Much to the admiration and gratitude of New York cinephiles such as yours truly (that is, young and urban and eager), BAMcinématek in Brooklyn has been running a retrospective of Carl Theodor Dreyer films during the second half of March. Beginning with a sold-out screening of The Passion of Joan of Arc and continuing through what I’m told will be a sold-out run of Vampyr screenings tonight, the series has shown a good deal of the master filmmaker’s silent cinema as well as his later, sound masterpieces. The silent pictures before Joan are mostly unavailable on Region 1 DVD (and those that are do not come well recommended), but thanks to those helpful guides at The Criterion Collection we have fine, restored, digital versions of Joan and each successive masterpiece (one per decade) that followed.
This much is predictable: part of the fun of a retrospective for me is the pleasure of seeing cinema exhibited as it should be—large, loud, altogether impressive—since I have no plasma television, no surround sound, and more often than not I appreciate seeing such films as these in friendly company. However, this should not stop you from exploring these elegant sphinx films at home if you could not make it to the series. For starters, Dreyer’s cycle is as fertile an education in the cinema as one may find since each film deploys a singular approach to the medium’s capacities for storytelling. Add to that: together they build an image of film history that stands outside time stamps: none of the five appear dated in the way, say, Marnie may (made the same year as Gertrud), or, to pick a descendant, something like Time of the Wolf howls of its era. Part of this is due to Dreyer’s lack of interest, so to speak, in documenting anything “of the moment” since each film is, to some degree, a period piece. Therefore, it’s best to look at these films as lessons in looking. It’s just easier, sometimes, to pay attention when forced to by the dark of the auditorium.
So why, you may ask, if it took a self-proclaimed cinephile such as me until this tardy moment to find Dreyer, should you bother? What kept me from him? Or, him from me? Well, I stayed away for a few simple factors that can be reduced to one baseline reason: with all else available (and demanding), so-reported dour Scandinavian cinema about faith never sounded like that much fun. And, to be fair, Dreyer’s films do not need you. But you may need them. You’ll have to trust me on this one. You may even have to believe me.
To start this dialogue, I should like to point you to the series of posts I have contributed to The Auteurs’ Notebook tracking my progression through the films. You can click here to jump straight over to that categorical feed, or you can click here to see a link dump post at my home-base blog, VINYL IS HEAVY, with specific guides to those pieces (as well as other helpful stops across the internet).
The series began, as did my relationship with Dreyer beforehand, with The Passion of Joan of Arc, which remains Dreyer’s most famous film. You can learn a lot about the face looking at this film. You will see that it projects as much as it protects; and that the face, in close-up, is all expression. The close-up is not about mirroring, or inviting, you. If, by its final fade out, you have truly seen Joan, you will recognize your separateness: that you cannot identify with her, nor should you, unless you are a ghost. No, to watch this one is to see what Dreyer himself calls a realized mysticism: finding the soul’s expression in “real” details, like the faces, like that arm pumping blood.
Day of Wrath followed Joan on the program and boy if it didn’t daze me. I am still processing all its complications, and desire to see it again, but I do not know when that will be. Ostensibly about witch hunts and young lovers in the 17th century, Wrath is the kind of film that helps sell the Dreyer mythology of an artist outside of time making austere films with no interest in simply satisfying his audience—if he even thought of his audience as such. Upon first viewing, I should like to say that Wrath can teach one about narrative ambiguity more than any of the other later films for the simple fact that Dreyer presents as many perspectives on the film (from characters within the film) story as there are characters acting in this world. This leads us to see how Wrath forms a world where there very well may be witches, where a curse under one’s breath may in fact kill a man. You either accept it or not. Another part of the myth: all these films concern faith.
Faith is front and center in Ordet as one of its characters, the middle son Johannes, thinks he is Jesus. This, naturally, poses a problem for his family. Like any good story, Ordet is spurred by crisis, but even its picture of crisis is quiet and patient. It’s a film out to wipe the frame clean, to negotiate a space of belief with its audience in some kind of God, be it Christian or cinematic, though the film rejects any closed system as a church might provide. Of all Dreyer’s films, I could probably watch this one most frequently.
Though it may be one of the most singular masterpieces of dream cinema ever, I do not know when I will sit down with Gertrud for a second time. It’s a film of stasis, it bleeds time. It’s a series of “scenes” structured around people sitting and talking and sitting and talking. If Ordet takes patience, Gertrud takes an act of will. Of course, Gertrud is not simply “a bore” or anything reductive like that (though plenty will tell you that is how the film was received upon its premiere); no, the film is as good a ghost story as you will see. What I learned watching this film is that all of Dreyer’s work is about the figure of the ghost in the world: how we can become shadows of ourselves, how we are in fact shadows, how we cast our shadows on others, how our shadows fade quicker than we hope or imagine or expect.
Vampyr will try to convince you that some of these shadows will suck you dry.
So this piece is not out to recommend a purchase, nor even to nudge your Netflix queue all that stridently, but to say that your life might get richer if you allow it to absorb some Dreyer. I told my friend Danny that these are films I feel I need to age with, but I don’t know when I’ll be seeing them next. I know I’ll need a break, and I know I won’t be buying the Box Set any time soon, but I am happy to know they will be around and an available part of my cinematic life.
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