as a fragment; butMikael (1924; Michael, also known as Chained) is an early masterpiece. The film, made in Germany, bears a striking resemblance to Auguste Rodin’s life and was both a critical and a financial success. Like The Parson’s Widow, Michael concerns the persistence of love and the effects of loneliness, but the film is particularly significant in terms of its decor, which became increasingly important to Dreyer as a means of reinforcing his themes.

Du skal aere din hustru (1925; Master of the House) and Glomdalsbruden (1925; The Bride of Glomdal) resemble earlier films in their emphasis on women and in their comedic plots, but the films hardly prepared audiences for Dreyer’s La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc (1928; The Passion of Joan of Arc), his French masterpiece. More than a year and a half in the making, The Passion of Joan of Arc is a remarkable film: It is the only Dreyer film not adapted from literature, though it is adapted from trial transcripts. It is the Dreyer film most notable for its close-ups and its use of light and dark. The film telescopes an eighteen-month trial into the action on a single day. In many respects, the film represents the culmination of many thematic and cinematic trends in Dreyer’s earlier films. An artistic success, The Passion of Joan of Arc was, however, a financial disaster; though it established him as a major artistic director, it also made funding more problematic.

In fact, Vampyr, which appeared in 1932, was partially produced by Dreyer’s own production company in connection with Tobis-Klangfilm of Berlin. Although Dreyer succeeds in making Vampyr seem like a nightmare in which nothing is real, the horror film is both a departure from Dreyer’s earlier work and a continuation of those films. The minimalist tendencies of The Passion of Joan of Arc are extended so that decor and mood transcend dialogue, which is virtually eliminated, and plot. The film, moreover, focuses in Dreyer fashion on the sickness of the isolated soul. Despite its current status as both a cult film and an important film in the Dreyer canon, Vampyr did not bring its director new film assignments. His next feature film, Vredens dag (Day of Wrath), was not released until 1943.

During the eleven-year hiatus, the product of his unwillingness to accept studio control, Dreyer was involved in film, first in England, where he worked with documentary filmmaker John Grierson, then in Africa, where his producer abandoned him. Understandably discouraged yet unwilling to compromise, Dreyer returned to Denmark, where he resumed his journalistic career, this time covering legal matters. His eventual return to filmmaking resulted from an offer of the Danish government, which enlisted his help in its documentary film movement, but Dreyer did not enjoy the control he had formerly demanded. Mødrehjaelpen (Good Mothers), his first effort, was produced in 1942, but the film is only twelve minutes long. It did, however, lead to a contract with Palladium Films for Day of Wrath, which was also made during the German occupation of Denmark.

Considering the political constraints under which he worked, Day of Wrath is an excellent film not only about witchcraft, one of Dreyer’s obsessions, but also about the contemporary world. Read allegorically, Day of Wrath condemns the Nazis as the ultimate witch-hunters. Although he had seen the play in 1920, he was not ready to adapt it to film, but in 1943-1944 he apparently believed that in its conflict between the forces of life and the forces of repression he had a “topical” film. As is the case with most Dreyer films, Day of Wrath is both “new” and “old,” as it blends new subject matter with recurrent themes involving control over souls, intolerance, and the battle between repressive male authority and awakening female independence, here manifested as sexual liberation.

Only a year later, Dreyer’s career again ebbed, this time because of Tva Manniskor (Two People), a film he made in Sweden. Dreyer has virtually denied the existence of the film, claiming that it was doomed from the start. Because he wanted to make the film, the ordinarily firm Dreyer relinquished some control to his producer, who made disastrous casting decisions. The film, which was never released in Denmark, was a critical and financial failure and was partly responsible for another of Dreyer’s long absences from directing feature films. During the ten years between Two People and Ordet (1955), Dreyer made seven more short films (fifteen minutes or less) for his Danish government, but in only one of them—“De Naede Faergen” or “They Caught the Ferry,” a free adaptation of a short story—is Dreyer’s “touch” apparent. Dreyer also spent his “free time” writing a script for his projected film about the life of Jesus Christ; he wrote the first draft of the script in Independence, Missouri, while visiting the United States in 1949-1950.

Despite his absence from the cinematic world, Dreyer did begin to receive the critical acclaim that he deserved, and in 1952 he received a lease to the Dagmar Bio Cinema in recognition of his accomplishments. Because of the resurgent interest in his films, he was able to make Ordet for Palladium Films, which had earlier produced Day of Wrath. Dreyer’s film, ostensibly about religious feuds, is of a piece with his earlier films, for he again focuses on confinement, physical love and its repression, and the solitary soul. Perhaps because of its inordinate amount of dialogue, at least for Dreyer, the film has not been as well received as his next and last film, Gertrud (1961), also made for Palladium. Gertrud, like Michael and Day of Wrath, concerns the pursuit of absolute love, itself an illusion. When the liberated woman finds that men cannot live up to her expectations, she leaves them for Paris, where she subsequently pursues knowledge, which is perhaps more accessible. In style, Gertrud is vintage Dreyer, employing the long take, mobile camera, close-up, and attention to decor.

