Day of Wrath (1943)

[phil noir]

If anyone else on the forum has seen this film, I'd be interested to hear their opinions...

Made in Denmark in 1943, and directed by Carl Theodore Dreyer, it centres around the marriage of a troubled minister to his much younger second wife. His mother hates the girl; his son falls in love with her. The story takes place in 1623 against a background of denunciations and trials for witchcraft. The women accused are tortured until they confess 'for the glory of the God' and then burnt at the stake. Both these events are dramatized horribly and shockingly for the camera.

It is a sparse, beautifully austere film, evidently shot on a low budget, since the townspeople who cry for the witches to die are only ever heard as noises off. Doing a bit of research, I found that the film was shot during the Nazi occupation of Denmark; does it then belong to the tradition of 'occupation' films in which artists contrived to insert parallels with their country's modern day suffering into historical settings? In this case, the religious zealots who countenanced torture for 'a greater good' might be identified with the Nazis.

I admired it very much, but I did not - strictly speaking - enjoy it. Well, I suppose it's not really one of those productions you're meant to enjoy. It was often painfully suspenseful, not because it was treated as though it were a thriller, but because of the oppressive sense of foreboding that hung over even the few carefree scenes. The performances were very good - strangely no-one was credited in the version I saw - especially that of the actress playing the central role of Anne, the young wife, whose presentation was troublingly ambiguous. Did she really consider herself a witch - or had she been pushed into playing such a role by the absence of choice in her marriage? I felt that more than almost any other film I've seen, the makers were going all out to recreate the mindset of another century - and so it's almost possible to add a third option: was she really a witch?

[Mr. Arkadin]

Day of Wrath is one of my absolute favorites and in my opinion, one of the greatest films ever made. I'm working on a project which includes this, so I'm reluctant to include analysis, but I will say that you're on the right track here:

Did she really consider herself a witch - or had she been pushed into playing such a role by the absence of choice in her marriage? I felt that more than almost any other film I've seen, the makers were going all out to recreate the mindset of another century - and so it's almost possible to add a third option: was she really a witch?

As for enjoying it, I think I know what you mean. I love the film, but it deals with dark human characteristics that many of us would rather not acknowledge or dwell on.

[charliechaplinfan]

I would say that this is a great movie, only watch with caution, don't watch it when you're feeling blue or at odds with the world. I would draw a parellel with The Crucible, to a point, Dreyer makes this more powerful than Arthur Miller's work. The Crucible was written at the time of the McCarthy witch hunts and this was made during the German occupation of Denmark, it really makes me shudder to know what mankind has been capable of at certain points in history. It also is reminiscient of Jeanne D'Arc, from my viewing experience these two are the most powerful of Dreyer's works and certainly the most emotional to watch.

I like the composition of Day of Wrath, it's invokes paintings from the era. It's wonderfully acted, the only people who feel human in this film are the old woman and Anne yet the people who condemn them don't have any positive human feelings, only bad ones like jealousy yet the condemn the most pure. The old lady is so afraid to die. It's utterly chilling and compelling.

[ChiO]

Ark wrote:

Day of Wrath is one of my absolute favorites and in my opinion, one of the greatest films ever made.

I couldn't agree more, and there are two Dreyer films that I like even more: THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC and ORDET. That puts Dreyer near the top of my favorite directors.

P. Noir wrote:

Doing a bit of research, I found that the film was shot during the Nazi occupation of Denmark; does it then belong to the tradition of 'occupation' films in which artists contrived to insert parallels with their country's modern day suffering into historical settings?

DAY OF WRATH can certainly be read that way. Dreyer himself, however, tended to try to make films that are timelessness or, to use Paul Schrader's apt characterization, transcendent. Dreyer indicated in a 1950 radio interview that DAY OF WRATH was not intended to be a statement on the Nazi occupation, but admitted that one never knows what is in one's subconscious. He also stated in that interview:

In both JOAN OF ARC and DAY OF WRATH I have consciously tried to remain impartial. The clergy in the two films did indeed condemn Joan and the harmless old witch to the stake, but it was not because they were evil and cruel. They were only caught up in the religious conceptions of that time. When they tortured their victims in order to force a confession from them, it was because the confession insured the accused eternal life.

My reading of Dreyer films generally is that he is critiquing the social institutions of power and control because those institutions impede personal growth and the creation of a better world. Joan and the daughter-in-law in ORDET, especially, are near ideal types of women trying to break the bonds of social convention (an idealized memory of his unwed mother who gave him up for adoption?). What makes DAY OF WRATH so fascinating to me is that the young wife is wanting to violate one of the most sacrosanct social conventions of the West, the incest taboo. I still can't get a grip on why Dreyer chose that to dramatize his general theme because it seems to de-idealize her, which, to his credit, also makes her the most human of his heroines.