All language subtitles for Vredens.dag.1943.Bluray.commentary

Day of wrath! O day of mourning!
See fulfill'd the prophet's warning!

Heav'n and earth in ashes burning!

Loud, dramatic music begins the film,

sounding the crack of doom
from the very first.

Dreyer wanted the music
played at a thunderous volume.

He wrote a letter to the projectionists
who ran the film at its premiere

where he said:

"In order that the overture may have
the intended doomsday character,

"it is important
that it is played at full volume,

"that is, at as loud a volume

"as the sound apparatus
can possibly bear."

Along with the booming music,

Dreyer displays images
of hellfire and damnation,

as well as the text
of the Dies Irae hymn,

rewritten specifically for the film
by the Danish poet, Paul La Cour,

who years before
had worked as an assistant

on Dreyer's Passion of Joan of Arc.

As the volume of
the soundtrack is turned down,

if the projectionist is following
Dreyer's instructions,

we see a hand
writing out an arrest warrant.

Whose hand?

The signature is Jens Uhlen,

but no character by that name
appears elsewhere in the film.

The writing hand sets in motion
the drama that follows,

in a way possible
only in the cinema.

The image of a hand writing
may seem a little uncinematic,

but it is in fact exactly the opposite.

Only the cinema can show us
a hand writing

without it belonging to anyone,
but nevertheless shaping the action.

Probably. It's herbs
from beneath the gallows.

It's strange to think
they are so powerful.

There is power in evil.

"There is power in evil,"
says the old, potion-brewing wise woman.

And this is a film
about the power of evil,

the power of evil thoughts,
evil intentions, evil appearances.

But is this an evil that belongs
to the 17th century

or one that exists today?

Several expert historians have written

that Dreyer in his film portrays the age
of the great witchcraft persecutions

of early modern Europe

with an insight that was decades
ahead of the historical profession.

Other critics have emphasised the fact
that the film was made in 1943,

when Denmark was occupied
by Nazi Germany,

and suggested
that the dark world of the film

is an allegorical reflection
of that grim reality.

Later in this commentary,
we shall look further at both ideas.

From outside, we hear the pealing
of the tocsin sounding the alarm

and the hate-filled cries of the mob
who have come to seize Herlofs Marte.

Most other filmmakers would have
cut away from the scene here

to a shot of a crowd of angry extras,

shaking their fists
and waving pitchforks.

Dreyer refuses to do so.

He had come to believe
that cutaways like that,

even cross-cutting in general,
was unsuitable for the sound film.

In the silent period,
rapid cutting had made sense,

but in the sound film,
its jittery agitation was undesirable.

Instead of cutting, Dreyer preferred
to rely as much as possible

on following the characters
with a fluidly mobile camera.

Dreyer's later films are sometimes
accused of being stagy and stiff,

and in this first scene, the refusal
to cut away to the angry mob

has certainly been regarded by some

as producing an unfortunate,
noises-off-like effect.

Certainly, Day of Wrath,
like both Master of the House

and his three later features,
is based on a stage play,

and I think it is worth
looking a little more closely

at how Dreyer went about
adapting this story.

The screenplay was based on a play
called Anne Pedersdotter

written by a Norwegian playwright
named Hans Wiers-Jenssen

and first performed in 1908.

The extended scene
we are watching now

corresponds roughly
to the first act of the play,

which ends with the capture
of Herlofs Marte.

On the stage,
the scene took place outside

in the yard in front of the rectory,

but Dreyer prefers to remain indoors.

More importantly,

Dreyer has reshaped the personalities
of the leading characters,

particularly Absalon,
who enters here.

Dreyer wrote out pen portraits
of the characters

to help the actors
understand their roles.

Absalon he describes as follows:

"Absalon is loving and kind
towards his wife, Anne,

"and his mother, Merete.

"A good son.

"Indeed, almost too good
and too obedient,

"because he has never quite
succeeded in freeing himself

"from his mother's sway over him.

"He is kind and credulous.

"Absalon is a dutiful clergyman,
strict with himself as well as others.

"His mind-set is expansive in a time
where narrow-mindedness is the rule.

"He is humane,
lenient and sympathetic."

Dreyer's understanding of Absalon
as a kindly man

is very clear in this scene,

where it is contrasted
with the unremitting hostility

of Absalon's mother
towards his new wife.

This is a change from the play,

where Merete's hatred of Anne
does not really emerge

till after Anne has begun her adulterous
and incestuous affair with her stepson.

Like a crow of ill omen,
Herlofs Marte draws near,

still pursued by the alarm bell.

According to Dreyer's
personality sketch,

there is initially "something undeveloped,
almost childlike" about Anne.

The actress Lisbeth Movin brings
a touch of unconscious feminine vanity

to the way Anne puts on the white collar
of her austere, puritanical costume.

And as she steps forward
to greet Martin,

a dark shadow
passes across her face,

suggestive of the secret passions
lurking within,

what Dreyer called "the woman in her"
that Absalon cannot awaken.

Are you his son?

Are you his wife?

Dreyer's characterisation
of Anne continues:

"In general, she is quiet,
perhaps a little shy."

In defence against the pinpricks
from her mother-in-law,

she has made up
a world of her own,

where she comforts herself
with her private thoughts.

In this world she carries a dream with her
without really being aware of it.

When Martin arrives at the rectory,
she becomes conscious of the dream,

and when he takes her in his arms,
the dream becomes reality,

and in the same moment
the child becomes a woman.

The dialogue at this point
becomes strange and unsettling.

Anne and Martin repeatedly refer
to themselves as mother and son.

But Anne's blooming youth

as well as the evident
erotic charge of the moment

she and Martin
first lay eyes on each other

makes the very idea that they should
relate to each other as parent and child

seem unnatural.

This also colours our view
of Anne's marriage to Absalon.

It just doesn't seem right
that this beautiful young woman

should be the wife of the desiccated,
abstemious Absalon.

The Absalon Dreyer shows us
is guileless and unworldly.

His attitude towards Anne
is almost grandfatherly -

kind, but without
any evident erotic interest.

In this, he is very different
from the Absalon of the stage play.

In the play, it is made very clear
that he married Anne

because she was beautiful
and he desired her sexually.

At one point he says of his first wife:
"She gave me no joy."

He continues, speaking to Anne:

"But you were young and beautiful,

"my blood was on fire
every time I saw you."

This Absalon gave in to carnal desire,

knowing very well
what he was doing.

Even worse, he deliberately
concealed his knowledge

that Anne's mother practised witchcraft
in order to marry her daughter.

Dreyer's Absalon,
on the other hand,

has never been conscious
of any illicit emotions.

His encouragement of a kiss
between Anne and Martin,

despite his mother's warning,

shows how trusting
and innocent Absalon is.

He believes that
he has helped Anne's mother

out of the kindness of his heart.

He also thinks of his marriage to Anne
as an unselfish act,

taking a friendless orphan
into his house.

It is only later, when exhorting
Herlofs Marte to confess her sins,

that her accusations
make him realise

that his motives for protecting
Anne's mother and marrying the girl

were far less pure than he imagined.

Herlofs Marte is frightened
and desperate,

and Anna Svierkier's
extraordinary performance

brings out the depths of her fear.

Anne, you must help me.
Hide me.

They'll burn me if they catch me.

You've been named as a witch?

The tone of Anne's reply reveals
that she is not entirely surprised

that the old woman
has been accused of witchcraft.

And note that Herlofs Marte herself
never claims to be innocent.

