Carl Theodor Dreyer

Biography

The dumb period

Dreyer hid all its life the secrecy of its origins: wire naturalness of one controlling, Joséphine Nillson, which had given up it and died two years later at the time of an abortion, it was adopted in 1891 by the Dreyer family and accepted for name and first names those of his/her adoptive father. He discovered the truth only at age the seventeen years and hated his family of adoption which had surrounded it by little affection.

He exerted various trades between 1906 and 1912, of which that of journalist, whom he will not give up, signing for the press of the articles where he praises the merits of Griffith and of the Swedish scenario writers (Victor Sjöström, Mauritz Stiller) for better fustigating the mediocrity of the Danish cinema. Entered in 1912 in Nordisk Kompagni Films, it climbs the levels one by one there: writer of subtitles, scenario writer of forty films, assembler. It began its career of realizer in 1918 with the President , who left two years later, and in 1925, he was already the author of eight films. Dreyer, later, will not attach any price to its early works, if it is not with Mikaël (1924), a comedy putting in scene Berliner the artist middle of the years 1900, whose scenario precedes that of Gertrud .

It is however thanks to the public big hit of the one of these comedies, the Master of the Home (1925), that Dreyer was invited to come to work in France. He then saw himself entrusting by the vice-president of the film General society, the duke of Ayen, a manuscript composed by the writer Joseph Delteil, whom he altered to make the scenario of the Passion of Jeanne d' Arc (1928). Dreyer was interested in the life of Jeanne d' Arc since canonization of this one, in 1924. Its ambition was not to make a simple film of time, although he studied thoroughly the document concerning with the lawsuit of rehabilitation: he wanted “to interpret an anthem with the triumph of the heart on the life”. Remained to find the actress able to incarnate martyrdom: Lillian Gish, Madeleine Renaud was a time had a presentiment of. But it is on Renee Falconetti, a high-speed motorboat of the light comedies, that its choice went finally. The meeting was determining: during the first test, Dreyer believed to see with the small wrinkles, the marks of its face which this woman had had to know “many tests, many sufferings”. This face of pain became the subject even film, the surface on which Dreyer could reveal the Passion of the historical Jeanne d' Arc but also the true face of suffering humanity. The agreement between the author and his actress was perfect, in spite of the sacrifices which it had to authorize (the hair that it had to shave, intimacy that its face was to reveal) as well was high as well the idea as the two artists were made work which they wanted to reach, was strong the intuition as they would approach the most intact beauty only at the price the most believed of of nudities. The scenes having been turned in the chronological order, it is astonishing to see at which point the face of the actress changes between the beginning and the end of film. The stylization of framings slicing in the sharp one, the abstraction of the decorations, reduced to the main part and as gained by nudity of the faces, the emotional power of the assembly making follow one another plane of the victim and plans of its torturers, all contribute to make of this single film an upsetting work. A spectator could declare well at his exit: “As this woman had to suffer! ” without it being known if he spoke about Renee Falconetti, of its character or true the Jeanne d' Arc so much the film had made them indistinguishable.

Of Vampyr to Day of anger

The arrival of the talking films in 1928 did not make say to Dreyer which the cinema was going to disappear, as much of realizers of the dumb man thought it then. He regretted however that the first sound films were only filmed theater and he on the occasion to prove with Vampyr (1932) that the sound did not remove anything but added to the capacities of suggestion of the cinema. This film Fantastique was financed to him by the baron Nicolas de Gunzburg, who interpreted there the main role under the pseudonym of Julian West. Inspired of two news of Sheridan Fanu, it contributed to the success of the myth of the Vampire, after Nosferatu of Murnau (1922) and Dracula of Tod Browning (1931). If, by its religious topics, Vampyr can be close to the Passion of Jeanne d' Arc (it is question in both cases of the damnation or the hello of the heart), aesthetically, Dreyer seems to have taken the opposite course to its preceding film: as many this one was worked by the idea réincarner to the screen the face flesh martyrdom, as much Vampyr seems haunted by the immateriality of the cinematographic images. Dreyer thus makes watch of a technical virtuosity and a taste of the faking which one will not find in any of his other films: over-exposed and veiled images of outside, interior very contrasted, moving shades, overprintings, images ravelling with back, this luxury of effects contributes to create the atmosphere distressing clean with the fantastic account at the same time as it invites to a reflection on the nature of the images and their complicity with death. The film will remain thus famous for this sequence of a rare audacity where the camera films a burial by adopting the point of view of death. It is seen that Dreyer stuck more to the poetry of the kind and its spiritual implications that with the kind itself and the public was undoubtedly destabilized by this film of vampire where the vampire played a so secondary part. Its commercial failure moved away for a long time the scenario writer from the studios.

