MovieChat Forums > Vampyr (1934) Discussion > Criterion edition: NOT the full staking ...

Criterion edition: NOT the full staking scene


Lord only knows why this wasn't done by Criterion, but the scene of the staking of the vampire woman is NOT fully restored! The bonus feature "Rise of The Vampire", detailing the making of the film, shows the complete staking scene and explains the German censors insisted the scene be shortened....in the film itself, the old man thrusts the iron spike downwards and it goes to the clouds overhead, then to the old vampire woman turning into a skeleton....but in the feature documentary, the scene continues after the clouds shot with footage of the old man holding the spike and looking away as Allan Gray pounds down on the spike several times with a hammer, then it shows the vampire becoming a skeleton. This COMPLETE footage could have very easily been reinstated into the film by Criterion....and yet it wasn't. This was somewhat of a letdown, and disappointing that the Criterion folks didn't even bother to do so. Anyone know the reason why the complete version of this scene wasn't used for the DVD release?

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Sadly its the same on the UK DVD. It seems the German restorers were being far too pendantic in restoring the German version as a prioirty, when the French is just as authentic language wise, and has the uncut versions of the vampire and doctor's deaths

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True, but that's how the German version was released, and Criterion decided not to muck up the soundtrack by trying to reconstruct the staking. I think it was an OK choice.

They do include the full footage from the French version, so I don't really see a problem.

It's interesting that the censoring of the staking has an impact on the perception of the Alan Grey character. The uncensored footage shows Grey himself staking the vampire, making him more of a hero, more of a direct participant in her demise. The censored version implies that the servant drives the stake.

And here's why I think the censored version is OK: all through the film, Grey is seen as curiously uninvolved, a cipher merely observing the events as they unfold, and we are in his shoes all the way. He's almost like a ghost in his own dream, and not showing him staking the vampire dovetails nicely into that.

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According to the booklet in the Criterion DVD, the restoration preserved the German release. The French version had the complete staking scene, but since the continuity of images and sounds is different in the two versions of the scene, it's not possible to reinsert the complete staking scene back into the film, so the complete scene from the French version was preserved in another reel of film. I'd rather have a censored staking scene than an unnecessary inconsistency in the soundtrack.

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the version shown on TCM this morning had the whole stake scene

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The streaming one on Netflix has the full staking.

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The main reason to restore a movie is to remain faithful to its author's intentions. In this case The Murnau Stiftung did a criminal act. The censored scenes had no reason to be censored in the first place. IF you don't want to restore VAMPYR DONT DO IT! But if you do decide to restore it DO NOT LEAVE OUT SCENES. duh. How stupid can they get?

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