Instead, she reveals her knowledge
that Anne's mother was a witch.

In the play, Herlofs Marte only invokes
her friendship with Anne's mother,

and Anne remains ignorant of
her family's dark secret for much longer.

By having her, and the audience,
learn of it at this point,

Dreyer not only enhances the tension
and the structure of the story

by introducing at a much earlier point

the threat against Anne that she too
might well be accused of witchcraft.

Dreyer also ensures
that Anne learns of her dark inheritance

at almost the same time

as she experiences
the first stirrings of erotic desire,

so that her discovery of her own sexuality
comes to run almost exactly parallel

to her discovery
of her powers of magic.

Merete's harsh rebuke of Anne
for leaving the cupboard door open

underscores her hostility towards Anne

and contributes to what Dreyer called:

"the latent tension, the smouldering dread
lying beneath the everyday life

"of the family in the rectory."

And that tension, that dread

was something
he felt was essential to bring out.

The drama, to Dreyer,
is above all psychological.

In a lecture he gave a few weeks
after the opening of Day of Wrath,

he said:

"In the artistic film, it is human beings
that we want to see

"and their psychological experiences
we want to experience.

"We wish to get close to and inside
the human beings we see on the screen.

"We wish that the film
may open a door slightly for us

"leading onto the world
of the inexplicable.

"We wish to be put
in a state of suspense

"caused not so much
by the external action

"as by the development
of the psychological conflicts.

"There is no lack of psychological
conflicts in Day of Wrath.

"On the other hand,
one will rarely find a subject matter

"that so invites outward dramatics.

"I, and I dare say my actors, too,
have chosen to resist this temptation."

There's blood here.

The manner in which Dreyer shows
the capture of Herlofs Marte

provides a perfect illustration.

In the screenplay, Dreyer planned
to cut to a close-up insert

of the trace of blood
that Herlofs Marte has left on the stairs

as the magistrate sees it,

but as we can see, he decided
against having such a cut.

He takes the camera up into the attic,

a rather large set
used only in this one shot

where the characters hardly move.

As soon as the action starts,
Dreyer cuts away.

(Door closes, footsteps)

(Scream)

Herlofs Marte's capture

is presented only as a series
of off-screen bumps and screams.

(Scream)

It is a way of telling the audience:

"There are important things going on here
that you cannot see.

"Therefore, you must pay attention
to what is hidden, unseen, unsaid."

Once again, we see a fateful decree
written by an unseen hand.

Absalon is given the task of exhorting
Herlofs Marte to confess,

likely because he is known to be
a devout and sensible man.

But whoever wrote the order
has made a catastrophic mistake,

since he is unaware that Herlofs Marte
knows Absalon's darkest secret,

hidden even from himself.

This secret will now be revealed,
not only to Absalon but also to Anne.

During the following scene,

Dreyer will repeatedly show her
eavesdropping at the door.

The extraordinary tracking shot
we are watching

serves no obvious purpose.

It might be seen as suggestive

of Anne's difficulties
in finding her bearings

after having heard that
her mother may have been a witch,

but Anne will not be able to escape
from the strict forms of the church.

Returning to the document
we just saw being written,

along with other, related documents,

it marks an important transition point
in the film's narrative.

The documents divide the story
into large sections

corresponding to the acts
of a stage play.

Dreyer habitually organised
his films in this way,

usually giving them a five-act structure.

This is also the case
with Day of Wrath.

The stage play it is based on
has only four acts,

but they do in fact correspond
rather well to one of Dreyer's acts.

So, Dreyer has added
an extra act, and this is it.

Everything that happens from the arrest
of Herlofs Marte to her execution

is merely reported briefly
in the dialogue of the play.

This means that the character
of Herlofs Marte

has been considerably expanded,

and that witchcraft beliefs
and the persecutions they produced

are given more prominence in the film.

The play was based loosely
on an actual case,

probably the most famous
witch trial in the history of Norway.

Absalon was a historical figure,

a writer and humanist
of considerable stature.

He died in 1575,
and after his death,

his wife Anne Pedersdotter
was tried as a witch and burned alive.

All the other elements of the drama,
however, are fictional.

The historical Anne Pedersdotter
was her husband's only wife

and not much younger than he.

She had eight children,
but no evil mother-in-law,

as far as we know.

Her trial took place
15 years after Absalon's death,

and while she was convicted
of having committed murder by sorcery,

she was not accused of
having murdered her husband,

as Anne will be at the end
of both play and film.

Dreyer has separated the story

even more completely
from the historical background

than the play had already done.

He has moved the locale to Denmark

and advanced the time of the story
almost 50 years.

It is very fitting
that the film is set in 1623,

because the period
from 1617 to 1625

was the time when witchcraft
persecutions in Denmark

were at their most intense.

The original play, however,
was set 50 years earlier,

when the Reformation in Norway
still lay within living memory.

An important theme of the play
is the continuing disagreements

between Protestant zealots

and those more tolerant
of Roman Catholic traditions.

The zealotry of the hardliners
makes them eager to see witches burn

and the play thus makes religious strife
an important motivating factor

behind the persecutions,

and at the same time,

it suggests that other, more enlightened
religious world views were available.

All this is absent from Dreyer's film.

Dreyer shows a community

where religious dogma
rules unchallenged,

its fundamental premises
accepted even by its victims.

All the characters in the film
accept witchcraft as a fact.

Not a single one of them seems able
to even conceive of the idea

that it might be
superstitious nonsense.

The boys' choir singing
the Day of Wrath hymn is replaced,

using one of the few
lap dissolves in the film,

by the torture chamber

where Herlofs Marte
is put to the question.

Dreyer's camera
slowly moves along the table

in another one
of his slow, careful movements,

combining a tracking shot with a pan.

Dreyer asked to have a special dolly
and tracks made for the film.

The only camera carts then available
in Denmark ran on straight tracks

and were unable to execute
a movement like this one,

which hides the terrible things
being done to Herlofs Marte off screen,

but presents us with a series
of portraits of her tormentors,

serious and dignified men
concentrating on their task,

the atmosphere tense,
writes Dreyer in the screenplay,

"like that filling a hospital
during a difficult operation."

The scene is grim and terrifying,

but to the famous Italian
micro-historian Carlo Ginzburg,

it also embodies
"a profound historiographical intuition"

in the way it depicts the situation.

What is striking about
Herlofs Marte's confession

is that she hardly speaks.

Words are put in her mouth.

All her devilish crimes are described
by the interrogating priest,

and she merely assents.

- You had to trample on the Cross?
- Yes.

He forbade you
to attend Communion?

- You had to renounce God and Christ?
- Yes.

You signed an eternal contract
with the devil?

To Ginzburg,
this is extremely significant.

Many historians in recent years

have sought to recover
the experiences of the little people,

those about whom the great chronicles
of wars and kings remain silent.

This scene, to Ginzburg, shows
the difficulties facing such historians.

Even if the records we see being written
were to survive until today,

they would still be not the words
of the poor woman,

but the words of the priest,

whose mastery of language
reinforces his power over her.

Ginzburg writes
that we should view the scene

"as a confrontation
between different cultures,

"and that is evident
in the way the judges are dressed

"while the poor witch is naked,
wrapped in a blanket,

"in the way they pose questions
while she babbles."

It is a confrontation between
power and powerlessness,

a confrontation between
a more articulate culture

and a less articulate one.

Herlofs Marte has not been
completely silenced, however.

But I shall remember you.

How?

