Carl Dreyer’s last film neatly crowns his career: a meditation on tragedy, individual will and the refusal to compromise. A woman leaves her unfulfilling marriage and embarks on a search for ideal love—but neither a passionate affair with a younger man nor the return of an old romance can provide the answer she seeks. Always the stylistic innovator, Dreyer employs long takes and theatrical staging to concentrate on Nina Pens Rode’s sublime portrayal of the proud and courageous Gertrud. —The Criterion Collection
Carl Theodor Dreyer was born out of wedlock to a Swedish housekeeper, Josefina Nilsson (1855-1891), who gave him up for adoption immediately after. The first year and a half of his life was turbulent, but the little boy finally found a home with the Dreyer family and was named Carl Theodor after his adoptive father. Dreyer’s birth mother died not long after his eventual adoption. Several film scholars have interpreted Dreyer’s frequent depictions of tragic women as an autobiographical element in his films.
Dreyer began his career as a reporter, specialising in aviation early on, in 1910-1913. Himself an active balloonist, he got a balloonist’s certificate in November 1911. Alongside his journalism, he wrote screenplays. His first realised script was Bryggerens Datter (Dagmar) (Rasmus Ottesen, 1912), produced by Det Skandinavisk-russiske Handelshus. In 1913-1918, he worked as a script consultant and writer at Nordisk Film, where he also made his directorial debut… read more
Moments immortalized in stubborn pursuit of the impossible: dark gives way to bursts of memory drenched in diffuse light; the exchange of a cigarette stops time; an undressing lover glorified as towering shadow; the self (frozen in mirrors) joins the art on the walls; a swell of music (mentioned diagetically) seems utterly non-diagetic. "A fire about to be extinguished" already rekindling in our imagination. Cinema.
The best female portrait Dreyer made in his career, because he draws feelings not only out of the script and his characters but deep within his own self as well. His everlasting concern for female suffering has never played a greater role than the one in Gertrud.
Bendtsen and Dreyer on the set of Gertrud (DFI); Ordet "Danish cinematographer Henning Bendtsen — whose career stretched from the 1940s
The Brooklyn Academy of Music is running a Carl Th. Dreyer retrospective, appropriately and monolithically titled DREYER, from March 13 - March
Above: The Bride of Glomdale (1926). Image courtesy of The Danish Film Institute/Stills & Posters Archive. Almost all early Carl Th
The Brooklyn Academy of Music will be running the Carl Th. Dreyer retrospective, appropriately and monolithically titled DREYER, from March 13
The Brooklyn Academy of Music will be running the Carl Th. Dreyer retrospective, appropriately and monolithically titled DREYER, from
Above: The Master, Carl Th. Dreyer. *** The Brooklyn Academy of Music will be running a Carl Th. Dreyer retrospective, appropriately and
Wow. I’m Breathless. “Gertrud” is an absolute celebration of the human life. A woman searches to be loved more than anything else. The long beautiful takes and exquisite lighting make “Gertrud” a true… read review
A failure when first released, Carl Theodore Dreyer’s final film stars Nina Pens Rode, who is trapped in a loveless marriage but is in love with a younger musician. She leaves her husband for him… read review