Original subtitles

There is a similarity between a work of art and a human being

to the extent that just as one can speak of a person's soul,

one can also speak of the soul of a work of art, its personality.

The soul emerges through the style

which is how the artist expresses his way of perceiving his material.

Style is necessary to retain the inspiration in an artistic form.

But it's invisible, it cannot be demonstrated.

Carl Theodor Dreyer, Danish film director.

By the time his last film was presented in 1965,

he had written and directed 13 features,

including The Passion of Joan of Arc,

Vampyr, Day of Wrath,

The Word and Gertrud,

all films that undeniably left their mark on the first hundred years of the motion picture

as a narrative medium and art form.

When the great Danish documentarist Jorgen Roos

wanted to make a film about Dreyer in 1964, Dreyer said:

Why make a film about me? I'm not interesting.

It's my films that are interesting.

But Dreyer is interesting.

Before he became a film director he had worked as a journalist

and expressed himself clearly and succinctly.

Not about himself-

he seemed to avoid too many biographical touches -

but on the subject of the cinema,

his one great passion and m�tier.

Those of us who love working in the studio

regard one another as equals, and we talk things over

until they fall into place.

If one is to understand an artist's soul, his personality,

one also needs to know his real life and background.

Dreyer himself wanted to say something about his childhood and youth.

I was born in 1889. My mother was Swedish

and she died shortly after my birth.

I was adopted by a Danish family named Dreyer,

who kept on telling me how grateful I should be

for the food t was given and that, strictly speaking,

I wasn't entitled to anything at all,

seeing as how my mother had wriggled her way out of paying

simply by lying down to die.

I have a lovely picture of my mother, a photograph,

and from the descriptions I have heard, she must have been a charming person.

My foster parents, who never missed a chance to remind me

that I was under an obligation to repay what they'd spent on me without delay,

wanted me to start earning money as quickly as possible.

First I got a job as a clerk with the Nordic Telegraph Company.

I dreamed of going to the Far East.

One day a senior accountant in the firm showed me some ledgers full of figures.

“There you have my life,“ he said.

I found ii most disturbing so I handed in my notice.

Then I became a journalist.

t got in touch with film people and started writing scripts

and the titles they used to put between scenes.

I learned a lot in those years.

Nordisk Film was making 16 or 17 films a year,

each of about 800 metres.

They were a}! made during the three summer months

because there had to be sunlight in the studios.

It was a terrific race against time.

Then I also started editing.

I edited nearly all the films that were made during those years.

My apprenticeship lasted five years

and I don't think many have had a better schooling.

After all it's from the daily grind of making films that you learn the craft.

In 1917 I was at last allowed to try my hand at directing.

My first film was The President.

It was very melodramatic but it also had technical innovations.

In that film, I used flashbacks.

And then I worked with types instead of only with actors.

If I needed some old people, I found some old people.

In the course of my work, I fried to get away from the impersonal run-of-the-mill interior

of the kind scene painters used to knock up.

I built my own sets.

I wanted my films to bear my personal imprint,

right down to the smallest detail.

Dreyer's second film, Leaves From Satan's Book,

was an impressive, ambitious work.

He had seen major American film epics

such as Griffiths' The Birth of a Nation

and he let himself be inspired.

He was such a friendly man, always

and quiet in his statements as to what one was to do.

But intense and strong-willed within.

The way he hammered into me how he wanted the death scene!

The others fell silent, seeing howl was gripped by it.

And then they rolled.

We did the first great close-up then.

It aroused great attention,

the shot where she...

...kills herself with a knife.

Her face fills the screen.

Dreyer stood quite still.

The cinematographer was of the same out -

a very great artist.

He rolled the camera the instant he saw I was...

They didn't ask, "Are you ready?" as they do nowadays,

for then, of course, one is no longer ready.

One has to go back into oneself all over again.

It was a very difficult shot, but they were both brilliant.

Dreyer stood close and simply told me what to do.

I was so fortunate to make two films with him.

It is said that I am the only woman ever to work for him twice.

Dreyer developed an uncompromising attitude to his film work,

as a result of which he fell out with the managing director of Nordisk Film Company

whose name was Staehr.

Dear Mr Staehr,

I am convinced that Leaves From Satan's Book

is the best script that Nordisk Films Company has ever been offered.

And I have declared, and repeated here,

that! shall make it my objective to produce a film that will set a clear standard.

But this film cannot be made for less than 230,000 kronner

and there's no point in speculating about where one could economise

for! am the only person who can really judge these matters

as! have a clear idea in my mind

of how I want every single picture to be.

There will be nothing superfluous, unnecessary or fortuitous.

The pictures will form an organic whole

and that's the end of the matter.

Leaves From Satan's Book was the last film Dreyer ever made for Nordisk Film Company.

During the following years, he directed films for other producers

in Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Germany.

When he returned to Denmark in 1926,

he was only able to make feature films for Palladium Film,

a company otherwise best known for its farces.

The first film he directed for Palladium was Master of the House.

I had made Master oi the House and took it to Paris with me

in the hope that it would have an appeal.

In the course of three weeks, it was shown in 57 different cinemas.

They reacted well everywhere.

I myself attended the premiere.

There was a party of young businessmen and their ladies

who were most merry, whistling, catcalling and booing.

I was very unhappy and left the theatre.

But in the foyer I met the man in charge.

He told me, "Do not be anxious, it will be a great success."

And it was.

Then I had a phone call from the Soci�t� G�n�rale de Films.