If you send me to my death,
you shall follow.

This threatening bluster
shows another way

in which Dreyer has anticipated
more recent developments

in the way historians
write about witchcraft.

Another famous historian,
the American Natalie Zemon Davis,

author of The Return of Martin Guerre,
has written:

"Day of Wrath presents what was then,
that is in 1943, a minority view

"but would now be a central view
in scholarship about sorcery.

"That witchcraft was not simply a fantasy

"projected by judges on old women
who confessed under torture,

"but was part of a shared
cultural system about the occult

"which could be manipulated
by the women themselves."

Dreyer slowly pans away
from the dramatic situation

developing between
Herlofs Marte and Absalon

to present us with a striking,
Rembrandt-like tableau.

I will return to Dreyer's
compositional effects

later on in this commentary,

but for now I'll leave them aside.

Herlofs Marte hopes

that she will be able to use her
secret knowledge about Anne's mother

to blackmail Absalon
into helping her escape her fate.

With her bluster and threats,
Herlofs Marte is very much like the people

who most often were convicted of sorcery
in historical trials.

Recent historical studies of witch trials
in both Denmark and other places

show that the accused
were rarely people brought down

by a single,
unsuspected denunciation.

Most were people who had long been
surrounded by suspicion and ill will,

people who for years had been rumoured
to be workers of malicious magic.

And often the victims had themselves
contributed to their evil reputations.

Those who were old and poor
and forced to survive by begging

would sometimes find it easier
to extract alms

when they threatened to cast evil spells
if they did not get what they wanted.

There is power in evil.

Dreyer presents us
with another artful composition,

the faces carefully modelled
by light and shadow.

The power, but also the deceptiveness
of the written record is emphasised here,

where the camera will linger on the words
"made a voluntary confession".

...as stated above and witnessed
by us priests assembled.

The images of nature
form a striking contrast

to the interiors where
most of the film takes place.

The light of the sun,
and in particular,

the movement created by the wind
blowing through the trees and the fields,

give a strong impression of fresh air.

The interiors, by contrast,
seem still, heavy, dark, stuffy.

Most of those
who have written about the film

have mentioned this contrast,

although not everyone has explained it
in the same way.

The most obvious interpretation
is to connect nature and the open air

with love, freedom
and healthy sexuality,

while the sombre interiors
are taken to correspond

to the life-denying impositions
of an oppressive, bigoted society.

However, the American critic
Robert Warshow

interpreted the contrast between inside
and outside in a very different way.

Warshow writes that Dreyer attempts

to equate the outdoors,
the world of nature, with evil.

The pastor's mother,
who is the one firm moral pillar,

is never seen outside the rigidly ordered
household she controls.

Warshow supports his argument

by pointing to the shadows of tree leaves

that we will see playing both on the face
of Herlofs Marte just before she is burned

and on the face of Anne when she tries
to use her supernatural powers.

Also, as we shall see,

when Anne embarks
on her adulterous affair,

not only do the lovers' trysts
take place out of doors,

Anne's "becoming a woman" is,
as previously said,

closely linked to her use of what
she herself believes to be witchcraft.

I have come to prepare you for death.

Absalon claims to be concerned
about Herlofs Marte's immortal soul,

but she has little use for that.

She wants to escape the burning,

and she tries to threaten Absalon,

but still makes no attempt
to deny being a witch.

Note again that when threatening
to denounce Anne's mother as a witch,

she is not threatening
to tell a malicious lie,

she is threatening
to expose a dreadful truth

which Absalon has sought to cover up.

No, Marte, no!

But it's not too late:

Anne shall suffer as I am suffering.

She mocks him for what
she regards as his hypocrisy,

but we have no reason to think
that Absalon is not sincere

in his concern
for Herlofs Marte's salvation.

This is another reason
why the historian Carlo Ginzburg

was so impressed by Day of Wrath.

Indeed, he has said that
it was an important reason

why he began to study
witchcraft trials in the first place.

The point is that the encounter
between the witch and her persecutors

is not, as Ginzburg observes,
a confrontation between good and evil.

The judges are not monsters or madmen.

They act as they do, firmly convinced
of the justice of their actions.

The "profound historiographical intuition"
of which Ginzburg speaks

also consists in having rendered
this extremely cruel situation

not as a confrontation
between good and evil,

but as a confrontation between torturers
and those they persecute,

both acting in good faith,
and thus without anachronisms.

Dreyer's portrayal of the world
of the great witch hunts

thus captures important aspects
of historical reality.

(Bell tolls)

Again, Dreyer keeps
the angry crowd off screen,

making its presence known
only by shouting,

giving a calm and solemn cast
to the grim scene ahead.

Note the cross with the little roof.

That is a graveyard marker.

We are in the churchyard.

Several more of these markers

will be clearly visible
throughout the scene.

And at the end of the film,
we will see the shadow of a cross

turn into the shadow
of a graveyard marker like this,

closing the film with the sign of death.

In this scene,
it is worth noting

how carefully Dreyer has orchestrated
the different points of view,

shifting seamlessly back and forth

between the overview of the scene
as Anne observes it,

her reactions to it,

and the aspects of the situation
which she remains ignorant of.

She would be unable
to overhear the words

that will soon pass between
Absalon and Herlofs Marte

as she makes a final attempt
to reveal her secret

and mark out Anne as a witch.

Also, in a moment, the horror of the scene
becomes too much for Anne.

She turns her face away and therefore
does not see its awful climax as we do.

It seems that Dreyer
had initially considered

not showing Herlofs Marte's plunge
into the fire,

describing her death
only through off-screen screams.

But in the end, he decided that
that was not going to work.

Some reviewers at the time attacked him
for taking things too far.

One even called Day of Wrath
"a perverted horror movie".

Dreyer, however, had his reasons,
which he described in an interview.

But before getting to that,
let me just point out

the shadow of the tree leaves
on the old witch's face,

which, some writers suggest,
link the world of nature with witchcraft.

In the interview I mentioned, Dreyer says:

"The burning was necessary
for dramatic reasons.

"This burning must make
such a strong impression

"on the film's female protagonist,
Anne Pedersdotter

"that it remains chiselled into her mind,

"that one understands her terror
when she herself believes she is a witch,

"and that the same horrible fate awaits her
as that she has witnessed."

The scene which now follows
is indeed a strikingly terrifying one.

The historically accurate use of a ladder
to plunge the witch into the fire

rather than tying her to the stake
makes it visually arresting,

while the choir of little boys,

their pure voices singing
the Dies Irae hymn,

adds greatly to the awfulness,

because it shows unmistakably

that this society regards the spectacle
of seeing an old woman die by fire

as an edifying and uplifting one.

You will regret this!

You yourself are going to the devil!

You hypocrite, you liar!

You liar!

You liar!

The day of wrath,
as dark as the night

Shakes the Earth to its very core

As the sun is held captive in the dark

The day of wrath strikes, ablaze

(Screams)

And we shall all be engulfed by its flames

Whilst the beautiful,
earthly palace collapses

The day of wrath strikes, ablaze

In majorem gloriam dei,
"to the greater glory of God",

Absalon writes
of Herlofs Marte's fiery end,

while her scream
still echoes in our ears,

a scream which must surely be among
the most horrifying sounds in all cinema.

On the face of it, this is anti-clericalism
of the most overt sort,

and it is underlined by the fact

that all the men we see
torturing and judging witches

and presiding over their executions
are clergymen.