When he died in 1968, Dreyer characteristically left several unrealized projects, chief among which was Jesus fra Nasaret, his film about Christ’s life. Although he apparently had the funding, had traveled to Israel, and had learned Hebrew, the film, which was to stress the parallel between the Roman occupation of Palestine and the Nazi occupation of Denmark, was never made.

Summary

Although he is currently acknowledged as one of the world’s foremost film directors, Carl Theodor Dreyer did not always enjoy critical acclaim. He first attracted attention in 1928 with The Passion of Joan of Arc, but, because his subsequent films appeared only intermittently, he worked in relative obscurity, certainly in terms of Ingmar Bergman, a fellow Scandinavian with whom he is often compared. His films, moreover, did not appeal to contemporary mass audiences because of their brooding intensity, serious themes, and the “slow pace” effected by long takes, as opposed to the more “exciting” montage style of other directors. Time, however, has been kind to him, for post-1970 critics and directors have found his films more consonant with current film theory and practice. David Bordwell has written that, since his death in 1968, Dreyer has enjoyed a revival: Critical studies have appeared, his screenplays have been published in translation, and his Christ script has been staged as a play. The revival may be traced in part to the special Dreyer issue that the influential journal Cahiers du cinéma published in 1968. That issue prompted a new look from contemporary film critics who have examined his films from Marxist, psychoanalytical, and feminist perspectives and found both form and content “modern.”

Certainly his sympathetic and complex treatment of women and his criticism of intolerance appeal to today’s audiences, and his realistic style with long takes involves his audiences, rather than “telling” them everything through editing. That he should speak so directly to modern audiences is a testament to a director who was also a film pioneer, an early master such as the French director Abel Gance or Victor Sjöström, a Swedish director whom Dreyer admired. Dreyer is, in a sense, the Danish cinema. He is one of its founders and its most accomplished director. Though he was influenced by early silent films, especially those of Griffith, and by German expressionists, he worked in a kind of critical vacuum, relatively free of cinematic debts. He did not “develop” in the sense that Bergman has, but instead varied his style with his material, which was almost exclusively literary. Yet he has influenced other directors, among them Jean-Luc Godard and Susan Sontag, all of whom have paid homage to this early auteur filmmaker who now has received his long-overdue acclaim.

Bibliography

Bordwell, David. The Films of Carl-Theodore Dreyer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981. A thorough analysis of Dreyer’s films by a leading film critic, the book is, in many respects, the “last word” on Dreyer. Bordwell focuses on Dreyer as an “experimental” director concerned with film narrative, abstract space, and “immobility” and also discusses recurrent themes in Dreyer’s films.

Bowser, Ellen. The Films of Carl Dreyer. New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1964. Although her eight-page pamphlet consists essentially of program notes for a screening of Dreyer films, Bowser provides a brief biography of Dreyer, an appreciation of his major films, and a chronological list of all of his films, including documentaries made for the Danish government, with credits and a brief synopsis.

Brakhage, Stan. The Brakhage Lectures: Georges Méliès, David Wark Griffith, Carl Theodore Dreyer, Sergei Eisenstein. Chicago: The Good Lion, 1972. A very informal, impressionistic appreciation of Dreyer by the United States’ premier experimental filmmaker, the lecture, sponsored by the Art Institute of Chicago, concerns Dreyer’s journalistic work, his debt to Griffith, and his recurrent themes. Brakhage’s approach is typified by his comment that Vampyr is a comedy, a “smile with fangs.” He considers Gertrude to be Dreyer’s finest film.

Milne, Tom. The Cinema of Carl Dreyer. New York: A. S. Barnes, 1971. A first-rate scholarly study of Dreyer’s oeuvre, the book also contains an extensive filmography (including Dreyer’s early scripts) with credits. Milne’s book is profusely illustrated with stills, and he includes helpful references to books and articles about Dreyer.

Nash, Mark. Dreyer. London: British Film Institute, 1977. Nash’s book is essential to Dreyer scholars, for it consists primarily of an extensive filmography with virtually complete credits, an extensive synopsis, and excerpted critical commentary (occasionally augmented by Dreyer’s own remarks) for each film. Nash also includes English translations of essays by André Techiné and Freida Grafe.

Schrader, Paul. Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972. Schrader discusses three cinematic “styles”—the Kammerspiele, expressionism, and transcendental—and finds that Dreyer created a different style for each of his films. The book is interesting because it focuses on Dreyer’s debt to cinematic history; that debt is largely denied by most film critics. Schrader’s book, which contains a helpful bibliography and many stills, focuses on Jeanne d’Arc, Day of Wrath, and Ordet.

Wood, Robin. “Carl Dreyer.” Film Comment, March/April, 1974: 10-17. In presenting an overview of Dreyer’s major films, Wood compares him to both Bergman and Alfred Hitchcock and suggests that in Dreyer the filmmaker is omnipotent. Wood focuses on Dreyer’s style, particularly camera movement, and finds Day of Wrath Dreyer’s “richest work.”