They asked me for three themes. I suggested Jeanne d'Arc,

Catherine de Médicis and Marie Antoinette.

They drew lots with matchsticks and the choice fell on Jeanne d'Arc.

I immersed myself in Anatole France and a lot of other material.

Those were happy years.

Paris was then, and still is, Europe's film laboratory.

No other city has such a great film culture.

Realism is not an an' in itself.

Only psychological realism is.

What is of value is artistic truth,

truth grasped from lite itself,

but liberated from unnecessary details,

truth filtered through ah artist's mind.

After all what takes place on the screen ls not reality and ls not supposed to be,

otherwise it would not be an'.

Dreyer had had a certain success with Master of the House.

Then a production company had got him to come to France

where they had a lot of trouble choosing a subject.

Finally he decided upon The Passion of Joan of Arc.

But nobody would play her as he was very demanding,

very original, there must be no commercial concessions.

And the great French actresses, Madeleine Renaud, Marie Belle,

were frightened by the unusual personage Dreyer was

and absolutely refused the magnificent pan of Jeanne d'Arc.

Then three months later Dreyer was strolling down the boulevards

when he saw from the Th��tre de Paris poster

that Falconetti was playing La gar�onne by Victor Marguerite.

A comedy in which she played the feminist.

And sol invited myself to her home the following afternoon.

Behind her make-up I thought I saw a woman

who could have been Jeanne d'Arc.

Falconetti was seduced by the extravagant side of the project

and by the extraordinary personality of Carl Dreyer.

So she consented,

and the fact that she would have to have her head shaved,

which had scared off the other actresses, did not stop her.

The Maid of Orleans, the path that led to her death.

The more I familiarised myself with the historical material,

the more imperative it became for me

to recreate the most important period in the maid's life.

I wanted audiences to be absorbed by the past.

A detailed study of documents covering the rehabilitation process was necessary.

However, the year in which the events took place

seemed just as unimportant as the interval between then and the present day.

I wanted to create a hymn to the triumph of the soul over life.

My will, my feeling, my thought.

Realised mysticism.

They got on admirably in their work

for they were two professionals, two geniuses,

two people impassioned by reality and truth.

Dreyer filmed The Passion of Joan of Arc as a kind of everyday event,

and then everything was truth. Falconetti was so bowled over,

she forgot she was Falconetti. She was Jeanne d'Arc.

As it was a silent film, with other stage actors,

it happened that Sylvain, for example, the wicked bishop,

who had also been Falconetti's teacher at the conservatoire,

tried to introduce the way theatrical actors work.

That is, as it was a silent film, he tried to make her laugh.

It's a little game actors play.

He would utter obscenities at the most dramatic places.

Dreyer flew into an absolutely crazy fury.

He said, "You must say your words."

"Words I have extracted from the trial records."

"The audience cannot hear the sound

but they will read every word on your lips."

A mood can be created just by a few words.

Generally speaking, I feel a director should order his actors about as little as possible

and I should like to take this opportunity to dispel the myth

that in Jeanne d'Arc, I'm supposed to have forced Falconetti

to act the way she did.

The way we worked was this.

Wed sit down in a comer and talk about the scene we were about to shoot.

And then she would go through it, but only a few times,

and then it would come off well.

She herself discovered what was needed

and then did it by herself.

Actors have the ability to see themselves, observe themselves,

and afterwards, they know whether ifs come off well.

They know whether they've had the feeling of being completely absorbed in the part.

I have tried to remove Jeanne o' 'Arc's halo and saintly image

and have worked my way into the mind of this young woman

who suffered death at the stake for the sake of her faith.

I have fried to show that, behind their historical costumes,

the characters in this medieval tragedy were ordinary people like you and me,

caught in the periods web of political and religious views and prejudices.

There is therefore nothing in this film that can seem strange

to modern people like ourselves.

Religious persecutions throughout the ages, indeed right up to our own times,

have made us familiar with death and torture

used as ways of convening or fighting against those who hold different beliefs.

My film about Jeanne d'Arc has erroneously been called an avant-garde film,

which it most definitely is not.

It is not a film intended for film theoreticians,

but a film of general human interest, aimed at the general public

with a message that can be understood by every open-minded human being.

She had not reckoned at all

that she would go down in history thanks to The Passion of Joan of Arc

and that people would call Falconetti Jeanne d'Arc.

Nowadays if you say "Falconetti", people reply "Jeanne d'Arc".

For my pan, I've never been able to escape the fact

of being the daughter of Jeanne d'Arc.

My colleagues, friends, people I meet say,

"Look, the daughter of Jeanne d'Arc!" It's a bother.

She never made another film.

It's been said it was because she found filming too exhausting.

True, with Dreyer it was exhausting,

above all for her, in the title role.

He kept her there to watch the rushes

long after everyone else had gone home.

But that's not what discouraged her.

It was because she was an invention of Dreyer,

created by Dreyer.

On stage she was Falconetti. She did as she pleased.

I think that's why she never wanted to make another film.

She was asked to make L 'Equipage, but Marie Belle did it.

She stopped at that one marvellous, prodigious experience.

Spurred by ambition and her great passion for her metier, acting,

Falconetti bought her own theatre in Paris

but was forced into bankruptcy and had to leave France.

After World War ll, she tried to get into the USA

but was refused entry by the immigration authorities.

So she went to Buenos Aires

and in the course of a wild night at the casino, lost the remainder of her fortune.

To her way of thinking, life without the theatre just wasn't worth living.

Then she got involved in mysticism,

convened to Buddhism and died in 1946.

Why or how, we do not know.

