Vredens dag (Day of wrath) 1943 - Dreyer's second sound film after a decade of silence

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IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Main Caast: Albert Hoeberg, Lisbeth Movin, Preben Neergaard

"Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer's Day of Wrath (Vredens Dag) is set in 1623 Denmark, where Anne Pedersdotter (Lisbeth Movin), the second wife of a Danish pastor, grows to loathe her husband for his self-asceticism and instead falls in love with the minister's son - with whom she spends an inordinate amount of time. Locals overhear her wishing aloud for her husband's death; when he dies of a stroke not long after, she is accused of witchcraft, a charge taken seriously enough to be punishable by death. Eventually, the poor woman is tortured and traumatized to such a point that she actually believes she is a witch - and she gives in to being burned at the stake. Yet Dreyer then shifts the perspective from internalized - illustrating the woman's paralyzing fear - to externalized, a point of view that enables the director to depict his subject's spiritual purification. Even allowing for the aura of raw terror, Dreyer never loses sight of the eroticism inherent in the concept of witchcraft. All of Dreyer's stylistic trademarks are in place: an extreme austerity in the compositions, an emphasis on the contrast between black and white, an abundance of slow tracking shots, and a judicious use of extreme close-ups. The film moves with Dreyer's customary deliberate pace, but nevertheless it's one of his most accessible films. Lead actress Lisbeth Movin's spectacular final moments, as she accepts her fate, bring to mind the legendary Maria Falconetti in Dreyer's early masterpiece, La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc. Based on a play by Wiers Jensen, Day of Wrath was filmed during the Nazi occupation of Denmark and not released abroad until after the war, and the director reportedly had to flee his native country when he angered the government with the film's political content." - www.allmovie.com

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Vampyr (Vampire) 1932 - A compelling mood of horror

IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0023649/
IMDB rating: 7,7

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer
Main Cast: Julian West, Maurice Schutz, Rena Mandel, Sybille Schmitz

"Vampyr ranks in many circles as one of the greatest horror films of all time. In this chilling, atmospheric film from Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer favors style over story, offering a minimal plot that draws only partially from established vampire folklore. Instead, Dreyer emphasizes an utterly dreamlike visual approach, using trick photography (double exposures, etc.) and a fog-like effect created by allowing additional light to leak onto the exposed film (the cinematographer is Rudolph Mate). The result is an unsettling film that seems to spring literally from the subconscious, freely adapted from the Victorian short story Carmilla by noted horror author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, about a young man who discovers the presence of a female vampire in a mysterious European castle. There's more to the story, of course, but it's the ghostly, otherworldly tone of the film that lingers powerfully in the memory. Dreyer maintains this eerie mood by suggesting horror and impending doom as opposed to any overt displays of terrifying imagery. Watching Vampyr is like being placed under a hypnotic trance, where the rules of everyday reality no longer apply.
Dreyer has more in common with filmmakers such as Ingmar Bergman, who openly admired his work, and David Lynch, who has also shown a fondness for dreamlike movies that emphasize mood and imagery over an easily comprehensible plot. Deemed by Alfred Hitchcock 'the only film worth watching... twice',Vampyr's influence has become, by now, incalculable."

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