The secular authorities,

who in fact would have been responsible
for most of the judicial process,

are strikingly absent.

Yet the film's anti-clerical edge

has largely been ignored
by commentators.

An important reason for this is, I think,

that the clergymen
are not depicted as villains.

Absalon's faith, as we can see and hear
is obviously sincere.

But the character sketch
of Absalon makes clear

that Dreyer's sympathy for the man
does not extend to his convictions.

Dreyer writes of Absalon:

"In this man's character

"otherwise all-of-a-piece,

"there is a single fracture,

"caused by the inner tension
between his humaneness

"and the narrow theological outlook
which he preaches.

"He does not doubt that
Anne's mother has practised witchcraft

"and therefore deserves
to be burnt at the stake,

"but his humaneness compelled him
to spare her life.

"Out of sympathy with the person
he kept silent,

"where fidelity to dogma
otherwise required him to speak out."

I have lied to him.

Dreyer's dislike of religious dogmatism

is perhaps also less apparent

because the most frightening
character in the film,

Absalon's mother Merete,

is not as obviously motivated
by religious beliefs.

Dreyer writes about her:

"She is proud, commanding, clever,

"and filled with an all-consuming
family selfishness.

"The relationship between her
and Absalon, her son,

"is best described in this way:

"that the umbilical cord between them
has never really been cut.

"She has invested
all her feelings in her son

"and keeps watch
like a jealous mistress

"that no other woman
comes between him and her.

"She is still one with her son.

"She thinks his thoughts,
feels his feelings.

"The wrongs he suffers,
she suffers two times over

"and the evil done against him,
she feels more deeply than he."

Dreyer's description of Merete

emphasises the erotic aspects

of the tensions
running through the household.

For Merete, the demonic
menace of witchcraft

is closely connected
with excessive sensuality,

and the two are both present
and linked in the person of Anne.

Have you ever looked
into Anne's eyes?

Have you seen how they burn?

I'm thinking about her mother...

Her eyes burned like that.

Why say this to me?

One day you may have to choose.

Choose between what?

Between God and Anne.

The anti-clericalism of Day of Wrath
may not be obvious,

but Dreyer's detestation
of intolerance and bigotry

is a very powerful and
evident current in his work.

Still, it is somewhat surprising
that many commentators have preferred

to see the intolerance
on display in Day of Wrath,

not as what it overtly is:

a denunciation of the bigoted beliefs
of the Christian Church,

but rather as a covert description,

an allegory of life
under Nazi occupation.

Denmark was occupied
by Germany in April 1940,

but for a long time maintained the fiction
of being still a sovereign nation.

There was a duly elected government,

which had received a very strong mandate
at a parliamentary election in 1942.

The Danish army and navy
were still under arms

and order was maintained
by the Danish police.

This arrangement, after much stress,
had collapsed at the end of August 1943.

The government was dissolved,
the Germans declared martial law

and attacked, disarmed
and interned the Danish military.

On 17 September,

the F�hrer gave the order to round up
the Danish Jews on 1 October,

but the order was leaked
to the Danish resistance,

and most of the Jews
were able to escape,

crossing the narrow sea
to neutral Sweden

in fishing boats
and other small vessels.

All this was fresh
in the minds of audiences

when the film opened
on 13 November 1943.

There can be little doubt
that many spectators felt

that the atmosphere of terror
and persecution of Dreyer's film

was uncannily similar
to the dark times

they themselves were living through.

The vivid scenes of torture

must have struck a powerful chord
with audiences

who knew that
some of the courageous few

who joined the underground
resistance movement

were at that very moment
enduring similar torments

at the hands of the Gestapo.

She admitted it.

Nevertheless, watching this scene,

we realise that the comparison
does not really hold up.

The key issue is that of witchcraft.

She could call the living and the dead,
and they had to come.

If she wished someone dead,
they died.

Mogens Skot-Hansen, who worked
on the screenplay with Dreyer,

suggested in an interview
many years later

that Anne's being
the daughter of a witch

could just as well have been
her being the daughter of a Jew.

But, said Skot-Hansen,
"Dreyer betrayed that idea

"when he chose the blonde
Lisbeth Movin for the part."

That does not seem
at all plausible, however.

By logical extension,

Absalon and Merete should then,
in some sense,

be taken to represent Nazis,

and that is to my mind absurd.

The supernatural abilities which Anne
comes to believe herself to possess

are deeply morally ambiguous.

The power to kill at a distance,
mentioned by Absalon,

is one that Anne later in the story
will attempt to use

to murder her husband,

and, at least in her own mind,
she will succeed in doing just that.

The powers
are also strongly eroticised.

Absalon.

Take me and make me happy.

No, no...

We have already heard
of the burning eyes,

and in a moment, we will see
how Absalon's inability

to recognise Anne's sensual needs

is linked directly with his inability
to see the fire in her eyes.

Dreyer has held this shot
for a very long time,

slowly moving the camera
with the characters.

But to underscore
the importance of the moment,

he not only cuts
to a much closer view,

he shifts to a camera position
on the other side of the characters

and reverses their positions.

So innocent, so pure and clear.

All in all, I think that Dreyer's treatment
of the witches and their powers

makes it a very dubious proposition

to compare being a witch
to being Jewish.

I would like to stay with the issue
of supernatural powers for a little longer

before continuing with the discussion
of the significance

of the German occupation,

because we are getting close
to the pivotal scene of the movie,

the calling or invocation scene.

In the original 1908 production of the play,

the star, Johanne Dybwad,
had her greatest moment in this scene,

where Anne first uses
her supernatural powers,

and Dreyer, who was then 18,

may well have seen her
perform the role in Copenhagen in 1909.

Hans Wiers-Jenssen,
who wrote the play,

was a firm believer in spiritualism
and parapsychology,

holding a leading position

in the Norwegian Society
of Psychical Research.

He seems to have had little doubt
that psychic powers were real

and that the superstitions of the past
were attempts to account for them.

To the original play's author, then,
witchcraft is real

in the sense that Anne does have
actual telepathic-hypnotic powers

which she can use to summon Martin.

Should we assume that the same
is the case in Dreyer's film?

Note the shadow of waving leaves
on Anne's face.

Martin!

I can do it.

I can do it.

Once more, Dreyer shifts the camera
almost 180 degrees,

which creates a jumpy effect

because the characters suddenly move
from one side of the picture to the other,

and then he shifts right back
in the next shot.

In Hollywood, such cuts would have been
deemed much too obtrusive.

I'm seeing you through tears.

The line "I see you through my tears"
does not come from the play,

but in the film,
it has great significance,

because Anne will repeat it
at the very end of the film,

after she has been abandoned by Martin

and confessed to murdering
her husband by sorcery.

Again the eyes are emphasised.

Innocent, pure and clear?

No.

Deep and mysterious.

But I see into their depths.

What do you see?

A trembling, quivering flame.

Which you have lit.

The intensity of Anne's passionate desire
is not in doubt

but Dreyer, I think quite deliberately,
remains ambiguous

with respect to the question
of whether she has paranormal powers.

Various interviews with Dreyer

have shown that he had a considerable
interest in parapsychology,

and it seems likely that he believed
in the existence of ESP

and similar parapsychological
phenomena.

But in the calling scene there is nothing
that requires them to exist.

The only thing we see
is Anne exercising her will.

Martin's appearance
may simply be a coincidence.

How happy I am.

Anne's tears,
which Martin wiped away,

and which will reappear
only at the end of the story,

I think signify that Anne does realise

that her love for Martin
is sinful and wrong

but her enjoyment
of her own sexuality,

her "becoming a woman",
will soon overpower this realisation.