The ten years which followed were very difficult for the scenario writer: he fails to work in England, refuses to turn in Germany hitlérienne where an adaptation is proposed to him, a project of film in Somalia falls through, he sinks in the depression, gives up his career of scenario writer and does not devote itself any more but to journalism.

It is only in 1943, in full world war, that Dreyer found the plates to turn Jour of anger , an adaptation of the part Ann Pedersdotter of Hans Wiers-Jennsen. The subject in certain connections points out that of the Passion of Jeanne d' Arc : it acts in both cases of a historical film (the action of Jour of Anger is at the 17th century) in which an young woman is confronted with intolerance and fanaticism. The lawsuit in sorcery which opens film is even an obvious recovery of that of Jeanne. But the style and the thought of the author changed well since 1928. Aesthetically, the scenario writer does not seek any more his references on the side of Eisenstein or Griffith but tries a fusion of the theater and painting and composes his plans like alive tables. It is difficult, for this reason, to describe the plastic sumptuousness of the images of Jour of anger , which evoke in turn the scenes of kind and the corporative portraits of Dutch painting at the time of Rembrandt. Spiritually, the safety of its heroin, Anne, does not depend any more, like that of Jeanne, of an exclusive love of divine, but seems suspended with its achievement ici-bas in the spiritual and sensual union which it forms a time with her son-in-law, Martin. It will be enough to a walk in full nature so that the two lovers see reconstituting under their steps the lost Paradise and understand that it is not other garden for the man only that which flowers with the meeting of two beings, two flesh, two hearts.

Unfortunately, the film was not accommodated better at its exit than Vampyr and Dreyer spent several years after the war to be devoted to the realization of court-measurings.

Ordet and Gertrud

In 1952, the scenario writer accepted State the concession of a cinema, Dagmar Teatret, which it managed until the end of his life. It is there that place, on January 10th 1955 had, the first world one of its new film, Ordet ( the Word ), more than ten years after Jour of anger and like this one adapted of the theater. Dreyer had attended in 1932 the representation of the part of Kaj Munk and since 1933, in an press article, “the true talking films”, it evoked the idea to carry it to the screen. The manner that had the playwright to put the question of the faith simply it had immediately allured and the subject of Ordet directly met one of its older projects, on which he worked more particularly since 1949: that to turn a life of Jesus.

Ordet indeed considers the possibility of a new advent of Christ, in the person of Johannes, a son of peasant, who throughout film expresses himself by enigmatic parabolas. His/her parents, its neighbors, take it for simple spirit or insane, until it carries out at the end the miracle to bring back to the life his sister-in-law, died in layers. It is, of all its films, that where Dreyer pushes further the reflection which is in the middle of its work since the Passion of Jeanne d' Arc , namely the possibility of holiness in a universe dominated by the tepid ones, the fanatics and the skeptics. Like Jeanne, Johannes is in hillock with the brimades incrédules, because there remained faithful to the spiritual value of the message evangelic, against its temporal diverting, and will be needed the final miracle, triumphs over the love over death, so that order of the world and divine order are reconciled.

This unforgettable outcome when it was seen once would not be if upsetting for the spectator, whatever his beliefs, if Dreyer had not taken the party to register it in the most prosaic reality: outsides were turned in the parish even of Kaj Munk, in Veders, and the pieces of furniture which we see in the farm of the patriarch, Morten Borgen, which wanted to lend well the inhabitants of the surroundings are those. In the same spirit, the scenario writer chooses to reduce to the third the original dialog of the part, removing all in particular that deviated from the language most clearly and simplest to remain attentive with the only elements which gave flesh to the concrete and significant life of its characters. A good portion of the images of film can thus seem extracted from documentary on the country rich person life of Jutland, in the years 1930. But, as in Day of anger , the abstraction of the setting in scene, imposing with the actors a slow and soft diction, seizing their remarks in a gray half-light beads clean with meditation, playing with a perfect control of the quasi hypnotic effect produced by long sequence shots encircling the characters in close-ups, lightens little by little this decoration of its historical weight to open it on a mythical depth. It is this simplicity, this diagram of the style, fruit of the most erudite art, which makes us accept the final miracle like an upsetting obviousness, of which interpretation does not remain however captive of a strictly religious reading.

