Why Carl Theodor Drey­er is one of cinema’s great­est ever directors

There are those undis­put­ed mas­ters of cin­e­ma whose names have become part of the lex­i­con of film crit­i­cism – such is the dis­tinc­tive­ness of their style. Yet while remov­ing Carl Th. Drey­er from the annals of cin­e­ma would undoubt­ed­ly result in a vast chasm in both the her­itage of Dan­ish cul­ture and Euro­pean film his­to­ry, his is not a name read­i­ly appro­pri­at­ed in film analy­sis and dis­cus­sions of visu­al rhetoric.

Dreyer’s con­tri­bu­tion to both silent and sound cin­e­ma was immense, hav­ing mas­tered the lan­guage of silent expres­sion before mak­ing the tran­si­tion into sound, and as such his influ­ence con­tin­ues to rever­ber­ate through­out cin­e­ma. To coin­cide with the BFI’s release of The Carl Drey­er Col­lec­tion on Blu-ray, here’s a look back at four of Dreyer’s most influ­en­tial works.

A silent social satire cen­tred around the theme of domes­tic­i­ty, Mas­ter of the House is iron­i­cal­ly brand­ed the silent out­sider among the sound films that com­prise this piece. It con­ve­nient­ly sits at the start, like an over­ture to an opera that will unfold over four acts; con­clud­ing with an aria from the title char­ac­ter of Dreyer’s final film, Gertrud.

Drey­er scores his com­ic but cut­ting satir­i­cal over­ture with lighter tones that dark­ened across his pro­ceed­ing work as he became pre­oc­cu­pied with the super­nat­ur­al and faith; death and para­noia. Any pre­oc­cu­pa­tion with pre­serv­ing domes­tic bliss in 1925 would off­set dra­mat­i­cal­ly when Gertrud took to the screen near­ly four decades later.

In a comedic tale of role rever­sal and domes­tic trans­for­ma­tion, with Mas­ter of the House Drey­er cre­ates a sharp social cri­tique of the ways in which gen­ders are defined. In par­tic­u­lar, he taps into the post World War One cli­mate of the capa­ble and self-suf­fi­cient woman that chal­lenged pre­vi­ous def­i­n­i­tions entrenched with­in years of tradition.

While Mas­ter of the House intro­duces the idea of domes­tic­i­ty as a stage for comedic satire, Drey­er would con­tin­ue to explore deep­er human issues beyond the realm of com­e­dy. There­in he would define him­self as a reflec­tive film­mak­er and Mas­ter of the House’s strong women would be fore­run­ners to Day of Wrath​’s Anne, Ordet​’s Inger and Gertrud. Col­lec­tive­ly they infer Dreyer’s inter­est and fas­ci­na­tion with women that he empow­ers with­in his nar­ra­tive fic­tion to cre­ate a jour­ney whose ebb and flow is one of hap­pi­ness and suffering.

The boom­ing music and fiery words of scrip­ture are an omi­nous pre-cur­sor to this tale of domes­tic­i­ty, although they are fit­ting as the tale that will unfold is one shroud­ed in para­noia, sus­pi­cion and accu­sa­tions of witch­craft. If in Mas­ter of the House Drey­er was pre-occu­pied with sus­tain­ing domes­tic peace, then Day of Wrath is a tale of frac­tured domes­tic­i­ty and women divid­ed rather than unit­ed. Here there is a fight for suprema­cy over the domes­tic set­ting that is accen­tu­at­ed by the oppo­si­tion of the young wife/­daugh­ter-in-law Anne and old­er moth­er/­moth­er-in-law Merete.

Whilst Day of Wrath is not to be defined as a pure blood hor­ror, Drey­er bor­rows the arche­typ­al premise of witch­craft that is entrenched with the realm of hor­ror to deep­en the reli­gious shad­ows with deep shades of the super­nat­ur­al that shroud the domes­tic set­ting. These serve to frame Anne and her son-in-law Martin’s blos­som­ing love sto­ry as a flick­er­ing flame in the darkness.