While it is easy
to sympathise with Anne

and regard her carnal fulfillment
as a triumph

for natural and healthy urges
over oppressive bigotry,

Dreyer refuses
to make things that easy.

Three times, he will cut away
from the lovers

to show the haggard Absalon
in his study.

While he broods
over the morality of his actions,

his wife is cuckolding him
with his own son,

and even though he is unaware
of what is going on,

we still sense his humiliation,

and it is difficult to feel
that it is fully deserved.

The scene helps us to understand

why Dreyer insisted on casting the
dignified, ascetic-looking Thorkil Roose

in the role of Absalon, rather than
the man his producers suggested -

a robust, fleshy and full-blooded fellow
named Eivind Johan-Svendsen.

The latter would have been
much closer to the way

the original play describes Absalon,

but it would have been
much harder for audiences

to sympathise with such a figure,

a dirty old man
abusing his powerful position

to get a beautiful young girl
into his marriage bed.

The Absalon Dreyer shows us
may be a fool,

but he is also a kindly man,

and it is therefore not easy
to regard Anne's betrayal of him

as an unequivocally good thing.

The contrast between indoors
and outdoors

is very clear in this sequence,

and it is obviously closely connected

to the clash between
Anne's sensual nature

and the moral order of her society.

But while the film clearly does not support
the oppressive and rigid religious system,

it does not fully endorse
Anne's actions, either.

Becoming a woman will change Anne,
but not only for the better.

Hold me close.
Take me and make me happy.

This is the beginning of what I called
the fourth act of the film,

which corresponds
to act three of the play.

In the play, six months
are supposed to have passed

since the end of the last act

and the consummation
of Anne's affair with Martin,

but here we get no such indication.

We are not shown any documents,

but instead we have the Bible
from which Absalon reads.

Anne's awakening
has emboldened her considerably,

and she proceeds
to subvert the holy writ,

reading from the Song of Songs
not as an act of devotion,

but as a way of surreptitiously
speaking words of love and passion

to Martin across the table.

Merete understands
what is going on,

and she interrupts the Bible reading,

but it is clear that the balance of power
in the household has shifted.

Anne will no longer meekly submit
to the strict rules

Merete has hitherto
been able to enforce.

Anne has dressed herself
in about as frivolous a costume, I guess,

as it is possible for her to wear,

her bonnet, collar and cuffs
all edged with lacy frippery.

(Humming)

She hums a happy tune,

clearly something
that she isn't supposed to do,

and she will proceed
to directly defy Merete

over this, admittedly trifling matter.

Will you be quiet?

(Continues humming)

Anne's gesture of defiance

might also have evoked a
powerful response in occupied Denmark.

During the occupation,

there were a number of films about
unmarried women becoming pregnant.

One was Dreyer's documentary
Good Mothers,

Danish title M�drehj�lpen,

about the Mothers' Aid organisation

which had been established
to help such unfortunates.

But there were also
a number of fiction films,

and they all took
a non-condemnatory stance.

There were popular songs as well

saying that love should be free,

and it is quite likely
that contemporary audiences

were primed to regard free love
as a kind of freedom fighting.

Denmark had its greatest ever baby boom
during and immediately after the war,

but there are probably
other explanations for this.

Martin is clearly not quite comfortable
with the situation.

Dreyer wrote only a brief
personality sketch of Martin,

which says that: "he is sincere and honest
in his feelings for Anne,

"but he is inwardly disjointed,
weak and vague

"and without the courage which,
when the great choice must be made,

"bears beyond life and into death."

The great choice is, of course,
the one he must make

at the end of the film,

where he accepts the idea that
he must have been bewitched by Anne

and abandons her
to face the flames alone.

In the screenplay, Dreyer writes
of the scene we are watching

that it is intended to show
that the "erotic initiative" lies with Anne.

And through the acting one must sense
that it happens this way

the way it has happened
many times before.

Kiss me.

Then I'll kiss you.

Because of the suddenly
awakened passion,

she is the stronger of the two

and strong enough
to overcome his resistance

when he begins to feel remorse.

The exchange of glances
between the two lovers,

shot through the weave
of the needlework screen,

is visually striking,

the more so because Dreyer uses
this kind of shot, reverse-shot cutting

quite sparingly in this film.

It also makes us aware
of the empty space in the pattern,

the significance of which
will shortly be made clear.

During the occupation,

there were a number of Danish films
about obsessive love affairs,

evidently inspired by the sombre
French dramas of the pre-war years

like Marcel Carn�'s films,
Quai des brumes

and Daybreak or Le Jour Se l�ve.

The Danish films featured
tragic stories of people

so much in the grip of their passions
that they were powerless to resist.

One was even called Obsession,
Bes�ttelse in Danish.

It came out in 1944
and tells the story

of the obsessive love of an older man
for a calculating young woman.

The Postman Always Rings Twice

seems to have been
a significant source of inspiration,

although the film
isn't an outright adaptation

like Visconti's 1942
Italian film Ossessione.

The title of the Danish film,
Bes�ttelse,

is a word which also means
both possession,

as in demonic possession,

and occupation,
as in the German occupation.

In the screenplay,
Dreyer uses the word "bes�ttelse"

in a comment
about the following scene

to describe the way Anne has become
possessed by her passions.

"As for Anne, she is completely
filled by her passion,

"which is so strong that
it pushes all other feelings aside

"and breaks down all inhibitions.

"Her love for Martin has become
a sort of obsession, bes�ttelse.

"From that comes her ruthlessness
and selfishness."

Can't it wait?
I was looking forward to...

The ruthlessness Dreyer talks about
is perhaps an unconscious one,

but it is evident that she has absolutely
no consideration for Absalon's feelings.

She may not have heard of his hope
to be "young with the young",

but it is shattered almost
as soon as it is expressed.

And now Absalon and we discover

that the missing part
of the needlework image

will show a small child.

The screenplay describes
Absalon's reaction.

"Absalon nods to himself

"as if he understood that in her work,

"Anne in fact gives expression
to her unconscious longings."

Absalon's inability
to provide Anne with a child

is of course an emblem
of his impotence.

And while Anne and Martin
frolic through verdant nature,

Absalon is called away
to sit at the deathbed of Laurentius,

the fanatical priest who questioned
Herlofs Marte in the torture chamber.

One of Dreyer's recurrent devices,
particularly in his silent films,

is filming characters, often lovers,
reflected in still water

and Dreyer uses it again here.

It is a device which does not necessarily
carry a fixed meaning.

Indeed, a bit further on,

Anne and Martin will offer
divergent interpretations

of a tree overhanging the water,

both of them imposing their personal
preoccupations on the image.

Dreyer again intercuts
the idyllic nature scenes of the lovers

with interior scenes of Absalon
at Laurentius' deathbed,

creating an obvious contrast

but also ensuring that death
is never far from our thoughts.

Day of Wrath
could certainly be counted

among those Danish films of the
occupation period I mentioned before

which tell stories of people in the grip
of dark forces beyond their control.

And one might argue that
there are interesting similarities

between those stories
and the situation of Denmark,

which clung to the idea of normalcy

even though the country was completely
controlled by Hitler's Germany.

However, when Dreyer
was interviewed after the war

at a time when it would have been safe
and perhaps even advantageous for him

to say that Day of Wrath had been
a work of covert anti-Nazi propaganda,

he denied having had such intentions.

