Del Toro elsker Dreyer

Den nye dvd-udgivelse af Dreyers ”Vampyr” i serien ‘Masters of Cinema’ har fået et kommentarspor af Guillermo Del Toro – det er noget af et scoop. Teksten her har jeg sakset fra et andet sted, kan desværre ikke huske hvor:

»A major coup for the Masters of Cinema series, given that no such track appeared on the recent US release by Criterion, who must be kicking themselves for letting this one slip by. One of the leading fantasy filmmakers working today – his films include The Devil’s Backbone and Pan’s Labyrinth, as well as two genre-advancing vampire movies, Cronos and Blade 2 – del Toro has both a passion for and an extensive knowledge of the genre he works in and has a particular love for Vampyr, which he believes is Dreyer’s masterpiece. As with all of the best del Toro commentaries this is both bristling with detail and entertaining – up front he describes his contribution as “the equivalent of inviting a fat Mexican to your house, feed him, and then you have to listen to him for mercifully a short time and then disagree, agree, insult or share any of my opinions.” Del Toro sees the film as a cinematic memento mori, and don’t worry, he provides a full history of that particular artistic genre, along with a detailed examination of the film’s style and complex substructure, particularly, as a Catholic, its religious reading. There are some lovely moments in here, particularly his assertion that Jean Cocteau was a magician but Dreyer was a prophet, and his gorgeous description of the surrealists as “beautiful savages of the id.” Wouldn’t you have loved to have said that? I was also amused (although perhaps a little deflated as I thought I’d scored a minor coup) that I was not the only one who’d spotted the similarities between the village doctor and Professor Abronsius in Roman Polanski’s The Fearless Vampire Killers and the death of a bad guy in Peter Weir’s Witness to the manner in which the doctor meets his end. The great thing about both of these commentaries is not only are they completely pause free, but there is almost no duplication of information, a rare an much appreciated thing for multiple commentary discs.«