Here Drey­er uses the domes­tic as a stage to explore the mis­guid­ed belief in reli­gious super­sti­tion that sees us naive­ly led astray by the irra­tional. The blend of the reli­gious and super­nat­ur­al with the per­son­al con­flicts crafts a tragedy out of which Anne emerges as one of cinema’s defin­ing trag­ic characters.

At its heart Wrath of God is a human sto­ry cen­tred upon one woman’s claus­tro­pho­bic exis­tence that has seen her life raped through a love­less depri­va­tion. Anne is the eter­nal vic­tim, and is vil­i­fied and con­demned for desir­ing the most human of desires. Day of Wrath is Dreyer’s tale of super­nat­ur­al domes­tic­i­ty, women divid­ed and con­dem­na­tion of a victim’s attempts to escape her claus­tro­pho­bic and love­less prison.

Spi­ralling out­ward from Day of Wrath, here Drey­er reimag­ines the para­bles whose sub­ject are of faith in what one can­not see. To dis­cuss the theme of domes­tic­i­ty in Dreyer’s fil­mog­ra­phy, Day of Wrath and Ordet togeth­er form an inte­gral sequence in which the former’s para­noia and blind faith in the super­nat­ur­al is off­set by the super­nat­ur­al emerg­ing from the shad­ows and reveal­ing itself in the latter.

While the domes­tic stage was shroud­ed in shad­ows of death and mur­der in Wrath of God (life tak­en), Ordet illu­mi­nates these shad­ows to be the giv­er of life. But before these shad­ows are dis­missed, Drey­er looks at domes­tic­i­ty in a broad­er sense, specif­i­cal­ly the expan­sion of the domes­tic through mar­riage. Here Drey­er explores how reli­gion in the hands of its fol­low­ers has the poten­tial to be a means of divi­sion: exclu­sive rather than inclusive.

If Day of Wrath is cen­tred around frac­tured domes­tic­i­ty, then Ordet returns Drey­er to his ear­li­er pre­oc­cu­pa­tion: its preser­va­tion. But just as the fam­i­ly is a cen­tral fig­ure with­in reli­gion – The Holy Fam­i­ly – so too does Drey­er cen­tre his explo­ration of faith and the super­nat­ur­al upon the strong nucle­us of his own nar­ra­tive families.

Dreyer’s final bow before the cur­tain descends shares an intrigu­ing rela­tion­ship with these three ear­li­er films. But on reflec­tion per­haps the ulti­mate jour­ney from Mas­ter of the House to Gertrud is the will­ing­ness of a hus­band to trans­form him­self to a woman’s uncom­pro­mis­ing stub­born­ness. And if Day of Wrath and Ordet were an explo­ration of faith, reli­gion and the super­nat­ur­al, then Mas­ter of the House and Gertrud book­end the study of the irra­tional with the rational.

As the final cur­tain on the domes­tic stage is read­ied to drop, what we wit­ness in Gertrud is a duel between domes­tic­i­ty and Gertrud who fer­vent­ly pur­sues love, and the desire to be the most desired part of her husband’s life. Gertrud looks back to the deter­mined Anne, and while she may pos­sess a greater inde­pen­dence to pur­sue her own course, both when the oppor­tu­ni­ty is there pur­sue with fer­vour that which they most desire: uncon­di­tion­al love. But this is where the com­par­i­son ends, as sim­i­lar­ly to the dis­tinc­tions between Wrath of God and Ordet, Anne breathes life into domes­tic­i­ty whilst Gertrud taketh its life. And so Gertrud shares a trag­ic fate, although a more sub­dued one com­pared to her predecessor.

Along­side Day of Wrath’s pes­simistic end­ing, Gertrud off­sets the opti­mistic end­ings of Mas­ter of the House and Ordet, sym­bol­ic of that jour­ney: the ebb and flow of hap­pi­ness and suffering.

The Carl Drey­er Col­lec­tion is avail­able now via shop​.bfi​.org​.uk