"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 aims 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 Führer 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 Mødrehjælpen, 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 Carné's films, Quai des brumes and Daybreak or Le Jour Se lève." "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, Besættelse 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, Besættelse, 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 "besættelse"" "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, besættelse." ""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.""