the digital level, than recorded back to film (sound negative) after restoration in the computer. Restoration in film almost always means duplication, of course, because what one has to do is to create a new element that can become the source for new prints.

The "originals" remained unchanged and went back to the various archives which made them available. A restoration log documents where every shot of the restored version came from, as well as the algorhythms and filters used for the treatment of the sound. Thus this restoration is - at least theoretically - transparent and reversible, as any restoration should be without question.

As far as what survives on film, we have done the best one can do until further footage turns up, which seems unlikely taking into account the amount of work that the major archives have been putting in researching and restoring this film over the past decades. The philological implications of the concept of an original version of Vampyr should, however, be a subject of further study. Perhaps it is possible to establish what was edited in the first "original" version of the film, and what was then cut out. Dreyer's handwritten script of the film is kept in the Danish Film Museum, and it is quite different from the version published some years ago, which follows more the finished film as we know it. And it may well be that one could find more documents in the estates of the people involved in the production which could give answers to questions we have not even asked.

Wolfgang Zeller's handwritten score survives in the collection of Deutsches Filmmuseum in Frankfurt am Main. As far as I could gather from comparing the very sketchy manuscript with the film, the music follows the editing of the film as it presents itself now pretty closely, but some scenes are missing from the manuscript and it is here where most of the changes were made. Interestingly, the score has several options for the ending, which may have to do with the alterations made for the censor, or may not. More study has to go into that, as I said, however it will only explain what happened, and not bring any footage back.

At this point, the restoration of the German version is finished. What should follow is a resurrection of the French version with the same care. A restoration of the original Danish version (different in style and text of the intertitles) would be a possibility also, as the Danish Film Institute still possesses a nitrate print that is largely complete. A lot of the elements sorted out for the German restoration can be used again, as the music track is entirely the same (except for reel 9), and a lot of the images were - as explained above - also the same in all versions.

© 2003 Martin Koerber - Reprinted here with permission. Previously published as:

"Genopstår - Notater om Restaureringen af Dreyers VAMPYR"
in: Film (Kopenhagen), Nr. 7, Februar 2000
Reprinted in Italian in: Close-Up (Turin), Nr. 11, Januar 2001