Moreover, it would have been
an extremely risky proposition

to try to smuggle anti-Nazi allegories
past the censors,

and one that a sensible film producer
would be almost certain to refuse.

There are a number of
celebrated instances

of satires directed against the Germans

under the guise of describing infestations
of weevils, rats, or similar pests.

Yet the Germans easily recognised them
for what they were and had them banned.

Day of Wrath, however, was not only
allowed into the cinemas without protest,

it was given a glowing recommendation
in the Kopenhagener Soldatenzeitung,

the official news magazine
of the German occupying forces.

Its reviewer lamented the
narrow-mindedness of the Danish critics,

who were largely hostile to the film,

and suggested that
if Denmark was too small a country

for an artist of Dreyer's stature
to have the opportunity to use his skills,

"it will be in the interest
of European film art

"that he be given
such opportunities elsewhere",

meaning, of course, in Germany.

As one might imagine,

Dreyer was anything but eager
to be enrolled

in the Nazi propaganda apparatus,

and he left Denmark
and went to Sweden,

which it was still possible,
though difficult, to do legally,

and he spent the rest
of the war years in Stockholm.

The rowboat used by the lovers
is in fact an exact reconstruction

of an original 17th-century design

which Dreyer had made for the film
at substantial expense.

Dreyer was committed to realism,

and he painstakingly
researched historical details.

This realism was never a goal in itself,

but in order to free up
his creative imagination,

Dreyer needed to feel certain
that every detail was correct.

Anne looks up and sees
the tree reflected in the water.

- It is bowed in sorrow.
- No, in longing.

In sorrow for us.

In longing for its reflection
in the water.

We can no more be parted
than the tree and its reflection.

This suggestive bit of dialogue
does more than delineate the characters.

It is not only to them that the surroundings
seem filled with significance.

We, the audience, can hardly escape
a similar impression.

The systematic way
Dreyer uses the contrast

between indoors and outdoors,
for instance,

encourages us
to attach symbolic meaning to both.

Each locale becomes meaningful,

not just a place where
the logic of the action takes us.

The sparseness of the sets
also contributes to this impression.

Obviously, the film takes place
in a puritanical, ascetic world,

where ornament and worldly goods
are frowned upon,

and the sets are arguably just a realistic
rendering of such an environment.

Nevertheless, the visual impression
remains one of abstraction,

of spaces cleansed
of all unnecessary clutter,

so that only significant objects remain.

The slow pace and extreme
deliberateness of the film

is also important.

Again, the environment provides
a certain justification for this,

but it is nevertheless clear

that events never move so fast
as to leave the spectator breathless.

On the contrary, we are given ample time
to let everything sink in.

This allows us time to think about
what we see

and wonder what it means.

And the film is so carefully crafted

that we are in no doubt
that it means something,

that nothing we see
is merely accidental.

The significance of some details
may be relatively obvious.

That Anne is no longer
wearing her bonnet

and has let her hair fall free,
shining in the light,

clearly indicates that she and Martin
have just made love.

But in many cases, no simple,
unequivocal interpretation offers itself.

I think this impression is extremely
important in accounting for the fact

that many commentators
have described Dreyer

as a spiritual
or transcendental filmmaker

and that his films,
including Day of Wrath,

are often thought of
as being particularly religious.

This is not necessarily because
the anti-clericalism I've spoken about

has been overlooked or ignored.

Rather, the slow pace, the deliberately
understated and restrained style,

the lack of attention-grabbing action

all allow the spectator time
to think about what is not shown.

Obviously, what goes on inside the heads
of the characters is very important here.

Much of the drama of Day of Wrath
is psychological.

But the world of the spiritual is also,
almost by definition, invisible.

And so, because Dreyer's later films
emphasise the invisible,

the intangible, the otherworldly,

it is not surprising that they produce
a strong impression of the spiritual

in many spectators.

That such an impression
was intentionally sought by Dreyer

is shown by the letter to the projectionists
I quoted at the beginning.

Besides writing
about the sound volume,

Dreyer also has a recommendation
about the projection lamp.

He writes, "To achieve an impression
of the mysterious,

"the photography is, by design,
particularly soft.

"Too strong a lamp will dispel this effect
and make the pictures misty.

"It is therefore recommended in cinemas
with very strong lamps

"not to put too much light on

"but to try to find the light that
best brings out the mood of the images."

We may also turn to Dreyer's
well-known essay Thoughts on my Craft,

originally a lecture given
at the Edinburgh film festival in 1955.

Here, Dreyer says that he believes

that abstraction is the way
for film art to develop.

He continues: "The artist must
describe inner, not outer life.

"The capacity to abstract is essential
to all artistic creation.

"Abstraction allows the director
to get outside the fence

"with which naturalism
has surrounded his medium.

"It allows his films to be
not merely visual, but spiritual.

"The director must share his own
artistic and spiritual experiences

"with the audience.

"Abstraction will give him
a chance of doing it,

"of replacing objective reality
with his own subjective interpretation."

This, of course,
raises questions about

what that subjective interpretation is,

but as I've already said,

it may be very difficult
to find satisfactory answers.

One important Dreyer scholar,
David Bordwell,

has even written that it is impossible.

"We cannot," Bordwell writes,
"interpret the long walks,

"the pauses, the camera movements
as significant,

"in some way representing psychology,
historical setting or atmosphere.

"Instead, we must recognise
that such rhythmic devices

"are in a literal sense quite empty,
barren of significance.

"They mean nothing."

Instead, Bordwell suggests

that Dreyer is deliberately exploring

various pictorial
and compositional patterns

because he is interested
in their specifically aesthetic effects.

Dreyer's own pronouncements, however,
are not easy to square with this claim.

On various occasions,

he was sternly critical
of camera movements

and other cinematographic effects

which seemed flashy
or self-indulgent,

effects that were not firmly tied
to the needs of the narrative.

Yet Dreyer was himself
not entirely consistent.

One can point to several cases

where Dreyer himself does things
that he has cautioned against

in interviews or published essays.

On the other hand, one should not,
as at least one writer has done,

question Dreyer's commitment to realism

with the observation that he has included

an evidently anachronistic object
in his set,

namely, the heavy sideboard
in the background of this shot,

on which the date 1639
is clearly visible.

The film is set in 1623.

Rather, it is evidence of Dreyer's
commitment to authenticity

that he has had an actual piece
of 17th-century furniture

brought on to the set,

very likely with the intention
of helping the actors

to get into the mood of the period.

A bit of dialogue that again emphasises
the propensity of the characters

to look for meaning in their surroundings

was left out of the finished film
at this point.

In the next shot, which for the first time
shows Absalon outdoors

as he struggles home
through the tempestuous weather,

Absalon in the screenplay looks up
at the storm-rent sky and says:

"Look at the sky, the clouds.

"They are like strange letters.

"But where is the one
who can decipher the writing?"

Yet if we look carefully
at a shot like this one,

it is clear that Bordwell
is on to something important.

Bordwell points out that Dreyer's lighting
here and elsewhere in the film

is strikingly unrealistic.

A lot of the light
in these night-time interiors

seems to be coming
from high above the characters.

But neither the candles
inside the room

nor moonlight entering
through the low windows

could plausibly produce
this kind of illumination.

The light has an extraordinary way
of catching Anne's hair

and especially her eyes
as she softly glides across the room,

the camera following
her sinuous movements.

