Carl Theodor Dreyer

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Based on Herman Bang’s 1902 novel of the same name, Dreyer’s film is a fascinating fin-de-siècle study of a “decadent” elderly artist (Benjamin Christensen) driven to despair by his relationship with his young protégé and former model, Michael (Walter Slezak). With suffocatingly sumptuous production design by renowned architect Hugo Häring (his only film work), this Kammerspiel, or “intimate theatre”, foreshadows Dreyer’s magnificent final film Gertrud, by forty years with its “Now I may die content, for I have seen great love” epigraph.Read More »

Traveler Allan Gray arrives in the village of Courtempierre and takes lodgings in a small inn. Gray has a great interest in the supernatural, particularly vampires. He’s barely settled in when he feels a sinister force descending upon him. In the night an old man enters his room to tell him ‘she must not die’. One of the old man’s daughters, Leone, has been bitten by a vampire. In order to break the curse, Gray and Leone’s sister Gisele must find the original vampire and drive a stake through her heart.Read More »

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In a 17th-century Danish village, an old woman is accused of witchcraft. In the shadow of her flight, capture, confession, and burning at the stake, the young wife of the town’s aging pastor falls in love with the pastor’s son…Read More »

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Although only Dreyer’s third film, The Parson’s Widow is an astonishingly mature achievement. Many of the director’s chief characteristics can be recognised, appearing not as blueprints but in their already fully-realised form. To people who only know his more celebrated later works, the most surprising feature of The Parson’s Widow is its humour. Its comedy is in the tradition – as becomes a Swedish production of the time – not only of Mauritz Stiller’s well-known frequentation of the genre, but also of some of Victor Sjöström’s less widely seen or underappreciated masterpieces, such as Hans nåds testamente (His Honor’s Testament, 1919) and Mästerman (1920). All of these films are quiet, poignant comedies of love and ageing, strangely foreshadowing some of Leo McCarey’s 1930s films.Read More »

Within its walls, Kronborg Castle in Elsinore contains large sections of another, older castle, Krogen, built by Eric of Pomerania around 1420. Discoveries unearthed during the 1926-1935 restoration of Kronborg made it possible to form a picture of Krogen, illustrated in the film by reconstruction models.Read More »

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Carl Th. Dreyer’s beautiful documentary uses no words to show different aspects of this beautiful bridge in Denmark. It is one of over a dozen state-commissioned documentary shorts made by the famous director.

The Storstrom Bridge was built between 1933-37 to the designs of Anker Engelund with construction under the direction of civil engineer Guy Anson Maunsell.

Storstrom Bridge connects the island of Sjaelland (Zealand) at Vordingborg to the smaller island of Falster to the south. Some two miles long (3199 metres or 3520 yards), at the time it was built it was the longest bridge in Europe.Read More »

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“Landsbykirken” or “The Village Church” takes us back to the Danish old churches built in the Middle Age and their transformations through the years and through the dominant groups of a certain period, like the Christians and the Protestants, and the new things they were modifying in those constructions.Read More »

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In a 17th-century Danish village, an old woman is accused of witchcraft. In the shadow of her flight, capture, confession, and burning at the stake, the young wife of the town’s aging pastor falls in love with the pastor’s son. Her confession of this illicit affair to her husband brings on her husband’s death. At the funeral the pastor’s mother denounces the young widow as a witch. Will the widow’s lover come to her defense, or has the day of wrath returned?Read More »

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The Mothers’ Aid is a state-funded institution with branches all over Denmark. Erna, a young pregnant woman, has asked a doctor to carry out an abortion, but instead he advised her to go to the Mothers’ Aid for consultation. She is unmarried, and afraid of losing her job, if she is going to have a baby. The female adviser suggests that she should give birth to the child, and then decide if she should keep it, or have it adopted by someone else. Erna takes part in a course, where she learns how to look after a baby. The last six weeks before the birth she lives in a home for expectant mothers at no expenses for her. The child is born and Erna decides to keep it. She and her child spend the first months in a home for mothers and their babies, which is also free of charge.Read More »