Dreyer, Karl Theodore

Dreyer was the illegitimate child of Jens Christian Thorpe, a Danish farmer, and Josefina Bernardina Nilsson, a laborer from Scania , who died trying to have an abortion . He spent the first two years of his life in shelters, then was adopted by the strict Lutheran family of the typographer Karl Theodor Dreyer, in whose honor he was named.

At 16, Dreyer graduated with honors from a classical gymnasium and, leaving foster parents, began to earn a living as a journalist. He mainly collaborated with the liberal publication Politiken .

From 1912 to 1919, Dreyer worked at the Nordisk film studio as a screenwriter, editor and caption editor ^[2] . During these years, 22 films were shot according to his scripts ^[3] .

The first independent film by Dreyer was the film adaptation of the novel by Francoz "The President" about the mother-infanticide (there is a roll call with the fate of the director’s mother himself). However, viewers were the first to see “ Pages from the Book of Satan ” - four short stories arranged like Griffith ’s Intolerance .

In the 1920s, Dreyer became an international director - he shot in Sweden , Germany , Norway , France - those countries where he managed to find funding for the next film project. Among the works of this time is one of the first films on homosexual themes, “ Michael ”, based on the novel of the same name by Herman Bang .

In 1927, Dreyer created one of the pinnacles of silent cinema - shocking the audience with his uncompromising realism, “ Passion of Joan of Arc ”. Eisenstein called it “one of the most beautiful” in the history of cinema. The basis of the director's style of Dreyer was a close-up that allowed to convey the dynamics of the psychological state of the character in the smallest nuances.

During the years of the “ Great Depression ”, Scandinavian cinema plunged into crisis, and Dreyer returned to journalism, wrote theoretical articles, which many years later composed the book “On Cinema”. In 1931, in Berlin, he shot the first sound film “The Vampire ” ^[2] , which in many respects adjoined German expressionism . This radical experiment in the field of frightening surreal imagery, later recognized as a classic, at one time discouraged both viewers and film critics.

The disappointment in the audience, the scrupulous approach to the material and the chronic lack of funding were the reasons why Dreyer made only three films for the rest of his life. They are distinguished by extra-long plans, a thorough construction of all mise-en-scenes, and contrast of the monochrom.

The Day of Wrath (1943), a tale of a medieval witch hunt in Norway , was seen by contemporaries as an allegorical statement about the fascist occupation of Europe (although Dreyer denied that it was his intention). The next film, “Two People,” was shot in Sweden and did not enter the Dreyer canon: the director removed his name from the credits. In the postwar years, he worked on short documentary films with funds from the state budget.

Solemnly slow pace, which confused the audience of "Day of Anger", was the basis for the next full-fledged film by Dreyer - " The Word ". The premiere of this tape at the Venice Film Festival of 1955 and the award of the Golden Lion caused a huge international response. The Danish government placed at the disposal of Dreyer the metropolitan Dagmar cinema, for the proceeds of which the director, now recognized as a "living classic", made his last film " Gertrude " (1964) based on the drama of Yalmar Söderberg .

Dreyer died of pneumonia on March 20, 1968 in Copenhagen during active preparations for the shooting of a long-planned film about the life of Christ. His other unfulfilled project was the adaptation of the novel Doctor Zhivago .

Feature Films

• 1919 - President / Præsidenten
• 1920 - Pastor's Widow / Prästänkan ( Denmark - Sweden )
• 1921 - Pages from the book of Satan / Blade af Satans bog
• 1922 - Branded / Love Your Neighbor / Die Gezeichneten ( Germany )
• 1922 - Once Upon a Time / Der var engang
• 1924 - Michael / Michael ( Germany )
• 1925 - Honor Your Wife / Du skal ære din hustru
• 1926 - Glomdals Bride / Glomdalsbruden ( Norway - Sweden )
• 1928 - Passion of Joan of Arc / La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc ( France )
• 1932 - Vampire / Vampyr - Der Traum des Allan Gray ( Germany - France )
• 1943 - Day of Wrath / Vredens dag
• 1945 - Two people / Två människor ( Sweden )
• 1955 - Word / Ordet ( Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival)
• 1964 - Gertrud / Gertrud

Short films

• 1942 - Help for Mothers / Mødrehjælpen (12min.)
• 1946 - Water in the Village / Vandet på landet
• 1947 - Fighting cancer / Kampen mod kræften (15min.)
• 1947 - Village Churches / Landsbykirken (14min.)
• 1948 - They caught a ferry / De nåede færgen (11min.)
• 1949 - Thorvaldsen / Thorvaldsen (10min.)
• 1950 - Bridge at Storstrøms / Storstrømsbroen (7min.)
• 1954 - Castle in the castle / Et Slot i et slot

• Om filmen, Kbh., 1964
• Fire film, [Kbh.], 1964

Publications in Russian

• About the movie / Transl. E. Krasnova and P. Kashtanova. - M.: New Publishing House, 2016. - 256 p.

• Sémolue J., Dreyer, P., [1962]
• Carl Th. Dreyer cinéaste danois. 1889-1968, 2 éd., Cph., [1969]
• Schrader P. Transcendental style in film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972
• Bordwell D. The films of Carl-Theodor Dreyer. Berkeley: London: University of California Press, 1981.
• Houe P. Carl Theodor Dreyer's cinematic humanism. Minneapolis: Center for Nordic Studies, University of Minnesota, 1992
• Laporte M. A la recherche de Carl Theodor Dreyer. Paris: Center National de la Cinématographie, 1997.
• Sémolué J. Carl Th. Dreyer: le mystère du vrai. Paris: Cahiers du cinéma, 2005.
• Andronova A.A. Karl Theodor Dreyer. Great Dane. St. Petersburg: Publisher, 2014 - ISBN 978-5-4386-0685-7 .

• The Carl Th. Dreyer
• IMDB Website Page