Where does the possibility lie for an artistic renewal of film?

For my pan', I see only one way -

abstraction, the art of presenting the inner, not the outer, life.

Dreyer had a contract to make several films for the Société Générale de Films

but they were failures and the company went bankrupt.

However, he was ready with his next project-

the sound film Vampyr.

With financial backing from Baron Nicholas de Gunsberg,

the film was made with Dreyer himself as producer.

There was no major disagreement about the Jeanne d'Arc film.

Broadly speaking, it was probably the way people wanted it

but just imagine what might have happened if I had continued along those lines.

In the end, they'd have cal/ed me the saint director,

and that would have been terrible.

So then I chose the vampire theme

just to do something completely different.

I rented an old château that was mouldy with damp and age,

full of rats and all that sort of thing.

It was a particularly scary chateau but that's what it was supposed to be.

I wanted it to be as genuine as possible.

Imagine to yourself that we're sitting in an ordinary room.

Suddenly we 're told that there's a corpse behind the door.

Immediately the room we're sitting in changes character.

Every single everyday item in it looks different.

The light and the atmosphere have changed

without actually having changed physically

because we have changed

and things are the way we perceive them.

This is the effect I want to produce in my films.

Hey! Cripple!

Be quiet!

It's absolute nonsense to say I'm a mystic.

What do people mean by mysticism?

Vampyr ls a completely realistic film.

It's simply been enveloped in an atmosphere of strangeness.

You can't just separate mysticism from reality in that way,

as if mysticism was something supernatural beyond what is logical and psychological.

Our definitions of what is mysticism and what is realism are far too narrow.

Logic and psychology are the two cardinal points,

in art as in politics.

Sound film is a concentrated form.

Ifs astonishing how much you can go on shortening dialogue,

cutting out whole sentences and words

with the sole effect that your intentions emerge more clearly.

But sound film has a tendency to neglect the visual aspect In favour of dialogue.

Film ls first and foremost a visual an' that appeals to the eye.

And a picture can make a deep impression on the viewer's mind,

much more easily than words.

Nobody who has seen my films can be in any doubt

that for me, the technique is a means and not an end in itself.

The shooting and finalisation of Vampyr was a troublesome process for Dreyer.

He was under severe pressure as a result of strenuous working conditions,

not only during production, but also in connection with the final work in Germany.

He ended up with a nervous breakdown and was admitted to a mental hospital,

the Clinique Jeanne d'Arc in a suburb of Paris,

where he received treatment for three months.

During the following years, Dreyer stayed in Paris

and worked on a number of different projects,

all of which were unsuccessful or failed in one way or another.

An Italian producer commissioned him to make a film in Africa

but heat and illness put an end to this project, too.

Finally, Dreyer gave up film work in Paris and returned to Denmark in 1936.

Where he resumed work as a journalist on the Copenhagen tabloid BT.

He changed his title in the Copenhagen telephone directory

from film director to journalist.

Until the cinema offers me an honourable return to the work I have never ceased to love

by giving me assignments and working conditions comparable to those I had in France,

until then, I do not wish to be regarded as a film director.

1940 saw the publication of the Danish film critic Ebbe Neergaard's book

A Film Director's Work." Carl Th. Dreyer's Ten Films,

in which he drew attention to the fact

that Dreyer wasn't being allowed to make any more films.

As a consequence, Dreyer was given a chance to make one short film

before finally being enabled,

as a result of the Danish film producer Mogens Skot-Hansens intervention,

to make Day of Wrath.

Whereafter she promised to confess.

Tell us

how you entered the service of the devil.

Come along, answer!

Oh, so you do not wish to confess after all.

- She has not had enough. - I have, I have.

It's the action and the whole atmosphere of Day of Wrath

that have determined its even, peaceful rhythm,

but this serves two other purposes at the same time.

Firstly, it expresses the slow rhythm of the period.

And secondly, it emphasises and supports

the mentality the writer has tried to convey in his play

and which I have then fried to transfer to film.

A person's movements must harmonise with the way he or she speaks.

Just look at Lisbeth Movin.

The rhythm of her movements harmonises beautifully

with the rhythm of her voice.

I didn't know Dreyer at all.

But I had been asked by telephone to go and see him.

At the same time I had been told I should not do so,

for the pan was already cast. I knew he was doing Day of Wrath.

But young as I was, of course I went to see him.

There I had my first surprise.

I didn't think he looked like a director at all.

A small, dapper, modest,

amiable, very courteous man.

Almost a little office clerk.

But it was Dreyer.

I don't recall what he asked me,

but we chatted for a quarter of an hour or so.

One thing I do recall.

Suddenly he looked most strangely at me and said,

"Miss Movin, can you cry to order?"

I was indignant, I was enormously angry.

You don't say such things to an actress!

That evening, very late, the telephone rang.

Mother answered it, and said, "It is Carl Theodor Dreyer."

I thought, "Oh goodness, I've insulted him and must apologise."

"But I won't. I meant what I said, I thought he was rude!"

But he just said, "Miss Movin, you must play the lead

in my Day of Wrath, and I will make you famous."

"Yes, but why me?"

And Dreyer said, "I cannot explain that to you now."

ls Master Absalom at home?

No, he has just gone to meet his son.

His son'? That is me.

Are you his son'?

Are you his wife'?

Have I not seen your face before'?

Where could that have been'?

Perhaps in my thoughts?

I was in two of Dreyer's films -

Day of Wrath and The Word.

On Day of Wrath we did a great deal of preparation.

