Directed by:
Pierre Étaix
You won't stumble upon many other genre shorts with quite the pedigree this one has. The director was a multi-instrumentalist, magician, comedian (best known for his silent era / Buster Keaton-style slapstick), clown, mime, writer and actor who often worked with some of the most acclaimed European directors of the time (as well as Japanese director Nagisa Oshima). The same year he made this, he won both an Oscar and a BAFTA Award for the short Heureux anniversaire / "Happy Anniversary" (1963). That Oscar was shared with co-director / writer Jean-Claude Carrière, who also wrote this short.
Carrière would go on to even greater heights, with a highly-acclaimed career that saw him receiving three additional Oscar nominations for penning some of the most critically-lauded films of all time: The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988). In addition to that, he won a Grand Prize at Cannes for his short La pince à ongles / "The Nail Clippers" (1969), received a lifetime achievement Laurel Award from the Writers Guild of America for his screenwriting and was then awarded an Honorary Oscar in 2014 for his cumulative body of work. And that's just the tip of the iceberg as far award recognition is concerned. Early on, both men worked with Jacques Tati (a former mime himself) while Carrière formed a creative partnership with Luis Buñuel that lasted nearly two decades.
A man (played by Étaix under the name "Gabriel Blonde") lies in bed unable to sleep. You know the routine. The lights go off. The lights come back on. Drink of water. The lights go off. The lights come back on. A couple of sleeping pills. Lights off. Lights on. And then a book. Only this man unwisely picks up a vampire novel and starts reading. He then envisions what's going on in the book as he drifts in and out of sleep. We cut back and forth between scenes of the man in bedroom, which are in color, with scenes from the book, which are monochrome and effectively styled and (over)lit to look just like a silent film. The book scenes are set in a fog-bound castle late at night and touch on all the usual cliches (howling wolves outside, candlelight strolls through dark hallways, shadows cast all over the place...) as a young woman retires to her bedroom and her father hangs a cross on her door to protect her from a vampire. Down in the cellar, the vampire (also played by Étaix) awakens from his slumber, arises from his coffin Nosferatu-style and then then goes after the people upstairs.
Considering the later acclaim of the director and writer, this is an interesting footnote in both of their careers, though a minor one. Not that this is at all bad. It's not. The photography and Gothic atmosphere are excellent, and this does provide some clever moments (like when the vampire removes a spade hand from a clock and uses it to prick the neck of a sleeping victim) as well as a few chuckles, most especially how the insomniac's wife (who is fast asleep next to him the entire time) inadvertently keeps scaring him every time she moves.
This 16-minute, dialogue-free short later ended up as the opening segment in the four-part comedy Tant qu'on a la santé / As Long as You're Healthy (1966), which received a Criterion Collection release in 2013, along with a number of Étaix's other films. It's also available to view for free at archive.org. The original U. S. distributor was the International Film Bureau out of Chicago.
★★1/2
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