Danish filmmaker Carl Theodor Dreyer’s way of seeing things is just crazy enough to make you believe it. There’s an uncomfortably penetrating light in his films, which are all black and white – he freezes rooms and objects in his sight until they begin to shine. He is interested in investing all things, from landscapes to faces, with human sensitivity. Six of his films are available on DVD in SciLi. None of them are especially easy to watch; they are uncompromising in their pursuit of life below the surface, and this means that you stare at their surfaces for a long time. But if you are willing to stick with a particularly ornery and intense vision to the end, you will be rewarded.
Ordet
This seems especially true of “Ordet,” Dreyer’s second-to-last film. Adapted from a play by Kaj Munk, a Danish pastor, it tackles faith with a heavy, groaning seriousness. The story concerns an old farmer, Morten Borgen, and his family. His son Johannes believes, to everyone’s dismay, that he is the new incarnation of Jesus, while another son, Anders, wants to marry a girl from a rival Christian sect. This unfolds slowly, in depressing wooden interiors, with everyone speaking slowly and emphatically–as if they all, like Johannes, believe themselves to be prophets and wise men. Although there are moments that give you a sensual rush, most of the film feels simple and dry. Characters grumble at each other about religion and hardship; Johannes intones long monologues in a high-pitched holy wail; everything falls into its unsurprising place. Is this all really necessary?
Well… yes. It is. It all leads somewhere, don’t worry. The ending of “Ordet” is simple and slow, in the movie’s usual style, but as in an early love scene between Inger and her husband, things become raw and pure. Rather than lying dormant within a cold and stilted story, Federspiel’s warm sensuality finally infuses everything else, and redeems it. The film’s ending is as hushed and gentle as all that precedes it, yet it’s also a scream of joy.
Vredens dag
Another, earlier consideration of religious faith, “Vredens dag” (Day of Wrath), is far less clear and affirming. Set during the 17th-century witch-hunts in rural Denmark, the film follows a pretty young woman, Anne (Lisbeth Movin), whose loveless marriage to a much older pastor drives her to a doomed affair with her stepson. The film is quicker and more vigorous than “Ordet,” and it’s probably a much better introduction to Dreyer. But everything in it is doomed. Unlike, say, “The Crucible,” this film may believe in witches, and even suggests that we are all witches at our darkest. The most beautiful scenes feel like sorcery, with far too much luster and intensity concentrated in fleeting moments. The flipside comes in grueling scenes in which an old woman is tortured for witchcraft by stately men in robes.
Our sympathy for the old woman, however, is complicated by the fact that she does, in fact, consider herself a witch. Likewise, as Anne pursues her lust, her smile becomes darker and darker. Our loyalties are further confused when Anne’s misguided witch-hunter of a husband suddenly cries the purest tears for his sins. It all comes to terrible tragedy, of course. However, while “Ordet” suddenly blooms in its final minutes, “Day of Wrath” closes on a mournful, stunted note; nothing is certain, except that all things will someday die.
Gertrud
Dreyer’s final film, “Gertrud,” is set in an elegant modern milieu, and death seems far away, yet the film is even darker than “Day of Wrath.” Like “Ordet,” it’s a play adaptation, and, for all its lush decorations, it’s even more talky and cold. Gertrud (Nina Pens Rode), a middle-aged housewife, decides to leave her longtime husband for a young, reckless musician who can’t really love her. Meanwhile, an old flame comes crawling back to her, and she turns him bitterly away. And then she becomes a librarian. The end.
What happens doesn’t matter; what fascinates and saddens is Gertrud’s tragic fixations, her self-obsessed passion for romance and melancholy. Rode is breathy and sensual, like Federspiel in “Ordet,” but Gertrud is the haggard inverse of Inger, always hungering and empty. At the end of his life, Dreyer had long been trying to make a film about the life of Jesus, but it’s somehow fitting that his final film is a soul-crushing exploration of another kind of gospel, one that preaches love but means oblivion.
The Passion of Joan of Arc
I have avoided discussing Dreyer’s most famous film, the silent “The Passion of Joan of Arc.” Suffice to say that it’s an incredible study of the human face in all its aesthetic and spiritual qualities, and that it’s probably Dreyer’s most liberating, frustrating, and soul-exploding film – but it’s also the one you are most likely to get a chance to see on the big screen, where it belongs.
Vampyr
I have avoided discussing the highly-regarded “Vampyr,” on the other hand, because it doesn’t do much for me. The film is a collection of eerie imagery rather than a story, more about dreamy shadows than people’s souls (which are what Dreyer does best). Still, the DVD includes a freaky Polish stop-motion short about a toy puppy that goes in search of an orange and meets the devil (who is a puppet) and an army of grotesquely re-animated trash items. Which is good.
Michael
That leaves the early silent “Michael,” an interesting collaboration with Thea von Harbou (early spouse/collaborator of Fritz Lang). Its melodramatic treatment of an aging painter and his ungrateful protégé is awfully conventional. As a portrait of a decaying aristocracy and the slow dissolution of morality through petty lust, though, it is typically striking Dreyer. Not as challenging or as rewarding as his later work, though.
So if you want to kick back this weekend with a slow-moving, black and white Danish film about religion, morality, and/or emotional despair, Carl Theodor Dreyer is your man.