Carl Theodor Dreyer

Carl Theodor Dreyer
Date of birth:	February 3 1889(1889-02-03)
Date of death:	March 20 1968 (aged 79)
Death location:	Copenhagen, Denmark

Carl Theodor Dreyer, Jr. (February 3, 1889 - March 20, 1968) was a Danish film director. He is regarded as one of the greatest directors in cinema. Although his career spanned the 1910s through the 1960s, his meticulousness, dictatorial methods, idiosyncratic shooting style, stubborn devotion to his art, and difficulty raising money to finance his film projects ensured that his output remained low. In spite of all that, he produced some of the most enduring classics of international cinema. His best known film, The Passion of Joan of Arc, was listed in fourtenth place in the 2002 poll (a poll taken every decade) of international critics by the British Film Institute's highly influential journal Sight and Sound.

Life and early work

Dreyer was born illegitimate in Copenhagen, Denmark. His birth mother was an unmarried Swedish maid named Josefine Bernhardine Nilsson, and he was put up for adoption by his probable birth father, Jens Christian Torp, a farmer who was his mother's employer. He spent the first two years of his life in several different foster homes until his adoption by a typographer named Carl Theodor Dreyer, Sr., and his wife, Inger Marie. Moreover, before the private adoption could be finalized, his mother Nilsson, while carrying another child out of wedlock, took an accidentally fatal dose of phosphorous in an attempt to induce a miscarriage.

Just when the young Dreyer learned the circumstances of his birth and of his mother's fate is not known, but he seems to have suffered in deeply wounded silence about these facts for much of the rest of his life and to have been especially sensitive to the plight of abused and downtrodden women.

Dreyer's adoptive parents were strict Lutherans and his childhood was largely unhappy, but their teachings and discipline were to influence the themes of his films. He was an academically gifted student, but at the age of sixteen he left home, discontinued his formal education, and disassociated from his adoptive family.

He then took up a series of unsatisfactory office jobs before finding himself as a journalist. He worked as a reporter for several newspapers including Berlingske Tindende and Politiken. At the age of 21 he joined a group of young reporters in starting a short-lived newspaper called Riget. He also became part of the young aviation society, and his articles about this brought him to the attention of the Nordisk Film Company, for which he served as a technical advisor about hot air balloons. He then worked for awhile on the journal Ekstra Bladet, and also had increasing connections with the young Danish film industry, which got him some occasional jobs at writing titles and film scripts. Then in 1913 he signed an exclusive contract with the studio Nordisk. In the next several years his interests broadened to include film edting (he was good at it) and eventually to directing.

Dreyer as film director

Dreyer's first film as director was a melodrama entitled The President (1918). Instead of studio actors employed by Nordisk, Dreyer assembled a cast of professional and non-professional actors selected for their appropriate face types. He dispensed with cosmetics and decorated sets so he could achieve a naturalness and realism to his films.

The President takes up a subject that was personal for Dreyer: a parent’s moral responsibility for a child conceived out of wedlock. As Acquarello puts it in the Senses of Cinema account of Dreyer, "In the film, a prominent and well respected judge (Halvard Hoff) is forced to decide the fate of his adult illegitimate daughter, a governess named Victorine (Olga Raphael-Linden) when she is brought before the court to face charges for the death of her newborn child. Ironically (and perhaps, uncoincidentally), Victorine’s circumstances — a good woman seduced by her unethical and irresponsible employer — provides a intriguing plausible theory to Dreyer’s paternity." (http://www.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/dreyer.html)

File:Vampyrcoffin.jpg

Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg (who appeared under the screen name Julian West).

File:Vampyr.jpg

Original movie poster.

In 1920 Dreyer made Prästänkan, known in English as The Parson's Widow. Here a young man, a divinity student and theologian, works to receive his first parsonage, which he does by undercutting the other applicants. But he then finds that a condition of his being appointed parson is that he must take care of the widow of the late parson, a dour and harsh woman who has already outlived three husbands. He eventually marries her, and also brings his young fiancée into the parsonage under the pretext that she is his sister. The film is part comedy, part commentary on male-female relations, part domestic satire, and part commentary on aging, obsolescence, and the social status of women, especially elderly ones.

In 1928 Dreyer made his great classic film, The Passion of Joan of Arc. Working from the transcripts of Joan's trial, he created a masterpiece of emotion that drew equally from realism and expressionism. Because he did not have enough money for sound, the film is silent. It is a study of faces — the Inquisitors and priests who question and condemn her, and Joan, stoically standing against them.

Dreyer used private finance from Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg to make his next film as the Danish film industry was in financial ruin. Vampyr (1932) is a surreal meditation on fear. Logic gave way to mood and atmosphere in this story of a man protecting two sisters from a vampire. The movie contains many indelible images, such as the hero, played by de Gunzburg (under the screen name Julian West), dreaming of his own burial and the animal blood lust on the face of one of the sisters as she suffers under the vampire's spell. The film was shot as a silent but had dubbed dialogue added later.