We were together regularly. We went for long walks.

We talked and talked and talked.

Thus I got to know Dreyer closely,

if one may use that term at all.

One night at 2 or 3 am the telephone tinkled.

"Hello, Dreyer speaking."

"Would you be so kind as to find page such-and-such?"

"Of course. In what?" "The script. Page such and such."

"Then I must put the light on first, I was asleep."

"Asleep?" I put on the light.

"After all, it is 2 or 3 o'clock!"

"Oh, how time flies! But if you'd just look it up..."

"Then I must fetch the script first, Mr Dreyer."

"You do not have it to hand?"

"No, I do not take it to bed with me."

I fetched the script and he said, "Look, it says such and such."

"Would you mind if we said so and so instead?"

"No, I don't suppose so." "Splendid."

"In that case, goodbye, goodbye."

"Goodbye, Mr Dreyer."

A director...

is not just there to keep things together.

He also has to be a great psychologist.

He must be capable of working with the actors he has chosen.

To me he was a wonderful director.

It was a huge gift to get him as a director

just at that stage and in the right part

and with a perfectly marvellous artist

who knew how to guide me onto that path, Anna's path

and mould me like a lump of wax.

Martin.

Martin.

I can... I cannot.

What I keep an eye out for and hope for

is the really beautiful piece of acting,

something so subtle

that it cannot be explained or comprehended,

but which occurs at rare moments

when the actor has played a scene so beautifully and expressively

that it really becomes memorable in the film.

There are many beautiful moments that may get lost during the technical process,

moments which the actor looks for in vain the next day.

Its extremely important for actors to understand that the director has no other wish

than that what has been done

should be presented as clearly and advantageously as possible.

- Pure and clear'? - No, deep and mysterious.

We weren't allowed to wear make-up at all.

Every morning,

and it may raise a little smile,

he came to my dressing room and rubbed my cheek.

"You haven't got any make-up on, have you?"

I said, "No, no, I haven't." Nor did I have.

But when he had gone...

Well, one is a girl, so one cheated a bit.

I put a teeny dab on my nose, and he never noticed.

Sometimes in films we see faces devoid of make-up

to create a refreshing effect.

But the ideal situation will only come when all faces are represented

just the way they are in real life.

Nothing in the world can compare with the human face.

It's a landscape one never tires of exploring,

a landscape that has its own beauty, whether rugged or gentle.

She is to be burnt as a witch.

She was tied to a very primitive ladder made of sticks.

Then somebody suddenly said, "Luncheon, Mr Dreyer."

"Off we go, then."

I walked off with Mr Thorkil Rosen.

Anna Svierkier was still tied up. I said to Rosen,

"Surely Anna Svierkier cannot be left there while we take luncheon?"

"No, no, I don't think so, either."

"Listen, Mr Dreyer, surely she need not lie there

while we take luncheon?"

"Yes, she does. Leave her to me, Mr Rosen."

And no more was said about it.

When we came back,

sweat was pouring off the poor old lady.

And I promise you, yes, you can see it in the film.

There is terror in that shot.

Let me escape the flames. Or else!

Fear not. The Lord is merciful.

The Lord will bring sight to your eyes and avert your soul from sin.

I will deliver Anne. Do you hear'?

I will get you!

Sound film has been working deliberately towards a special rhythm

that I myself have tried to develop further.

In some scenes, instead of short, rapidly changing pictures,

We introduced tong, gliding close-ups that rhythmically follow the actors,

feeling their way from one to the other.

But I have been reproached about the rhythm in Day of Wrath.

Some people say it's too heavy, too slow.

In December 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark,

Dreyer went to Sweden, firstly to launch Day of Wrath in Stockholm,

but also to get started on a new film project

because the poor reception given to Day of Wrath in Denmark

had made his chances there rather small.

He became fascinated by a play by the French playwright Somin

and wrote a screenplay for a film called Two People.

But while shooting was still in progress,

disagreements arose between Dreyer and the film's producer

who was working for Svensk Filmindustri.

The film proved to be Dreyer's biggest flop.

There was often ten years between Dreyer's features.

He was used to this ten-year gap and took it very calmly,

patiently waiting for his next great task.

He would ask the shorts producers if they had work for him.

He met lb Koch Olsen of Dansk Kulturfilm.

Olsen thought it a scandal that Dreyer was unemployed.

So he got him making shorts.

When is the next ferry from Nyborg?

- You won't catch her. - I have to.

- I say you won't. - I say I will. How far is it'?

- Some 70 kilometres. - That's nothing.

The road is all curves.

They don't worry me. When does she sail'?

- In 3/4 of an hour. - Then I shall catch her.

Koch Olsen had the idea

that the Road Safety Council would finance the film.

It would be based on a short story, They Caught The Ferry.

Dreyer wrote the script, but it was Olsen's idea.

Frames were built for fastening to the motorcycle.

Then one could shoot close-ups of the wheels and riders in motion.

Dreyer sat in the sidecar, I on the pillion.

On our way from Copenhagen we got caught in a downpour.

On the Great Belt Ferry we dried ourselves in the toilets.

Dreyer thought it most amusing, in his cap and goggles.

I suggested that the script indicate

how fast we were to go in the various sequences.

I told him I could lower the speed of the camera

and make it seem we were going faster.

But he said "No, we must ride at the right pace."

So if the script said 120 kph, that's what we had to do

before I might film.

For some shots I had the camera fixed to the sidecar.

There I squatted sol could peer into the viewfinder.

We were to do a shot where the solo bike overtook a lorry

on the inside.

