Day of Wrath
Carl Theodor Dreyer
Initial release:
The year was 1943. Denmark lived under the Nazi jackboot, its civilians brutalized, its speech suppressed, its Jews fled the country. And Carl Theodor Dreyer, Danish filmmaker, had something to say. Day of Wrath, released in late 1943, isn't about the Nazis or the Holocaust, but its story of life in a repressive society that treats its citizens with suspicion resonated with the Danish resistance.
The year is 1623. Marte, an old woman, is on the run from witch hunters. She goes to the local pastor, Absalon, whose young wife Anne hides her, but Marte is caught anyway. Marte knows the middle-aged pastor spared Anne’s late mother (accused of witchcraft) to marry Anne, and threatens to spill. Ultimately, Marte is executed without betraying Absalon’s secret, but Absalon feels guilt over leaving her to burn. Meanwhile, Absalon’s elderly mother hates Anne, who has fallen in love with Absolon’s son martin, the two of them carrying on a relationship in secret.
While the film is sometimes presented as a horror film, there’s not very much in the way of scares, or even tension. Everything moves glacially: the plot, the characters, their lines. Probably the single scariest thing is a scream as Marte is lowered into the pyre.
Dreyer’s
films are often accused of being slow-paced. His previous film, 1932's Vampyr, was also a slow burn, bordering on silent film. He likes to make use of long shots and glacial dialogue; every line seems to be delivered woodenly; the camera work is
mostly standard shots with very little of note (I did like a panning
shot in a room full of columns, though.) Only the music stands out.
This film is considered analogous to the Nazi oppression of Jews; Dreyer denied it, but left Denmark to sit out the war in Sweden anyway. But I dislike the comparison, because while in the real world witch hunts have always been tools of oppression, in the film witches are real, and villainous. It’s the same problem as The Lancashire Witches — any negative critique of historical witch hunts, and any attempt to make analogies to more modern situations of oppression, will always be undermined by making villains out of the victims.
In
the end, while I’m puzzled over the 100% fresh rating it has on Rotten
Tomatoes, I will admit that if you like gloomy, slow-paced European
films with metaphors that don’t stand up to any serious examination,
you’ll like Day of Wrath.
-june❤