Both films were box office failures, and Dreyer did not make another movie until 1943. Denmark was by now under Nazi occupation and his Day of Wrath had as its theme the hypocrisy of people who engaged in witch hunts. With this work, Dreyer established the style that would mark his sound films: careful compositions, stark monochrome cinematography, and very long takes. In the more than a decade before his next full-length feature film, Dreyer made two documentaries

In 1955, he shot Ordet (The Word) based on the play of the same name by Kaj Munk. The film combines a Romeo and Juliet-style love story with an examination of faith.

Dreyer's last film was 1964's Gertrud. Although seen by some as a lesser film than its predecessors, it is a fitting close to Dreyer's career, as it deals with a woman who, through the tribulations of her life, never expresses regret for her choices.

The great, never finished project of Dreyer’s career was a film about Jesus. Though a manuscript was written (published 1968) the unstable economic conditions and Dreyer’s own demands of realism together with his switching engagement let it remain a dream. In return a manuscript about Medea (1965) was realised by Lars von Trier in 1988.

Dreyer died of pneumonia in Copenhagen at age 79. The documentary Carl Th. Dreyer: My Metier contains reminiscences from those who knew him.

Filmography

Feature films

Year	English title	Original title	Production country	Notes
1919	The President	Præsidenten	Denmark	Based on the novel by Karl Emil Franzos.
1920	The Parson's Widow	Prästänkan	Sweden/Denmark	Based on the story "Prestekonen" by Kristofer Janson.
1921	Leaves from Satan's Book	Blade af Satans bog	Denmark	Loosely based on the The Sorrows of Satan.
1922	Love One Another	Die Gezeichneten	Germany	Based on the novel by Aage Madelung, this film is extremely rare (only 4 prints survive in archives).
1922	Once Upon a Time	Der var engang	Denmark	Based on the play by Holger Drachmann.
1924	Michael	Michael	Germany	Based on the novel Mikaël (1904) by Herman Bang.
1925	Thou Shalt Honor Thy Wife (aka Master of the House)	Du skal ære din hustru	Denmark	Based on the play by Svend Rindom.
1926	Bride of Glomdal	Glomdalsbruden	Norway/Sweden	Based on the novel by Jacob Breda Bull.
1928	The Passion of Joan of Arc	La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc	France	Co-written with Joseph Delteil, author of the novel Jeanne d'Arc (1925, Prix Femina).
1932	The Vampire	Vampyr - Der Traum des Allan Grey	France/Germany	Based on the novella Carmilla (1872) by J. Sheridan Le Fanu.
1943	Day of Wrath	Vredens dag	Denmark	Based on the play "Anne Pedersdotter" by Hans Wiers-Jenssen, hymns by Paul La Cour.
1945	Two People	Två människor	Sweden	Based on the play "Attentat" by W.O. Somin. Made in Nazi-related exile to Sweden, the film was disowned by Dreyer and withdrawn from distribution.
1955	The Word	Ordet	Denmark	Based on the play by Kaj Munk.
1964	Gertrud	Gertrud	Denmark	Based on the play by Hjalmar Söderberg.

Short films

• Good Mothers (Mødrehjælpen, 12 min, 1942)
• Water from the Land (Vandet på landet, 1946)
• The Struggle Against Cancer (Kampen mod kræften, 15 min, 1947)
• The Danish Village Church (Landsbykirken, 14 min, 1947)
• They Caught the Ferry (De nåede færgen, 11 min, 1948)
• Thorvaldsen (10 min, 1949)
• The Storstrom Bridge (Storstrømsbroen, 7 min, 1950)
• The Castle Within the Castle (Et Slot i et slot, 1955)

Bibliography

• Drum, Jean and Dale D., My Only Great Passion: The Life and Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer (Lanham MD: Scarecrow Press, 2000). ISBN-10: 0810836793 ISBN-13: 978-0810836792
• Carney, Ray, Speaking the Language of Desire: The Films of Carl Dreyer (Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 1989). ISBN-10: 0521378079 ISBN-13: 978-0521378079
• Bordwell, David, The Films of Carl Theodor Dreyer (Berkeley CA: University of California Press, 1981). ISBN-10: 0520039874 ISBN-13: 978-0520039872
• Skoller, Donald, Dreyer in Double Reflection: Translation of Carl Th. Dreyer’s writings About the Film (Om Filmen) (New York: Da Capo Press, 1991). ISBN-10: 0306804581

ISBN-13: 978-0306804588

• Schrader, Paul, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer (New York: Da Capo Press, 1988). ISBN-10: 0306803356 ISBN-13: 978-0306803352

External links

• Carl Theodor Dreyer at the Internet Movie Database
• Carl Theodor Dreyer at SensesOfCinema.com
• carldreyer.com
• A rare 25-minute radio interview in English, c.1965, USA (mp3)
• Dreyer's essay - 'Thoughts on My Métier'
• Dreyer's article - 'Realized Mysticism'
• In-depth article from 1951 on 'The Tyrannical Dane'

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