Vampyr is even more experimental than its predecessor, since the camerawork, cutting, sound, dialogue and overall narrative seem intended to render everything not only profoundly unsettling but ultimately inexplicable. The protagonist’s experiences at a sinister château (the story is based on Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla) are as nightmarishly strange as anything in a David Lynch movie; suffused with a pallid, cloudy grey, the world of shadowy beings and deathly visions feels as eerily intangible as it is terrifying.

“It is undoubtedly one of the key works in his career, and nothing could be more quintessentially Dreyer than the introductory title which reads: ‘There exist certain predestined beings whose very lives seem bound by invisible threads to the supernatural world. They crave solitude . . . they dream . .. their imagination is so developed that their vision reaches far beyond that of most men. David Gray’s personality was thus mysterious’.” (Tom Milne)

Showing as part of a season of Carl Dreyer’s greatest films throughout April.