Day of Wrath (1943)
Posted: June 24th, 2009, 5:51 am
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?
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?