The Vampire of Penthaz
Yesterday’s film buffs will remember Carl Theodor Dreyer’s masterpiece Vampyr (1932). It was the first film acquired by the Cinémathèque suisse. This choice would shape its destiny: a creature of the dark auditoriums, our Cinémathèque fed on the nitrate of film to become a prodigious memory monster. Its history was written in the pure tradition of tales of vampires and avengers, including:
— Striking characters : Claude Emery the lodge master, Freddy Buache the game master, René Favre the treasurer, Hervé Dumont the historian, Frédéric Maire the relayman. And even Erich von Stroheim as the godfather;
— Endless twists and turns : rescuing reels, repatriating archives by lorry, storing them in a nuclear power station, setting up a lair in a casino, travelling exhibitions by train, infiltrating major festivals, setting up a rear base in Locarno and storming the legendary Salle du Capitole ;
— Lastly, as a focal point, carrying out a plan that had been cleverly devised from the outset : the dissemination of cinema, the recognition of Swiss cinema and its enshrinement in the Constitution and the Law. In Vampyr, people die in old mills. The Cinémathèque suisse has lived in old stables but, with the support of the Confederation, it will live on in a modern building, an invaluable place to preserve its exceptional collections, where, straight out of a fantasy film, the accumulated nitrate will be transformed into digital, to the delight of future cinemalovers.
Alain Berset
President of the Swiss Confederation