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Carl Theodor Dreyer Box Set

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Following the release of Carl Th. Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, the Criterion Collection renews its commitment to this major director with a special-edition box set of his sound films, Day of Wrath, Ordet, and Gertrud. Each is an intense exploration of the clash between individual desire and social expectations, with Dreyer’s famously perfectionist attention to detail shining throughout. With brand new digital transfers supervised by Gertrud director of photography Henning Bendtsen, the Criterion Collection is proud to present these Dreyer masterpieces on DVD for the first time. The fourth disc in the set presents the masterful 1995 documentary on Dreyer by Danish filmmaker Torben Skødt Jensen, Carl Th. Dreyer—My Métier. Extensive interviews with collaborators and actors provide fresh insight into the life and work of one of cinema’s great masters.

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Day of Wrath

Filmed during the Nazi occupation of Denmark, Carl Dreyer’s Day of Wrath (Vredens dag) is a harrowing account of individual helplessness in the face of growing social repression and paranoia. Anna, the young second wife of a well-respected but much older pastor, falls in love with her stepson when he returns to their small seventeenth-century village. Stepping outside the bounds of the village’s harsh moral code has disastrous results. Exquisitely photographed and passionately acted, Day of Wrath remains an intense, unforgettable experience.

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Ordet

A farmer’s family is torn apart by faith, sanctity, and love—one child believes he’s Jesus Christ, a second proclaims himself agnostic, and the third falls in love with a fundamentalist’s daughter. Putting the lie to the term "organized religion," Ordet (The Word) is a challenge to simple facts and dogmatic orthodoxy. Layering multiple stories of faith and rebellion, Dreyer’s adaptation of Kaj Munk’s play quietly builds towards a shattering, miraculous climax.

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Gertrud

Carl Dreyer’s last film neatly crowns his career: a meditation on tragedy, individual will and the refusal to compromise. A woman leaves her unfulfilling marriage and embarks on a search for ideal love—but neither a passionate affair with a younger man nor the return of an old romance can provide the answer she seeks. Always the stylistic innovator, Dreyer employs long takes and theatrical staging to concentrate on Nina Pens Rode’s sublime portrayal of the proud and courageous Gertrud.

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Carl Th. Dreyer—My Metier

Torben Skjødt Jensen’s elegant documentary is a collage of memories and reflections on one of cinema’s greatest directors. Visually rich and densely layered, Carl Th. Dreyer—My Metier illuminates an artist too little understood and too important to overlook. Through interviews, historical writings, and rare archival footage, a portrait of Dreyer emerges: an austere perfectionist, yes, but also a passionate man possessing a genuine sense of humor. The Criterion Collection is proud to present this in-depth study of Dreyer’s life and work for the first time on home video.

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Special Features

- New digital transfers of all the films, supervised by Gertrud cinematographer Henning Bendtsen
- Interview footage with cast members from Day of Wrath, Ordet, and Gertrud
- Archival footage of Dreyer during the production of Gertrud
- Interviews with Dreyer cinematographers Henning Bendtsen and Jørgen Roos
- A 22-page booklet, including a reprint of Dreyer’s essay Thoughts on My Métier
- An extensive essay by Dreyer scholar Edvin Kau
- Stills galleries accompanying each film
- Gertrud enhanced for 16×9 televisions

I watched Gertrud recently, and it's always far more hypnotic and compelling a viewing experience than I recall. It's a film where the text and on-screen action are no more important than normally minor formal elements, such as the small camera movements (always significant) and gaze (possibly the most expressive element of the film). This makes for a very unusual viewing experience (though Eugene Green's recent Le Pont des Arts seems to be an indirect descendant, at least) but I find the whole thing, so perfectly balanced, utterly mesmerising, and ultimately emotionally draining.

I received a copy of this box set today, but I'm not sure if it's 100% legitimate.
The first thing I noticed was the back cover, which was not printed directly on the cardboard, but printed on a white sheet and then glued on the cardboard. But then i remembered, wasn't the Cocteau designed like that?
And lastly, is the inside of the box supposed to be just plain white and not contain any art work like the Bergman set?

I should also mention that the back cover sheet was only attached on the cardboard with just some glue on the top. So beneath the sheet was the same artwork like the one on the front, just a bit differnet (a grey background and different stills from the films).
Maybe it just wasn't glued on properly and this is the way it should look like beneth?
And is the quality of the cardboard suppose to have a more glossy quality, as opposed to the Bergman and Fassbinder set.

That's correct. That's what the box looks like. There's another discussion on here somewhere talking about how the individual cases don't fit snugly in some people's boxes, but they all appear to be legitimate.

