Carl Theodor Dreyer 1943 Denmark
Starring: Lisbeth Movin, Thorkild Roose, Preben Lerdorff Rye, Sigrid Neiiendam, Anna Svierkier
Several years ago I met a young woman who I felt an instant attraction to, not 'love at first sight' or anything so clichéd but just a sort of magnetism that I couldn't ignore. It wasn't that she was particularly beautiful or even particularly noticeable but there was something drawing me to her. For lack of a better term it was as if I recognised her, although quite how when I'd never encountered her before in my life was beyond me. As it turns out though this wasn't as original a thought as it seemed to me at the time because, as ever, one of cinema's greats got there 60 years before me. In Day Of Wrath, Carl Theodor Dreyer's drama of witch-burning, sexual liberation and religious tyranny, Anne, the young wife of a priest, meets her stepson Martin (actually older than she is) for the first time and she's struck in the exact same way as I was, a feeling that's summed up perfectly with the phrase "I've seen your face". Right from the start we can tell that their relationship isn't going to end well but, regardless, they can't disregard each other. It's one that changes Anne, giving her a confidence and a happiness that she's never experienced and signposting her eventual denouncement almost as much as the image of her face behind the bar-like frames of a window. Late in the film (in an astonishingly intense scene) she practically seals her fate when she responds to her anguished husband's question of whether she is happy in their marriage by admitting that she has never loved him and berating him for his motives. Dreyer however never loses sight of his sympathy for both parties even though we've already seen Absalon take part in the torture of an elderly woman accused of witchcraft despite his doubt of her guilt (he's apparently more comfortable with her dead and out of the way than alive and potentially damaging to his reputation) then assemble a group of choirboys to sing hymns as she is flung into the flames. Still, perhaps the oddest thing about the film is its admittance of the supernatural. Despite being pretty plain about the fact that most of the accused aren't witches we're told early on that Anne's mother genuinely was a witch by a character shown as good and otherwise wholly sensible and that Absalon lied and spared her from death so he could marry Anne. It's not hard to see which Dreyer portrays as the worst crime. Later, it's implied that Anne may have similar powers. At one point her mother's ability to 'call the dead and alive alike' is discussed and seconds later Anne appears to call Martin silently and he is immediately by her side. Similarly, Absalon's mother is shown as a negative character from the start - even her face with its bags under her eyes and nose like a ripe plum never rises beyond disapproval - but her worst crime seems to be being a victim of the patriarchal society of 1623. The Old Testament also hangs heavy over the film; even when an accused woman hides in a pig pen the atmosphere has been so pious that we can't help but think of Leviticus 18:23 with its 'Neither shalt thou lie with any beast to defile thyself therewith: neither shall any woman stand before a beast to lie down thereto'. It's a side that's never explored or even alluded to any further but it's still there. Many have labelled the portrait of witch-hunts in the film as an allegory of the Nazi Party's treatment of Denmark but for me it strikes as more easily comparable to the 'Red Scare' that started after the first world war and morphed into the McCarthy trials of the 1950's where many prominent people were accused of Communism and promptly blacklisted from business and basically ruined without much in the way of evidence other than having liberal leanings. It's a frightening, deeply moving depiction of religious totalitarianism with stunning shadowy cinematography reminiscent of the German expressionist era and one that makes me want to explore Dreyer's long career further, especially since he represents a bit of a gap in my viewing history.
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