Ordet was a certain success and was worth in Dreyer with the Festival of Venice a Gold Lion for its work. It was not the same with its last film, Gertrud (1964), which accepted a disastrous reception. Criticisms were icy, reproaching film for being it. It was difficult to include/understand how the scenario writer who had carried the pathetic one at his end in the Passion of Jeanne d' Arc could present a film to this emptied point of his blood and as vampirized by a setting in scene of a formalism judged without heart. The subject of Gertrud is however not different from that of the Passion of Jeanne d' Arc , of Jour of anger or Ordet , of which it offers the secularized version, and the style of Dreyer is there only the esthetic result of elaborate formal research starting from Jour of anger .

Adapted of a part of Hjalmar Söderberg, the film puts in scene the beautiful character of a woman, Gertrud, taken between three men: a poet, of which it was formerly the mistress and that it does not like any more, one austere politician, that it married but that it liked forever, and a young musician, with which it falls in love and who becomes his lover. Gertrud then tells anything else only one setting with the tomb, that of this quivering woman and her ideal in love, which it places above the social conventions and the life even: left by the goujat of which it is éprise, it rejects her lover of formerly and flees the marital home. The epilog, addition with the part by Dreyer itself, shows it to us out-of-date, withdrawn from the world, but not keeping null bitterness of its misfortunes: “that imports, since I liked”, says it to its confidant.

Resolutely turning the back on the assembly and the close-up which had made its glory in 1928, Dreyer encircles, in long sequence shots flattened by the absence of depth, the subject which is in the middle of all its work, namely the tension between the Life and the Ideal (that it is called God, Art or Love): if Gertrud, taken in the ices of ritual society men emptied of their substance, fails to escape from it and only finishes its life, in the name of an ideal of the love which all at the same time makes it live and prevents it from living, the fate of the male characters is not more enviable, and each one of them pays the price of the passion which devours it: the poet discovers too late that it lost the love of his life to be able to write his work, while the husband loses his wife to have liked the capacity and the honors too much.

Left at the moment when the scenario writers of the New wave put their camera in the street, Gertrud appeared a film of terribly measured with compasses studio. Dreyer died four years later, without seeing been able to carry out the project on the life of the Christ who held to him in heart since so a long time and which it was about to see succeeding.

Quotations

The exit of its films was often the occasion for Dreyer to write press articles and to grant talks where it exposed its design of the setting in scene. Most important of them are joined together today in the collection Réflexions on my trade . Here are some extracts:

"In very great architecture, the least detail well is established, calculated, so as to melt itself as a whole. There is not of them only one which can be modified, without giving the impression of a wrong note. Thus it is cinéma."

Whoever saw my films will know which importance I attach to the face of the man. It is a ground which one is never tired to explore. There is not nobler experience, in a studio, than to record the expression of a face sensitive to the mysterious force of the inspiration. To see animated interior, while changing into poésie."

What is characteristic of a good film is a certain rhythmic concern which is made, either of the movements of the characters inside the plans, or of the more or less fast change of those. In the first case, it is important to have an alive camera and mobile which follows the characters, even starting from a close-up, so that the decoration moves unceasingly - as for the eye when we follow a person of the regard."

"We wish that the cinema half-opens a door to us on the unexplainable one. We wish to test a tension which is less the result of an action external than that of the conflicts of the âme."

"New science, following the theory of relativity of Einstein, brought the evidence of the existence - apart from the world with three dimensions which is that of our directions - of the fourth dimension, that of time, and a fifth, that of the psychic one. One opened new prospects which make us recognize a major relationship between exact science and intuitive religion. New science allows us a major approach of divine and it is on the way to give a natural explanation to things surnaturelles."

Catalog of films

In fatty : feature-length films carried out by Dreyer. The dates indicated are those of turning.