I was to overtake in the sidecar on the outside.

But he moved ahead a bit too tardily.

I said, "Let's try again, a bit faster this time

so you're on camera when we come up."

The solo bike accelerated enormously

and the lorry driver got worried. He pulled leftwards and caught us.

Our bike swerved,

and we hit a tree, which passed between the bike and sidecar.

I flew off to the right of the tree,

and the rider to the left,

12 metres into the field.

I broke a rib, and my wrist.

I woke up in the field.

The first thing I saw was Dreyer,

standing there, hands behind his back,

examining the camera.

It was all right. Only then did he come over to see howl was.

"No great harm done, then."

He wasn't really interested in his shorts.

But they meant work for a while, so he could pay the rent.

But a profound interest in shorts, that he didn't have.

Dreyer had written a script for Shakespeare and Kronborg.

The idea was that perhaps Shakespeare had visited Kronborg

and now we would see the castle through his eyes.

Some sequences from Hamlet would be put on.

An American company were doing Hamlet there that year.

We got to know them.

I got to know the Ophelia, Ruth Ford.

I got on very nicely with her.

The manager of the troupe was Blevins Davis,

a multimillionaire who liked putting on classics in Europe.

He heard via Ruth Ford that I was working with Dreyer.

He was astonished that this celebrity was making shorts.

He asked for a meeting.

I put it to Dreyer. Dreyer wasn't keen on it,

but things worked out and I got him to Davis' room.

Dreyer quizzed Davis about what he was up to.

Then he told him he wanted to do a film about the historical Jesus.

Davis was fascinated, and he asked what Dreyer needed to get started.

"Well, first I must write a script."

"That will take a year,

so what I need is my living expenses for a year."

And Davis thrust his hand into his pocket for his chequebook.

Dreyer went to the USA in 1949,

partly to continue his negotiations with Blevins Davis

concerning a film about Jesus of Nazareth

and partly to investigate the possibilities of producing films in Hollywood.

Dreyer continued to work on his screenplay for a film about Jesus for the rest of his life,

but he never succeeded in making it.

Nevertheless, his next film was also to be based on religious fervour,

the sense of the divine.

It is possible to experience events that haven't even taken place yet.

New perspectives are opened up that make us recognise a deeper coherence

between exact science and intuitive religion.

It brings us closer to a more sincere understanding of the divine

and a natural explanation for supernatural things.

Kaj Munk was already aware of this when in 1925 he wrote The Word

and intimated that the insane Johannes is perhaps closer to God

than the Christians who surround him.

Woe unto you, you hypocrites!

You...

and you...

and you.

Woe unto you for your heresy!

Woe unto you for not believing in me, the resurrected Christ,

who is come to you at the command

of He who created Heaven and Earth.

"We are going to Vordingborg. There is a hospital there."

"I see," I said. I didn't really see at all.

Well, we got there

and I was admitted into a patient's room.

It was no ordinary hospital.

The room was a kind of cell.

It had no door handle on the inside.

There sat a very nice man,

almost beautiful, if one may say that of a man.

He resembled...

the most beautiful pictures one has seen in print

of Jesus.

I learned later that Dreyer wanted to use him.

But no, for when the time came for him to return to the hospital

it may have been difficult to rehabilitate him. Or so I surmise.

Anyway, there I sat, talking to this man,

who told me that he was an artist.

He spoke most peculiarly.

"I am a painter." "I see," said I. "How interesting."

"Yes, it is very interesting."

"Perchance , perchance..."

Peculiar. I don't know how long it took

but I did emerge again.

On our way home, Dreyer asked,

"What did you think of that man?"

"Oh, a splendid fellow," I said.

"What did you think of his manner of speech?"

"Speech? Well, he did speak rather queerly."

"How about speaking that way in the film?"

lam the light of the world

but the darkness does not fathom this.

I came to my own

and my own people did not welcome me.

It was hard, really hard.

And of course the press took me to task.

For all my pains!

Why put the candles there?

So my light can shine out into the darkness.

- Such a shame for him. - He's as mad as a hatter.

- He thinks he's Jesus. - Will he ever come to his senses'?

It's all that reading that's done for him.

It was 40 years ago.

But that time is very clear in my memory.

Perhaps because I was very happy.

One reason was that Dreyer had asked me

if I'd like to play Inger

in The Word by Kaj Munk, with him directing.

Anyone can see that a young actress would love to.

But I was rather worried, because I was pregnant.

A huge joy to me personally,

but I had to tell him, and although Inger is also pregnant,

it might not suit him. My size might not suit him.

Anyway, I told him.

And he was overjoyed that I was pregnant.

He liked working in long sequences.

He could work for days on the technical aspects.

Then we would come in the afternoon

and rehearse the sequence, for days at a time.

Long sequences, rare in movie-making.

I'd never experienced such long sequences before.

To begin with one might be nervous,

but because he took his time,

one felt there was a whole world around him

and what he did technically

and one gained confidence

and began to think it was natural to make suggestions.

In summer 1954, when Dreyer was to shoot The Word

I had been engaged by Palladium for Denmark's first colour feature.

A Danish-American co-production. The deal with Palladium

was that a colleague and I would audition

camera-wise and framing-wise, and then Dreyer would decide

which of us was to do the job.

I understand that disputes quickly arose between Dreyer and my colleague

sol landed the job.

We started with the relatively simple shots.

We had to travel miles to see the daily rushes.

But Dreyer was most satisfied

with the first day's shooting.

