VREDENS DAG (Day of Wrath, 1943) ***1/2 Car-chase lovers need not apply, philosophers of the world...recoil. Rather than denying the existence of witches and the evil one, Carl Dreyer predicates his action on their reality and the premise that evil brings everyone down in their own way. Clerics lie to each other to protect themselves, lovers lie to each other to protect their love, children prepare new and beautiful a capella hymns for the witch burning, "suspects" are tortured for "the glory of God," condemning priests pray extra hard for the souls of the damned to compensate for their complicity, it's remarkable that Scandinavian style was ever able to overcome any of this. It's easy enough to understand how Anna Svierkier falls so hard for Preben Lerdoff Rye after we get a good look at Thorkild Roose-severe and pompous in righteousness derived by position and robe, well meaning but afraid and cutting deals that he has to, and that terrify him. Svierkier is only brilliant, the most sympathetic and empathetic figure despite (or because of) her rationalizations of dark yearnings, with her head bowed and her eyes raised, fighting only for her love at the expense of all else, how can there not be heavy metal songs written in her honour? (answer: illiterate cro-magnons still trying to find a rhyme for "Lugosi") Betrayed by love and condemned by her own truth. It's a helluva argument that man will go wrong whatever situation we're put in, but an even better one, inadvertently I think, that we're being manipulated into situations that we can't handle. It's the most Protestant thing I've ever seen.
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