Carl Theodor Dreyer: two films

These reviews of films by Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, issued on DVD by the British Film Institute, were originally published in FILMWAVES in 2006.

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ORDET (1955)

Ordet was Dreyer’s penultimate film, rivalling Ingmar Bergman’s works in its sober reflection on the schism between orthodox religion and true faith. A pivotal film in Dreyer’s diverse oeuvre, which encompassed a sympathetic study of homosexuality (Mikaël, 1924), Ibsen-esque feminist drama Master of the House (1925), the seminal The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) and influential horror classic Vampyr (1932), Ordet is famed for the restrained intelligence of its cinematography, and for its remarkable climactic scene.

Dreyer’s script, adapted from Kaj Munk’s play, establishes a claustrophobic family atmosphere, contrasting the pious father with delusional son Johannes, whose extensive study of Kierkegaard has convinced him that he is the Resurrection. These are genuine, spiritual people in search of a transcendent experience, living frustrated lives tinged by tragedy. Son Anders’ courtship with a girl of a different denomination and Mikkel’s wife Inger’s pregnancy unfold with a subtle rhythm, Dreyer’s meditative pacing reinforced by cinematographer Henning Bendtsen’s unobtrusive lighting and quietly theatrical mise-en-scene.

Ordet, like The Passion of Joan of Arc, makes extraordinary demands of its viewers. Dreyer’s revolutionary cinematography in Joan of Arc made its viewers complicit with the protagonist’s pain, obliging them to share and understand it by presenting Joan’s facial expressions with such intensity. Ordet’s narrative does not just explore religious faith: it demands it.

Astonishingly, the film earns the faith necessary to accept its conclusion. Ordet’s challenging narrative induces both despair and hope in its audience by attaching them to Inger, purely through the depth of her characterisation, contrasting sharply with Johannes’ incessant rhetoric and the endearing belief of her daughter, Maren. Crucially, Dreyer’s deceptively simple film is about love as much as spirituality, and a skilful exercise in emotional manipulation, achieved through mastery of lighting and shot composition but primarily through a very human interpretation of Munk’s highly theological drama.

GERTRUD (1964)

Gertrud was Dreyer’s final film. Like Ordet, it was adapted from a theatrical text, this time by fin-de-siècle Swedish dramatist Hjalmar Söderberg (1906). Distilling its dialogue Dreyer shifted the focus of Söderberg’s drama, emphasising Gertrud’s internal struggle for freedom as she decided to leave her husband, promoted to the Ministry, and fails to find true love with old flame Gabriel, a poet, and precocious composer Erland, eventually deciding to remain alone and pursue her philosophical interests with Axel, the Professor.

In one sense, Gertrud is about the friction between emotion and intellect, established in the opening scene where Gertrud leaves her husband, lamenting that “You never guess my wishes or my thoughts.” Gertrud’s men cannot love her, preoccupied with their intellectual pursuits: eye contact is only made in the final scene, with most of the dialogue delivered to the camera as Gertrud and her romances sit side-by-side, the apparent stiltedness of their words representing an inability to synthesise their feelings and their thoughts.

Dreyer declared that ‘Gertrud is a film that I made with my heart’, and the emotional/intellectual conflict permeates not just its dialogue, but also its cinematography. Dreyer’s highly considered, painterly shots strike initially as imperiously intellectual, but their symbolism – such as the collapse of Gertrud’s relationship with Erland in front of a slowly flowing lake, or the final shot of a closed door in a bare room always reinforces the theme, each composition subtly incorporating familiar representations of emotional discordance.

Laden with mirrors, except in the final scene where the mirror is crucially absent, Gertrud breaks out of the philosophical conflict between determinism and free will to investigate the possibilities of self-determination and self-understanding. Like Ordet, the road to its optimistic conclusion often seems bleak, but the complexity of the film’s psychology makes Gertrud a challenge worth undertaking, to both mind and soul.