Thanks jorencain and ohrobert! It seems like it's 100% legit.
My breathing has now gone back to normal.

Any word of this box going OOP?
Some e-tailers seem low of stock, and I think I read somewhere (wish I could remember) that it is a possibility.

In all the musings & oozings & thematic absusings that constitute the critical analysis of the sum of Dreyers work, I've yet to catch a whiff of this observation: in most all of Dreyer's films, the death of a good/innocent woman is employed as a vehicle for the illustration of some garden variety of injustice/redemption/catharsis/equanimity- arrived-at... or otherwise all around profound, defining moment.

The last three vignettes of Leaves From Satan's Book. The death of The Parson's Widow (and the death of the one that preceded her). Joan of Arc. The dying innocent sister in Vampyr (plus the iron bar through the heart of the old vampire herself). The "witch" as well as the (presumably soon-to-be-executed) young wife in Day of Wrath. The death of Inger in Ordet (her subsequent resurrection notwithstanding). The strongly-implied-to-be-immediately-impending death of Gertrud at the end of that film. Even They Caught The Ferry includes the death of a young female lead.

Mikael is about the only film out of my collection (I own all mentioned titles) which features a man (two actually... in both the homo-and hetero couplings within the film which mirror one another) dying in that state of selfless, sacrificing grace for his love object.

I don't own Two People, nor have I purchased the VHS of Master of the House, though we know the subject matter concerns a long suffering wife of an abusive husband. And until I snag an all region DVD player, my copy of Happily Ever After will remain at the DFI store.

Of course we know of Dreyer's longing and probable neverending ache for his birthmother... grist for Freudians ad nauseum... but in terms of cinematic study I'm wondering if anybody else has observed this gravity of Dreyers toward tales of this type?

Maybe it's a Danish thing, look at Von Trier's movies. Or maybe Lars is just copying his idol Dreyer.

Simon wrote:Maybe it's a Danish thing, look at Von Trier's movies. Or maybe Lars is just copying his idol Dreyer.

I can't remember who it was, but I recall a critic claiming once that von Trier's entire career was his attempt to recapture the hard-on he got the first time he saw The Passion of Joan of Arc.

I can't remember who it was, but I recall a critic claiming once that von Trier's entire career was his attempt to recapture the hard-on he got the first time he saw The Passion of Joan of Arc.

I can't blame him. It's an experience that parallels my film collecting/watching endeavors.

Your wife has a lovely throat.

I emailed Mulvaney about the Gertrud aspect ratio question (see DVD Beaver for details.

You list your DVD of Dreyer's Gertrud as having an aspect ratio
of 1.66:1, but I've heard that it's been mistakenly issued at 1.78. Do you
have any plans to correct this in the future?

and got back this:

Criterion's GERTRUD is presented in its original theatrical aspect ratio of
1.66:1.

Best,
JM

Has it been corrected, or is JM just repeating the mistake on the box?

Hasn't been corrected. Criterion is in denial about this and the AR of Discreet Charm and Marriage of Maria Brown, among others.

Just read this wonderful article on Dreyer by Jonathan Rosenbaum and thought I'd share it here.

More proof that Tag Gallagher is our best writer on cinema.

That article appeared first 5 years ago in Filmhaftet #124 (2002: 6) - link still on the MoC Dreyer site, but pdf file seems to have dissappeared... Good to see it out and about again...

Would people suggest getting this or the Teshigahara box as a next purchase? How are the Dreyer masterings?

Adam wrote:Would people suggest getting this or the Teshigahara box as a next purchase? How are the Dreyer masterings?

the Dreyer set, definitely. Each Dreyer film is a masterpiece (every Dreyer film from Passion onward is a masterpiece... and this set gives you three of those five films). Ordet is mind-blowing and Gertrud has some of the most amazing camera-work (plus it was one of Orson Welles' favorite films).
The teshigahara box is good, but fairly uneven (as not everything is of Woman in the Dunes' quality). It's a good, solid, package... but if you don't have the Dreyer box, get it... it's my most beloved Criterion boxed set (right next to the Cassavetes and Bergman sets)

"Day of Wrath" is terrific as well, one of the best films I've seen for sure. Does anyone know of a 110 min version as mentioned at imdb? Most video versions that I've heard of, including the Criterion, run about 95 min only.

Some past members of this forum thought "Gertud" too stagy, but I thought the presentation worked very well for the story.

miless wrote:every Dreyer film from Passion onward is a masterpiece...

I'd say, cut out "from Passion onward". The earlier films may not be quite that last bit as sublime as the later ones, but are perhaps more accessible. Still even his VERY early pieces like "Praesidenten" and especially "Der var engang" are among the best films made in their time in my view.. But anyhow: Get that box immediately, if you can live with the misframed "Gertrud" (I can), otherwise buy the three BFI discs. And then head on for the silents.

