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Boccaccio in olden Norway or nearly, a comedy in woodcuts. The first image (a Sjöström waterfall fills the screen, a pan left locates a frolicking couple) showcases Carl Theodor Dreyer's understanding of movement within stillness, also his discovery of the cinematic shot as gag. The sweethearts (Einar Röd, Greta Almroth) arrive at the village but cannot get married until he becomes a parson, competition comes from two Copenhagen theologists—one looks like Stan Laurel and bores the congregation to sleep, the blobby other delivers a sermon with a feather sticking out of his hair. The protagonist knows an audience when he sees it and galvanizes from the pulpit with stories of Hell, with the job comes the elderly widow (Hildur Carlberg) who's already outlived three husbands. Her supposed witchcraft turns out to be a hearty breakfast of herring and schnapps, the deadpan arrangement brings his beloved into the household posing as his sister and plants a seed for Days of Heaven. A romantic ocarina receives a faceful of basin water, "a grave temptation," the finger poking through the weaving loom to be seized by the hatchet-faced servant becomes an even dirtier joke in Porky's. Even a demonic disguise (painted fangs and floppy ears on a sheet, plus Nosferatu claws) can't quake the old oak, a small detail gives it away: "Never have I seen the Devil himself walking in slippers!" The stinger is that the grumpy gorgon is a tender human being, reminded of her youth by the illicit lovers and all too aware of the encroaching Reaper. (Her last walk around the farm devastatingly clinches the progression from humor to compassion.) Dreyer reconfigures and darkens it in Day of Wrath, here the sorceress' parting gift is not a curse but the sagacity of age, the cross-shaped iris closes around the youngsters like an embrace. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |