It is 1623, Denmark, a hundred years after the Protestant reformation, and religious tide has swung from the sale of indulgences to theological fanaticism. Witchcraft trials occur with certain frequency, and any aberrant behavior is cause for denunciation. Herlof’s Marthe (Anna Svierkier), a morally weak woman who experiments with the occult, has been denounced as […]

Filmed during the transition from silent to sound, Vampyr also represents a creative transition for Carl Theodor Dreyer. Having ended his association with Société Général de Films, the production company that had brought him to Paris and financed The Passion of Joan of Arc (he subsequently broke his contract and filed a lawsuit against them […]

In 1431 Rouen, in the midst of a ravaging Hundred Years War with England, a nineteen year old French peasant girl named Jeanne was condemned to death by the church tribunal for heresy, and burned at the stake. Based on the historical transcripts of the actual trial, Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of […]

A departure from Carl Theodor Dreyer’s general reputation as a director of severe, forbidding, and deeply spiritual films, Master of the House reflects the gentle humor, humanism, and innate social conscience that is often overlooked in the cursory assessment of Dreyer’s stylistically identifiable and accomplished body of work. In Master of the House, Ida Frandsen […]

The prologue to Leaves from Satan’s Book recounts the familiar tale of Satan’s banishment from Heaven. In order to return, Satan is doomed to perform acts of temptation upon humanity with the stipulation that for every soul who yields, 100 years will be added to his time on earth. However, for every soul who resists, […]