The eye prefers what is organised

and this is why its important for the effect created by the pictures

to be harmonious and remain so,

even when the pictures keep gliding.

Lin-beautiful fines disturb the eye of the viewer.

The eye registers horizontal lines quickly and easily

but resists vertical lines.

The eye is involuntarily attracted by moving objects

but remains passive towards stationary things.

I know nothing about the relationship between light and shadow,

between negative and positive,

but I have a considerable interest in picture framing and picture composition.

His sense of what the final result would be like

was something he couldn't judge as we worked.

Only when he saw the rushes the next day

could he tell whether it was what he'd wanted and expected.

I was so fortunate as to strike a style that accorded with his taste

and he told me to stick to it

and complete the film that way.

The Danish playwright Kaj Munk's play The Word,

had already enjoyed great popular success,

possibly because it deals with religious questions such as resurrection.

Inger dies in childbirth

and only the demented Johannes and Lilleinger are such fervent believers

that they are convinced they can bring Inger back to life.

The child whose mother is in heaven

can no man harm.

When your mother is dead, she is always with you.

- She is when she is alive, too. - Yes...

But then she is busy with so much else.

Oh, yes. She has to milk, scrub floors and wash up.

- The dead don't have any of that. - Yes.

But I would still rather you woke her up, Uncle.

- You would? - Yes, so we could keep her here.

- My child! - Won't you wake her up'?

- If the others will let me. - Don't you mind them.

- Oh, how excited I am! - Are you?

Yes, I am. Will you come and tuck me in'?

Yes, and I will have one of my father's angels watch over you.

- Will you also bless us as usual? - Yes, I will.

I was young, 29 years old, when we started The Word.

The shooting script showed he'd done a huge amount in advance.

Every single camera position was sketched in,

and every move.

Yet I was puzzled, for when we turned up in the morning

we started from the beginning again

and built up every single scene together

until we arrived at how the scene would run.

At last I couldn't refrain from asking Dreyer

why he prepared so thoroughly in advance

when he was ready to jettison everything in his script.

And he said, "Bendtsen, I will tell you why."

"It's because one day I might be off form."

I think one became a pawn in his universe.

There is no doubt he knew exactly what he wanted in the can,

what it was to be about and the way it had to be.

But he never said it that way,

never whispered words of wisdom in one's ear

the way so many directors do, and which can be a great help.

No, he created the atmosphere, the calm,

the time we needed

to arrive at what he wanted to tell,

and for the technical side, always so complicated in movies.

I don't think he made it any less complicated.

There was a period of three weeks or so

with rain everyday, real rain.

One day the sun did shine, and who appeared'?

Our beloved president, Tage Nielsen, from Palladium.

I am sitting beside a can track on the heath.

He gets out of his car and says,

"You must be getting lots in the can in this lovely weather."

"No, sir, for the clouds...

are moving in the wrong direction."

"Oh? Oh?"

"Mr Dreyer is standing over there, sir. You can talk to him."

"To Dreyer'? No, God bless my soul, no, no!"

And he got back into his car and drove off again.

He did have a reputation for being despotic and tyrannical.

But I never witnessed that. He was always amiable, courteous.

Of course, inside he had an insistent stubbornness.

He could work for ages without tiring.

He didn't know the meaning of time the rest of us succumb to.

If one cautiously asked him

when we might be finished for today,

he might offer one a gobstopper,

and say, "Won't you have a sweetie?"

So naive and incredible,

yet somehow one fell for it.

If one had been offered a sweetie, one could last another hour or two.

Death is the gateway to eternity.

Through that gateway this young woman

has passed ahead of her loved ones.

We grieve as we do for we think only of ourselves, our loss.

For her there are no grounds for grief.

We were shooting the scenes

with Birgitte Federspiel in her coffin.

Dreyer wanted to shoot them in the evening to avoid disturbance

from craftsmen and others who frequent the studio.

We were to be in peace.

When we were halfway through it was time for a break.

As we headed for the canteen for coffee and sandwiches,

Dreyer said to Jepsen, the production manager,

"Jepsen, bring the corpse up to the canteen for a cup of coffee."

Jesus Christ...

If it is possible, allow her to come back to life.

Give me the Word.

The Word that can make the dead live.

Inger“

in the name of Jesus Christ...

I bid you...

rise!

Inger“

My darling...

The Word is my most harmonious film.

Jeanne d'Arc doesn't have quite the same balance,

but then I was young at the time

and didn't know as much as I did when we were shooting The Word.

The Word was Dreyer's only sound film to reach a wide public.

But by 1952, he had achieved financial security

as he had been made director of the Dagmar Cinema theatre in Copenhagen.

He managed to run it with great artistic and financial success.

Films can be many things, in the same way as books and plays.

In our wish to create artistic films,

we shouldn't' look down our noses at straightforward popular films,

which I think have a great mission.

Ordinary people who live in small flats and long for a ray of sunshine in their lives

can perhaps five for a whole week on the memory of one of these films.

It would be foolish and arrogant to think only in terms of artistic films.

That would make the world a boring place to live in.

And for the rest of us some of the pleasure lies perhaps precisely

in glancing at other films that aren't all that good.

Is it not true that great dramas are unfolded in silence?

People conceal their feelings

and avoid revealing the storms that are raging inside them.

In all an, man is the decisive factor.

In an artistic film, we want to see human beings

and we want to leam about their emotional experiences.

Again it was lb Koch Olsen from Dansk Kulturfilm

who wanted a portrait film about Dreyer.

Dreyer was kind enough to suggest that I make it.

I started talking to Dreyer about how we'd make it,

when, and so forth.

Dreyer was preparing Gertrud.

He said that as long as he was doing so,

he couldn't manage the other, too.

It would disturb him too much.

When he started shooting Gertrud,

and he'd told me that then we could get started,

he said he was so nervous

because he couldn't get the actors "into place", as he called it.

He was having trouble getting Nina Pens into place.

We'd have to wait until she was in place.

Then it was Ebbe Rode's turn. So he'd rather not be disturbed.

Tonight my life snapped.

When one sees that which one has loved more than anything else

sullied by renewed youth,

one turns old.

Oh, Gertrud, that we should meet this way! I had never thought it.

But nothing ever turns out the way one thought it.

How had you thought it, Gabriel?

Gabriel...

Gabriel, you take it so much to heart...

What became the special mark of Gertrud

was that the script was not divided into scene numbers.

It is continuous.

The tracking shots were not rigidly laid down by Dreyer in advance.

We would turn up in the morning

and the cast would come in with no make-up, not in costume.

We would slowly build up the sequence

the way the actors and Dreyer found it natural

and in accordance with the lighting options open to me.

Dreyer became so enthusiastic about this technique

that several times I had to tell him

that we couldn't stuff any more film stock in the camera

and would have to find somewhere to stock up.

You are my all. My new life, in joy and sorrow.

- In sorrow? - Yes.

It is my sorrow that I must love you as I do,

though I do not understand you.

To you I am no more than a passing fancy.

- You sent me roses. - After your first concert

Two roses and a card. And I received no reply.

- Not even a thank-you. - I received lots of roses.

We met... Do you remember our first kiss'?

I remember many kisses.

A rain of kisses, kisses that passed through marrow and bone,

kisses that made me gasp for breath.

One wonders how it is done. I have often done so.

How come the lines fall in that typical Dreyer fashion?

How come the arrangements he gets us to make

become his arrangements?

How come the cinematography becomes typical Dreyer'?

Bendtsen would say, "Dreyer, will you check in the view/finder?"

"Do I have to?" he said, and sat with his back half turned

as we shot the scene.

It's a question that remains unanswered.

This peculiarly dragging way of saying our lines

came quite by itself, not even because we thought it was good.

That's how it turned out.

When Dreyer made a film

after an interval of many years,

the script wasn't something he'd finished half an hour ago.

He'd been working for 30 years

and meticulously arranged every single second and minute.

He knew what he wanted.

He'd collected loads of newspaper cuttings and photos over the years.

He'd put them into big manila envelopes.

He'd appear quietly with his big envelopes and say modestly,

"I would like it this way," and point quietly at something.

We'd say, "Mmmm, we'll do our best."

That's pretty well what his direction consisted of.

If you acted so you looked like his photo, he was satisfied.

That is the dream I had the other night.

Advocate Kanning has finished his speech.

He'll be coming in a moment.

Nice to see you again, Axel. Sad you must leave so soon.

God be praised, Gertrud, you are not ailing.

I am feeling better now, thanks to Axel's pills.

- Thank you. - What matters is that they worked.

He was so meticulous.

Everything had to be so true, so true.

I remember a line of mine to Nina Pens on my return from Paris.

She had a headache and I had to offer her tablets for it.

I was to say they were from Paris.

"Can't I just say they are for headaches?"

"No, you must say they are from Paris."

I looked down at the box in my hand

and saw that the tablets really were from Paris!

So it was truth. The truth was in my hand.

They were Parisian headache pills and so it had to be said.

So I said, "Would you like some headache tablets from Paris?"

Everything is authentic.

Tangible. It has an atmosphere.

You open a drawer and there is something in the drawer.

And whatever's lying in the drawer

looks as if it's always lain there.

You get the impression that he has...

that he has created this...

...place, and it is your place.

There is quite a bit of interpretation there

that you can't put your finger on,

but which has an effect.

This meticulousness and...

...and love, for I am compelled to call it that, is what I saw most.

Strange that the man was so self-effacing,

yet had such enormous self-esteem.

I remember his asking in that quiet voice

if he couldn't have the shadow of some beech leaves

vibrating in one corner. Many of the operators

and people doing the lighting and so on

didn't have much understanding for him.

"Is it really necessary, Dreyer?"

And he said, "I'd like the shadow of some beech leaves."

"Come off it, Dreyer!" You could see Dreyer...

He was so stubborn that the dynamo inside him reached 10,000 volts

and a wave of anger burst out from across the horizon,

emerging as a little plash above his lower lip.

"I would like the shadow of some beech leaves!"

And he got it. Beech leaves.

In a tragedy, I find it easier

to interpose my own personality and my own outlook on life,

to introduce this something that makes people listen.

What is Gertrud about?

Certainly not about sex, but about love and eroticism.

This makes me think of the tines written by the English poet Richard Aldington:

"A man or a woman might die for love and be glad in dying

but who would die for sex?"

Do you remember your own words?

"There is no other life than loving?"

"Nothing. Nothing else."

Do you stand by what you said then'? No regrets?

No, no regrets. I stand by what I said.

There is nothing in life but youth and love.

Infinite tenderness and quiet joy, Axel.

When I am on the edge of the grave and look back at my life,

I will say to myself,

"I have suffered much, and often been mistaken,

but I have loved."

It was the last day we could shoot in the park at Vallo.

They had acres of tulips

and the next day the park would open to the public.

Filming would be impossible with so many people there.

We needed sunshine.

Dreyer wanted a particular light. There was...