Bordwell observes:
"As Anne circles Martin,

"she passes through
thicknesses of light and shadow

"which are never projected
onto the floor

"but which endow her with an aura
at once mysterious and sexual."

Bordwell has been much criticised
by other writers

for the way he stresses
the aesthetic aspect of moving pictures,

because it supposedly banishes
the human interest

and significance of the film,

replacing it with an arid formalism.

This charge is unjust, however,

and I think his ideas help
to illuminate what Dreyer is doing,

cinematographically speaking.

While he is reluctant to read meaning
into the film's visuals,

Bordwell makes clear
that they have functions.

The unrealistic lighting,
for instance,

"functions to imbue
the various characters of the film

"with a supernatural aura."

Anne now pronounces
her wish that Absalon might die.

Yes, I often think if he was dead...

- You wish him dead?
- No.

I only said "if"...

And note the billy goat,
horned, bearded,

like the devil presiding
over the witches' Sabbaths.

No, it was as though death
brushed my sleeve.

The next shot is held steady
for more than a minute,

underscoring the idyllic calm
of this brief moment of hopeful dreaming.

Dreyer said in a later interview:

"I very much believe in long takes.

"You gain on all levels.

"And the work with the actors
becomes much more interesting,

"for it creates a sort of ensemble,
a unity, for each scene,

"which inspires them

"and allows them to live the relationship
more intensely and more accurately."

Dreyer attached
great importance to casting.

His understanding of acting

was influenced by
his reading of Stanislavsky

and by working with some
of his pupils in the 1920s.

But he also subscribed
to the somewhat dubious idea

that actors should
basically play themselves,

that the director should cast actors

who were similar to the characters
they were going to play

in mentality and temperament.

He explained to
an American interviewer in 1947:

"The people one uses
should know how to act,

"for where there is no gold
you cannot bring it out.

"However, the main thing is
to have actors fitting the characters.

"Then one only has to let them
follow their inspiration.

"I always try to make them
forget the camera

"and be as natural as possible,

"and I have as few rehearsals as I can
to avoid stiffness."

Considering how carefully choreographed
Dreyer's shots are,

how the actors must move and stand
in very precisely determined positions

to catch the light
in exactly the right way,

it is a wonder
that this method could work.

Of course, there have been those
who felt that it didn't work.

When the film first came out,
one of the Copenhagen reviewers wrote:

"The entire film has been done
in a tight and brilliantly cold,

"but dreadfully slow tempo.

"The characters float across the screen.

"The actors carry out precise,

"but extremely unnatural
changes of position

"and the remnants of the difficulty

"of hammering these stylised movements
into the actors

"is felt as an undercurrent
in many scenes."

The actors move in exactly
the way Dreyer wants them to.

In many cases, their gestures
are specified in the screenplay.

For instance, after this line,

the screenplay states
that Anne avoids Absalon's gaze

and seems indifferent to his anguish,
and then glides into shadow.

There might appear
to be a contradiction

between this detailed choreography
and the desire for authenticity

apparent in Dreyer's wish
for actors who could live their roles.

But in a sense, this tension
between stylisation and realism

is central to Dreyer's art.

In the 1955 Thoughts on my Craft
lecture, he says:

"Every creative artist
is confronted by the same task.

"He must be inspired by reality,
then move away from it

"in order to give his work
the form provoked by his inspiration.

"The director must be free
to transform reality

"so that it becomes consistent
with the inspired, simplified image

"left in his mind.

"Reality must obey
the director's aesthetic sense."

In a slightly expanded version
of the lecture,

Dreyer added:

"The realities must be forced into
a simplified and foreshortened design,

"and be resurrected in a purified form

"in a kind of timeless,
psychological realism."

The quest for simplification means
that set dressings should be removed

until only
the most significant ones are left,

which of course contributes
to the austere feel

which the puritan milieu
would anyway require.

But it also produces an impression

that the spaces are, in a sense,
pregnant with meaning.

With respect to the dialogue,

the process of simplification
and purification

means that anything that is simply
insignificant chatter is deleted.

The remaining lines,
on the other hand,

are delivered in a slow,
deliberate manner

in order to allow
each of them to sink in,

giving the audience time
to consider their import.

I never asked
if you wanted to be mine.

I just took you.

I took your best years.

A wrong that can never be put right.

Yes, it's true.

You have taken my best years,

and you have taken my joy.

I have burned for somebody
I could love.

I have dreamt of a child
to hold in my arms.

Simplification also means restraint,
however.

Adding extra emotional effect
through over-empathic delivery

was clearly something
Dreyer discouraged.

Lines are spoken so evenly

that the slightest emphasis
is strongly felt,

that a lifted eyebrow
or a quiver of the hand

becomes powerfully expressive.

The power of conviction
carried in a scene like this one

has much to do with
its extraordinary economy of means.

We have no need to believe
in strange psychic powers,

no problem in accepting
that the old man's heart would give out

when faced with the hatred
in Anne's calm voice and burning eyes.

Martin!

Martin!

(Screams)

Of course, this restraint
may also have the effect

of making certain scenes
seem under-dramatic, as it were,

and this was a frequent complaint
in the first reviews.

One critic wrote that:

"the film seemed crushingly boring
and enormously tiresome

"because of its slowness,
its lingering manner,

"and because it didn't really
grip and shake you.

"The big scenes crumbled into nothing

"through Dreyer's ability
to drain the drama

"from even the most violent incidents."

With Absalon's death,
the drama enters its final act.

Dreyer does, in a rather
demonstrative way,

suppress much of the drama
inherent in the situations he portrayed.

But this has a function,

and one that is linked
to the impression of meaningfulness

his stylistic devices tend to produce.

It suggests to the spectator
that the real drama is unseen, inside.

This brings us back
to the 1955 lecture,

where he concludes
his deliberations about abstraction

and the careful simplification of reality
in the following way:

"The director's remodelled reality
must still be something

"that his audience can recognise
and believe in.

"It is very important for
the first attempts at abstraction

"to be made with tact and discretion.

"Should the attempt prove successful,
enormous prospects open up.

"The film may never become
three-dimensional,

"but by means of abstraction

"it may be possible to introduce
fourth and fifth dimensions."

In interviews from that time,

Dreyer explicitly links his talk
of fourth and fifth dimensions

to references to
parapsychological theories

that will eventually give us a natural
explanation to things of the supernatural.

Yet precisely because his style
serves to evoke the intangible,

that which must remain
unseen and unspoken,

it easily eludes any attempt to attach
any explicit conceptual meaning to it,

whether religious or pseudoscientific.

In the case of Day of Wrath,
it seems evident from the screenplay

that what really interests Dreyer

is the emotional relationships
between the characters,

not whether the witches of history
were really psychics.

Indeed, this scene
points in the direction

of a naturalistic explanation
for the events.

We are back at the spot
where Anne and Martin first made love.

The camera is in the same place,

but Anne can no longer exert
her influence over Martin,

supernatural or otherwise.

She calls out to him, in a tone of voice,
the screenplay instructs,

"which must resemble her voice
on that moonlit night

"when she called Martin to her side."

Martin!

Martin!

Martin!

But he does not come.

There is a further point I wish to discuss
about the style of Day of Wrath -

the fact that many of the original
reviewers called it "silent-film-like".

It was well known at the time that Dreyer
hadn't made a feature film in ten years,

and he was thought of as being
essentially a silent-film director,

a relic of an outmoded
kind of moviemaking.

And it was easy for those reviewers
who were bored by Day of Wrath

to dismiss it by saying
its slow pace was silent-film-like.

