:
Thorkild Roose,
Henrik Malberg,
Nina Pens Rode,
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Carl Theodor Dreyer,
Torben Skjodt Jensen,
Carl Theodor Dreyer,
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: Criterion
: Documentary, Foreign, Biographies, France, Scandinavia, Criterion Collection, Classics, Drama, Politics and Social Issues, Costume Drama/Period Piece, Classic Drama, Classic Drama
: English, French
: English
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Carl Th. Dreyer: My Métier (Criterion Collection) (1995)
Carl Dreyer is still regarded as one of Denmark's greatest filmmakers, though during his life, his films were largely unappreciated. Dreyer was a complex, enigmatic figure and this Danish documentary attempts to chronicle his life using interviews with people who knew and worked with him. The film also makes extensive use of Dreyer's own recorded thoughts as well as archival photographs, letters, scripts and articles. The filmmakers also visit the locations of some of Dreyer's best known films. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
Day of Wrath (Criterion Collection) (1943)
Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer's Day of Wrath (Vredens Dag) is set in 1623 Denmark, where Anne Pedersdotter (Lisbeth Movin), the second wife of a Danish pastor, grows to loathe her husband for his self-asceticism and instead falls in love with the minister's son - with whom she spends an inordinate amount of time. Locals overhear her wishing aloud for her husband's death; when he dies of a stroke not long after, she is accused of witchcraft, a charge taken seriously enough to be punishable by death. Eventually, the poor woman is tortured and traumatized to such a point that she actually believes she is a witch - and she gives in to being burned at the stake. Yet Dreyer then shifts the perspective from internalized - illustrating the woman's paralyzing fear - to externalized, a point of view that enables the director to depict his subject's spiritual purification. Even allowing for the aura of raw terror, Dreyer never loses sight of the eroticism inherent in the concept of witchcraft. Based on a play by Wiers Jensen, Day of Wrath was filmed during the Nazi occupation of Denmark and not released abroad until after the war, and the director reportedly had to flee his native country when he angered the government with the film's political content. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
Gertrud (Criterion Collection) (1965)
Nine years after the release of his acknowledged masterpiece, Ordet, Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer offered this a story of an individual in search of a measure of personal peace and serenity, which proved to be his last completed film. Gertrud Kanning, like the maid Joan in Dreyer's best-known film, La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc, is a woman in isolation. On the eve of her husband's appointment to a cabinet minister post, she announces that she is leaving their loveless marriage. But her younger lover Erland Jansson, a concert pianist, is more interested in keeping their affair illicit than in continuing it in the open. Gertrud's old lover, the poet Gabriel Lidman, offers more than his friendship, but she holds back from turning to him, instead choosing to live out her life in solitude rather than compromise with love again. Adapted from a 1920s play by Hjalmar Soberberg, Gertrud plays out in long takes, with few close-ups and exterior scenes. Though initial critical reaction to the film was largely unfavorable, its reputation has steadily grown, especially considered in the context of Dreyer's long career. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Ordet (Criterion Collection) (1955)
With his masterful Ordet (aka The Word, [1955]), legendary Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer examines the conflict between internalized personal faith and organized religion. Dreyer sets the drama in a conservative, super-pious Danish town, where widower Morten Borgen (Henrik Malberg) -- the father of three boys -- cuts against the grain of the community with his constant heretical doubt. One of his sons, Mikkel Borgen (Emil Hass Christensen), is entangled in an interfaith romance with a fundamentalist's daughter, while the second, Anders Borgen (Cay Kristiansen), is an agnostic, and the third, Johannes Borgen (Preben Leerdorff-Rye) -- a devotee of Sřren Kirkegaard -- believes that he actually is Jesus Christ -- a conviction ridiculed by almost everyone as pure insanity. Also known as The Word, Ordet was the only film that Dreyer made in the 1950s. The author of the play on which the film was based (and which was previously filmed in 1943) was Kaj Munk, a Danish pastor murdered by the Nazis for daring to announce his fidelity to Christ over Hitler. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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| Carl Th. Dreyer: My Métier (Criterion Collection) (1995) |
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| So much more!
by Kenyon
April 13, 2004 - 3:30 PM PDT
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8 out of 8 members found this review helpful
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| I have only recently discovered Dreyer, and am now trying to catch up on as much of his work as I can. What a gorgeous, moving, surprising film. Romantic in the best sense of the word and just telling the story to someone yesterday brought us both to tears. A tender, moving film - and beautiful to look at, luminous - as it should be. |
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