...a drizzle, we were concentrating on Aphrodite,

the statue he'd had brought in.

Time came to roll, and everyone was waiting.

But Dreyer had vanished!

Then we saw him beside Aphrodite.

Nobody said a word to him as he stood there,

hands behind his back, gazing across the lake.

Then I heard, "Bendtsen, would you come down here?"

Bendtsen did so.

I couldn't restrain myself. I tiptoed after him.

I had to hear what was going on.

Bendtsen steps up beside Dreyer, who says,

"Bendtsen, do you see how the trees are reflected in the water?"

Yes, Bendtsen could see.

"Bendtsen, we'll leave Aphrodite in peace."

"Film those trees."

I was mystified. I look at this man

and the whole of this colossal production,

all the significance put into it, and then, "Let's have the trees."

I went up to Dreyer and said, "Dreyer..."

"Mr Dreyer, what if we don't get it in the can?"

"Then we'll get it next year," said Dreyer.

I've never forgotten it. That fabulous calm,

a stubbornness wrapped up in mildness.

A self-assertion that is...

...paired with a modesty that is utterly self-effacing.

I think he was the first Zen master I ever met.

Producers are like Catholics.

What cannot be achieved in this century can be achieved in the next.

In a small country, especially, producers are afraid to experiment.

I never think about my audience when I am working on a film, I really don't,

beyond the fact that I am very concerned

to make a film that would be easily understandable.

But then I do this in the interests of the work itself

because one involuntarily aims at perfection.

But film as it is today is not perfect.

This is something to be grateful for

because what is imperfect is still in the process of development.

What is imperfect lives.

What is perfect is dead and set aside.

In the solitude he spun around himself

there was high voltage, so you didn't approach that man

unless he invited you to.

But he could stand there so humbly

that you thought he needed rescuing. But you mustn't.

I remember when the film won a Bodil, the Danish Academy Award.

There was a big party.

Several hundred people in evening dress

and in a corner, squashed against the decorations,

stood little, grey Dreyer in his black-green dinner jacket.

Dressed up for the occasion.

Nobody came up to talk to him, nobody contacted him,

and I don't suppose he wanted them to.

Gertrud had its world premiere in Paris in December 1964.

And with this film, Dreyer returned to the city

that had hailed him for his artistry as a film director.

Have you had the opportunity to look at modern French cinema?

Yes, at home. I like the New Wave.

Many exponents of modern French cinema

came to celebrate you this evening.

Yes, Truffaut, Luc Godard,

Cl�ment and Clouzot... and others I don't quite know.

It's been very nice meeting them.

I've always been attracted by everything that deviates from the standard pattern.

It's always aroused my curiosity and so have the New Waves.

t just have the feeling that they are waves that will slide back into the sea again,

but perhaps they will then produce new waves there.

The Danish Embassy put on a party.

There was a big room where one could greet the ambassador

and Dreyer. Dreyer scuttled off into a corner

so there'd be nobody behind him.

I'd often observed on our travels

that he hated having anybody behind him.

In the street he would stop at some window or other

displaying corsets or whatever, which we would study closely

until the people behind us had passed.

Earlier, I'd always held the door for him to enter first.

One evening he said, "That door-holding business..."

"Could you please stop it'? I'd rather you went in first."

He did suffer from a kind of persecution mania.

When we'd completed shooting The Word, Dreyer said to me,

"Bendtsen, I'd like to give you a token of my appreciation."

"Now, you must tell me if they are of no use to you,

but I have a fine pair of shoes that rather pinch my feet."

He didn't like to go and have them changed,

so, "If you like, you may have them as a present."

I did like, for I had never had such fine shoes.

Then when we finished Gertrud,

he came up to me again and said,

"Bendtsen, we've worked so splendidly together

that I'd like to show my appreciation."

"I have a very fine dinner jacket made in Paris in 1926

by a Danish tailor resident in Paris

but I am too stout for it now. If you are interested in it,

I will pay to have it altered to fit you."

As a result I received the loveliest dinner jacket.

I cannot feel any annoyance

at seeing the greatest film-makers making artistic conquests

from which less brilliant directors are later able to benefit.

Actually, I think it's splendid that conquerors do exist.

Isn't the main trouble with film that it has too few individualists,

too few fully-fledged personalities?

I shed no tears over my own fate.

I prefer to have been one of the conquerors rather than belong to the conquered.

I wear no martyr's halo.

It is a pleasure making films, and a great experience.

I have been asked to do many other things,

such as direct opera at La Scala

and the Royal Theatre in Copenhagen, but I've declined.

"Cobbler, stick to your last." I'm a film-maker and will die one.

Good films bear the mark of immortality.

tn the same way that good books are read by generation after generation

to whom the yellowing pages and ornate style represent merely an added charm,

the finest films will retain their fascination through the ages

as valuable cultural documents.

Carl Theodor Dreyer died in 1968 at the age of 79.

To the very end he worked persistently

to achieve his aim of filming his screenplay based on the Greek myth about Medea.

He wrote it for television and many years later, it was made by Lars von Trier.

Dreyer also continued to work on his ambitious project

about the historical Jesus of Nazareth.

I am sitting in a cinema theatre.

On the wall facing me, the heavy curtains are drawn aside.

The rights go out and the story comes to rife on the silver screen before me.

Perhaps it will make me laugh, perhaps cry.

Perhaps I shall laugh with tears in my eyes.

Perhaps I shall cry with a smile on my lips.

I am transported beyond time and space and forget my everyday life

until the magic spell is broken.

Film is my one great passion.