But this claim is completely wrong,

both about silent films
and Dreyer's picture.

Dreyer was well aware of this

and insisted over and over again
that the style of Day of Wrath

was in fact completely different
from that of a silent picture,

and intentionally so.

Dreyer explained in an interview

that "large sections of the film
have been made in a form

"possible only in talking films
and quite unthinkable in silent film.

"It is a form
which seeks to create calm

"in contrast to the restless flickering
of the silent film."

The key element was
the slowly moving camera,

often tracking and panning
at the same time.

Dreyer spoke of this device
as "floating close-ups."

He explained in an interview:

"These floating close-ups

"demand greater care
with the composition of the image,

"since that is changing
second by second.

"Thereby unexpected and
surprisingly fine effects may arise."

In his 1943 lecture, he elaborated:

"Instead of using short,
quick, shifting pictures,

"I introduced what I called
long, gliding close-ups

"that follow the players
in a rhythmic way,

"feeling their way from one to another

"just as the action is taking place
with one and then the other.

"In spite of, or perhaps
more correctly, I should say

"because of this almost
wave-formed rhythm,

"the scene with the two young people
by Absalon's coffin

"is one of the parts
that touches the public most strongly."

Did you have the power
to wish him dead?

Answer me!

You're sending me to the flames!

Did you have the power
to wish him dead?

Be reasonable, Martin.

I love you.
I love you, that is my only crime.

Did you wish him dead?

Don't torture yourself...

This shot, three quarters
of a minute in length,

is the most extreme example
of the technique,

and nothing like it is found
in any of the films of the 1930s

for which Dreyer expressed his admiration

and which he said helped him
develop his calm sound-film style -

films like Quai des brumes,
The Petrified Forest,

and William Wyler's
Wuthering Heights.

There certainly could never be
a shot like that in a silent picture.

Intertitles would break up
the continuity of the shot,

and the tension established
between the person shown

and the off-screen other

would be impossible to reproduce.

The camera has circled with Martin
as he stepped away from Anne

to resume his vigil
at the foot of the coffin.

Anne re-enters the picture
to re-establish her closeness to Martin.

She seeks reassurances from him
that he will stand by her,

not leaving her to face
the wrath of the community alone.

He assures her that he will

but our knowledge
of his weak, guilt-ridden nature

gives us good reason
to worry that he won't.

Martin...

I love you and you love me.

If we have sinned together,
we must stay together in misfortune.

But, in the end,
Anne will be left alone.

Several of Dreyer's
most important figures

are people
whose passionate convictions

cut them off from other people,

from the communities
to which they belong -

Joan of Arc,
Anne, Johannes, Gertrud.

It is evident that
many of them are women.

Their isolation and
their difficulties are deepened

by the fact that they live
in male-dominated societies.

Another of Dreyer's
elaborate camera movements

is led off by the voice of doom

in the person of one
of the choirboys singing a hymn.

The camera circles leftward,

like the camera movement
in the torture chamber.

A leftwards camera movement
was also used to show the grandstand

from which the assembled clergymen
watched the burning of Herlofs Marte.

Once again we pass
a row of bearded faces,

the serious men
who sent one woman to her death

and will soon send another.

These men embody the inflexible
and pitiless law of their community,

as do the various writings
we have seen along the way.

Both the documents and
the scroll of the Dies Irae hymn

speak of nothing
but doom and judgment.

And we cannot doubt
that their invisible authors are male,

like the heavenly father looking down
and the dead earthly father looking up.

This is a funeral,

but as in the text of the hymn,
it will also become a tribunal,

a scene of judgement
held before the face of God.

We cannot take any comfort
in the prospect,

because it is obvious
from the entire thrust of the drama

that Anne's doom has been sealed.

Martin delivers a eulogy for his father,

and the screenplay describes it
in the following way:

"He is deeply moved,

"and his speech,
stiff and formal at first,

"gradually develops into
a personal confession to the dead man."

Father, you were so good to me...

We are meant to be touched
by Martin's grief,

by his guilt over his betrayal
of his father.

And this betrayal is real enough.

It isn't just the oppressive laws
of this society

that makes it wrongful.

If you were alive,
how much better a son I would be.

It is the weight of the guilt

over the injustice he has done
against a father he loved dearly

that causes his courage to fail
when Anne needs him most.

One word more...

Yet the women are not simply
innocent victims.

Anne will be destroyed
by another woman,

one who is
what Anne most yearns to be:

a mother.

In the world Dreyer presents us with,

there is no hope of freedom.

Even Anne,
with all her beauty and passion,

can in the end only conceive
of her desires

as satanic in origin, as witchcraft,

and so, simply by expressing them,

she invites her own destruction.

I've quoted some of the harsh criticisms

that the reviewers directed at the film
when it first came out.

Since Day of Wrath
is today held by many

to be the greatest film
ever made in Denmark,

it is tempting to seek a reason
for this great divergence of opinion.

One of Dreyer's biographers,
Maurice Drouzy,

suggested that it was because
the critics in 1943 were too obtuse

to notice the film's
relentless dissection

of the soul-chilling evil

of an oppressive,
totalitarian belief system.

Of course, even if they had noticed
any parallels to the present,

they would not have been able to say so,

since the press was carefully scrutinised
by Nazi officials.

But they could have expressed
a more favourable opinion.

As I've argued before,

during the occupation,
people were highly sensitive

to anything that might seem to contain
a call for or even a hope of liberation.

But in Day of Wrath
one looks in vain for hope,

and I think this very bleakness

is part of the reason
for the critics' dislike of the film.

Once the war was over,

Day of Wrath was quickly hailed
as a masterpiece.

The critic Dilys Powell wrote
after its premiere in England in 1947:

"The film will, I think, be remembered
for its realistic treatment of the incredible,

"for its vicious tension,

"for the unrivalled horror
of its picture of human callousness."

(Bell tolls)

With the evil one's help?

Martin recoils from Anne,

and Dreyer's screenplay
describes her reaction.

"As Anne sits there
in front of the stately bishop,

"she is no longer the obedient wife
of master Absalon

"and even less
the dreamy, fiery lover of Martin,

"but just a young woman
bereft of all illusions.

"It is as if everything
has stopped for her.

"She shakes her head as if faced
with something she cannot comprehend.

"She feels lonely and
brought completely to ground,

"but it is not the feeling of danger
that has brought her to ground,

"nor fear of the fire,

"but only the thought
that Martin failed her, betrayed her.

"It is more than she can bear.

"The love for Martin is
the most important thing in her life,

"and it has been ripped away.

"Therefore, at a stroke,
life no longer has any meaning for her.

"Even living has become
of no concern to her."

The tragedy is drawing to a close.

And Dreyer will end it with a close-up,
well over a minute long,

where a series of deep
and intense emotions

will almost imperceptibly illuminate
Anne's face,

before the return of the Dies Irae scroll
and the dark shadow of the cross

will mark her doom.

I will let this close-up run its course,
let it sink in,

before making one final comment.

Yes, I murdered you
with the help of the evil one.

And I have lured your son into my power
with the help of the evil one.

Now you know.

Now you know.

I'm seeing you through tears,

but nobody is coming
to wipe them away.

I have said quite a few things
about technique in this commentary,

but I would like to round it off
with the concluding remark

from Dreyer's 1943 lecture
about film style:

"Nobody who has seen my films
can have any doubt

"that technique to me
is the means and not the end,

"and that the end has been to give
the spectator an enriching experience."