The Teshigahara box is definitely worth having, but the Dreyer set - and Ordet in particular - leaves me shell shocked every time. I would caution though that Dreyer is definitely the sort of director you have to be ready for. If you've ever found Bergman too bleak, or if you've ever turned something off and saved it for another time because you couldn't quite get into it, theres no shame in holding off on this. I certainly don't mean to indicate that Dreyer's work is inaccessible, but you have to be prepared to reach emotional depths previously undiscovered in a cinematic context. Tread lightly, and you will be rewarded exponentially.

Ditto on everything. This box and JOAN are, with stuff like 7Samurai and the Renoirs, the very cornerstones of the collection. Teshigi is sublime, but far less "central to the whole idea of cinema" (now theres an irritating turn of phrase but you get the gist) than that monstrously sublime Dreyer box.

And hey, just to prove that I really really mean it-- this thread is the first one I posted in when I first decided to post here a couple some-odd (very odd) years ago. All the "thematic musings and abusings" stuff was my first CriFordotorg post.

Tommaso wrote:

miless wrote:every Dreyer film from Passion onward is a masterpiece...

I'd say, cut out "from Passion onward".

Is everybody conveniently forgetting Two People, or did I sleep through a recent reevaluation? Other than that, I agree. The Teshigahara set is better presented, but filmwise it's no contest.

arsonfilms wrote:. I would caution though that Dreyer is definitely the sort of director you have to be ready for. If you've ever found Bergman too bleak, or if you've ever turned something off and saved it for another time because you couldn't quite get into it, theres no shame in holding off on this.

I agree very much. I feel really happy to have incidentally started my Dreyer watching with "Vampyr" and then "Jeanne" before coming to the later films. I don't know whether I would have touched Dreyer again if I had started with "Gertrud", for example (which is a great film, of course, but still extremely difficult for me). The early films (before "Jeanne") are also very helpful to put the late works into perspective, because they reveal a Dreyer who could actually be dead funny in places, especially "The Parson's Widow" and to a lesser extent "Master of the house". In these films Dreyer is much closer to Bergman's lighter pieces than one would imagine. And much as I hate to say it, because I'm a dedicated Ingmar fan: even the best Bergmans tend to pale if you compare them to "Ordet". It's indeed the greater bleakness of Dreyer's films which ultimately make them even more effective. Bergman somewhere said something to the effect that whatever dreary subject you're tackling as a filmmaker you should never forget to entertain people. He manages this with almost all of his films, of course, but the unrelenting abrasiveness of "Day of Wrath" and "Gertrud" leads to less entertainment but in the end to (even) greater works. Still "Ordet", although it's more accessible, seems to me the very greatest of the three films.

Zedz, of course I forgot "Two people", as almost everyone seems to when discussing Dreyer. I've never seen it, of course, but would be really interested, needless to say. The film has been dismissed by Dreyer and by critics alike,but still I cannot imagine that Dreyer would even have been ABLE to produce something outright bad.

Talking about re-evaluating Dreyer works: the only Dreyer I've seen that didn't exactly blow me away was "Leaves from Satan's books", though it's still not quite clear to me WHY. Perhaps it reminded me too much of the Italians or Griffith's "Intolerance" with not enough of the typical Dreyer personality in it (which I find much more in the earlier "Praesidenten"). I also wasn't exactly happy with the Image disc, which leads to my question: how is the new disc from the Danish Film Institute? It runs 30 min. longer than the Image, is that due to a more complete print or to a corrected projection speed? Should I go for an update?

Tommaso wrote:I also wasn't exactly happy with the Image disc, which leads to my question: how is the new disc from the Danish Film Institute? It runs 30 min. longer than the Image, is that due to a more complete print or to a corrected projection speed? Should I go for an update?

Tommaso, I cannot comment on the Image disc, as I have never seen it. However, I do own the disc from DFI, and I think it looks fantastic (I will be happy to post some caps, if you like). The actual running time of the film here is 157 minutes, but unfortunately it does not mention the running speed. All it says is: "HD transfer from a restored duplicate negative." Movement in the film seemed very "natural," if that means anything to you. The film is presented with Danish intertitles and optional English subtitles.

As extra material is included an alternative ending to the film, which runs apx. 2 ½ minutes, and a "reel" of raw footage clocking in at about 4 minutes (as far as I can tell this material is something like the rough cut for the alternate ending). The extra materials are presented without music.

Being as big a Dreyer fan as you clearly are, I can't conceive of you continuing your life at all happily without this disc in your bookrack