Dumb men

1912 : Bryggerens datter of Rasmus Ottesen, scenario
1913: Ballonekspeditionen of Kai van der Aa Kühle, scenario
1913: Krigskorrespondenten of Vilhelm Glückstadt, scenario
1913: Hans og Grete of Sophus Wolder, scenario
1913: Det gamle chatol of Hjalmar Davidsen, scenario
1914: Ned med vaabnene of Holger-Madsen, scenario
1915: Juvelernes skræk of Alexander Christian, scenario
1915: Penge of Karl Mantzius, scenario
1915: Den hvid djævel of Holger-Madsen, scenario
1915: Den skønne Evelyn of HAS W Sandberg, scenario
1915: Rovedderkoppen of Alexander Christian
1915: Lerhjertet of Holger-Madsen, scenario
1916: Guldkuglen of Karl Mantzius, scenario
1916: Legationens gidsel of August Blom, scenario
1916: Hans rigtige kone of Holger-Madsen, scenario
1916: Mud NR. 113 of Holger-Madsen, scenario
1916: Hotel Paradise of Robert Dinesen, scenario
1916: Lydia of Holger-Madsen, scenario
1916: Miskendt of Alexander Christian, scenario
1916: Gillekop of August Blom, scenario
1918: Grevindens ære of August Blom, scenario
1918: the President ( Præsidenten )
1919: Pages torn off with the book of Satan ( Blade af Satans Bog )
1920: the Fourth Alliance of Lady Marguerite ( Prästänkan )
1921: you Like the ones the others ( Die Gezeichneten )
1922: It was once ( DER VAr engang )
1924: Mikaël
1925 : the Master of the home ( Of the skal ære DIN hustru )
1925: Been engaged of Glomdal ( Glomdalsbruden )
1927: the Passion of Jeanne d' Arc

Sound

1931 : Vampyr ( Vampyr - Der Traum of Allan Grey )
1936: the white Slave (not credited, scenario and perhaps beginning of turning)
1942: Assistance with the housewives ( Mødrehjælpen ), short-measuring
1943: Day of anger ( Vredens dag , also known under the title Dies Irae )
1944: Two beings ( Två människor )
1946: Water in the countryside ( Vandet på landet ), short-measuring
1946: the Old men ( The Seventh Old ), short-measuring, only scenario
1947: the Combat against cancer ( Kampen MOD kræften ), short-measuring
1947: the Church of countryside ( Landsbykirken ), short-measuring
1948: They caught the vat ( Of nåede færgen ), short-measuring
1949: Thorvaldsen, short-measuring

1949: the Childhood of the radio ( Radioens Barndom ), short-measuring, assembly only

1950: the Bridge of Storstrøm ( Storstrømsbroen ), short-measuring

1950: Shakespeare and Kronborg ( Shakespeare og Kronborg ), short-measuring, scenario only

1954: a castle in a castle ( And Slot I and slot ), short-measuring

1954: the Rebuilding of Rönne and Nexö ( Rönnes og Nexös genopbygning ), short-measuring, original idea only

1954: the Word ( Ordet )

1956: On the Scandinavian community ( Noget om Norden ), short-measuring

1964: Gertrud

The sound catalog of films of Dreyer comprises many court-measurings, it is appropriate to specify that it is about documentary of order, mainly food.

Influences

At a few years of interval, the scenario writer draws up two lists of his films of election. The first, at the request of the Belgian Cineclub, date of 1952:

*1. Birth of a nation ( The Birth off has Nation ) David W. Griffith, 1915

*2. Herr Arnes pengar of Mauritz Stiller, 1919

*3. the Battleship Potemkine of Sergueï Eisenstein, 1925

*4. Gold rush ( The Gold Rush ) of Charles Chaplin, 1925

*5. Under the roofs of Paris of Clear Rene, 1930

*6. Quay of the fogs of Flesh-colored Marcel, 1938

*7. Short meeting ( Brief Encounter ) of David Lean, 1945

*8. Henry V of Laurence Olivier, 1944

*9. the petrified Forest ( The Petrified Forest ) of archie Mayo, 1936

*10. Rome, open city ( Roma, citta aperta ) of Roberto Rossellini, 1945

the second list, at the time of a maintenance for a review of cinema, goes back to 1963:

“ The titles off the ten films which I myself think that I cuts learned something from ” ( titles of ten films of which I think of having learned something ):

*1. Herr Arnes pengar of Mauritz Stiller, 1919

*2. Wire of Ingmar ( Ingmarssönerna ) of Victor Sjöström, 1919

*3. Intolerance (the contemporary episode) of D.W. Griffith, 1916

*4. Crainquebille of Jacques Feyder, 1922

*5. the Flame ( Die Flame ) of Ernst Lubitsch, 1923

*6. the Battleship Potemkine of Sergueï Eisenstein, 1925

*7. the Mother ( Chechmate ) of Vsevolod Poudovkine, 1926

*8. Ivan the Terrible ( Ivan Groznyj ) of Sergueï Eisenstein, 1945

*9. Henry V of Laurence Olivier, 1944

*10. the Door of the hell ( Jigokumon ) of Teinosuke Kinugasa of 1953

External bonds

Carl Theodor Dreyer on '' Masters off Cinema ''
Biography on '' Senses off cinema ''
Card IMDb

Random links: