Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.

Day of Wrath, for pity take
My sins away from Satan’s grasp
And bear up my soul to Heaven at last.
from the Dies Irae

Carl Dreyer’s film Day of Wrath (Vredens Dag (1943)) develops themes that are as important today as they were in the 1620’s, when the story takes place. Moreover, the visual splendor of this film can also compete favorably with any modern masterpiece. It’s a film about the persecution of “witches” and it’s not a pleasant film to watch – in the same sense that one would really rather not have to see pictures of prisoners being tortured by American military personnel. These are issues about which we have to force ourselves to accept awareness from a sense of moral responsibility for mankind.

Historical Background: Carl Theodor Dreyer (1889-1968) had something of a rough start in life. He was the illegitimate son of a housekeeper and when his mother again become pregnant, she attempted to end the pregnancy in a crude attempt at abortion and ended up killing herself. Dreyer was thereafter shunted from one foster home to another, before being adopted by a poor family. His adoptive parents never tired of reminding him that he was entitled to nothing because his mother had managed to escape paying for him by departing the world prematurely! His first job was as a journalist, writing theater reviews and, later, film reviews for the nascent Danish film industry. He later got a job editing films and writing screen scripts, providing his entry into filmmaking.

His first film was The President (1919). He then directed a number of films during the silent era including Leaves from Satan’s Book (a melodrama), The Parson’s Widow (a pastorale), and Mikael (a heterosexual/homosexual love triangle). His now uncontested masterpiece from the silent era was his 1927 film Passion of Joan of Arc, starring Renee Maria Falconetti, though at the time of its release it was a box office failure. Dreyer continued to work after the advent of sound technology – for another three decades, in fact – but his output was sporadic, resulting in just five acknowledged films: Vampyr (1932), Day of Wrath (1943), Two People (1945), Ordet (1955), and Gertrud (1964). Three of these films, Day of Wrath, Ordet, and Gertrud are available beautifully restored by Criterion in a DVD set along with an extensive and fascinating documentary about the life of Dreyer called My Metier.

Dreyer indicates in that documentary that he set out to establish a distinctive cinematic style that would be easily recognizable as his own. There is really not much question that he succeeded in that respect. You can pretty much count on a Dreyer film to deliver magnificent, austere high-contrast black-and-white images, intensity, a mood of dark brooding, grim thematic material featuring psychological and spiritual issues, and mystical or occult elements. The old adage that each great film director tells one story over and over has to be modified, a bit, for Dreyer. His narratives and even film classifications (by genre) changed from film to film, but the stylistic approach with which he reveals his story remains something of a constant over his career. In my personal opinion, Dreyer reached very near to perfection in stylistic elements of filmmaking, but his films many times suffer from substantial weaknesses in their scripts. I would attribute Dreyer’s relative lack of popularity (in relation to his lofty critical acclaim) to the combination of the severity of mood of his films and shortcomings in the scripts.

The Story: In the 1620’s in Denmark, the puritanical Christians engage in witch-hunts, whereby a woman is first denounced as a witch by one or more respected members of the community, induced by torture to acknowledge being in league with the devil, and then burned at the stake. An elderly pastor Absalon Pedersson (Thorkild Roose) is among the elders of the community who presides over the extraction of the confessions and sentencing. After losing his first wife, with whom he had a son named Martin (Preben Lerdorff-Rye), Absalon had remarried to a much younger woman, Anne (Lisbeth Movin) – younger, in fact, than Martin.

A harmless old woman named Herlof’s Marte (Anna Svierkier) has been accused of being a witch and is being sought by the authorities. She seeks asylum in the parson’s home, where Anne shows her the way to the attic for hiding, unbeknownst to her husband. Nevertheless, Herlof’s Marte is discovered, tortured, made to confess, and sentenced to death. Herlof’s Marte has one last trump card that she hopes will save her life. She knows that Anne’s mother had once been denounced as a witch but that Absalon had spared her in order to acquire the rights, in effect, to Anne. Herlof’s Marte threatens to reveal the truth about Anne’s mother, which would certainly taint Anne by relationship, but ultimately goes to her death not acting on the threat. A boy’s choir sings the Dies Irae (Day of Wrath) as she is dumped ceremoniously into a flaming pyre.

Anne had been forced into marriage with the old man and is neither happy nor in love. Moreover, the household in which Anne must now live is dominated by Absalon's aged mother, Merete (Sigrid Neilendam), who thoroughly dislikes Anne and denies her any share of authority over the household. Absalon’s grown son is due for a visit and Merete views it as scandalous that he will be sharing a household with a step-mother younger than himself. Martin arrives and he and Anne are almost immediately in love with one another, thus justifying Merete’s worst expectations.

Anne and Martin seemingly tempt fate, passing time together among the birches and the reeds. Except for a precious few moments of rapture, the pair, and Martin in particular, seems to agonize over their feelings of guilt more than garnering any enjoyment from their adulterous relationship. Absalon senses that Martin’s presence has raised Anne’s spirits and, having no idea of the extent of their attachment, is pleased simply to enjoy Anne’s newfound laughter vicariously.

ATTENTION! SPOILERS FROM HERE TO THE THEMES SECTION!

Absalon is required to pay a visit to a dying man in the community – a man who had acted as judge at the trial of Herlof’s Marte. The man attributes his sudden deterioration to the dying curse inflicted by Herlof Marte, thus further fortifying their obsession with the supernatural power of witches. After attending the man in his final hours, Absalon heads home amidst gale like conditions and senses that he, too, has been marked by death, passing closely by. Back home, Absalon demands that Anne tell him if she has ever wished for his death. Understand that this question is of more than passing interest, since Anne’s mother reputedly had the capacity to commune with the dead and to cause the death of living folks merely by wishing it! Anne initially denies any such wish, but, when reminded how Absalon had forced her into involuntary marriage, robbing her of her youth, she admits to having frequently wished for his death. He is so shocked by this revelation that he obliges her, keeling over as he tries to rush up the stairs.

Martin is genuinely distraught at his father’s sudden demise, perhaps all the more so from his own feelings of guilt in having an affair with his father’s wife. Merete is even more genuinely distraught, since Absalon was everything to her, but her pain is mixed with anger toward Anne. Though she knows nothing of the particulars of Absalon’s death, she is more than prepared to assume that it was Anne’s doing. When alone together, Martin promises to stand by Anne. Initially he does, but when Merete accuses Anne of murdering Absalon with the aid of the evil one, it suddenly occurs to Martin that he can conveniently absolve himself of all sense of guilt by imagining that he was seduced by the devil. He symbolically walks away from Anne to stand beside his grandmother.

Anne sees that she has been betrayed and that her assumption that she had found true love with Martin was a terrible self-deceit. “I see through my tears but no one comes to wipe them away.” She effectively commits suicide on the spot by confessing that she has been guided by the devil and killed her husband. Though her actual death may be a few days away, she has assured that she will be burned at the stake like Herlof’s Marte before her.

Themes: Let’s start with what might seem like a ridiculous question. Was Anne, in fact, in league with the devil? Now, I don’t believe in either god or the devil, but consider, for a moment, the question from the point of view of the community depicted in the film. Consider how quickly Anne and Martin fall in love. Anne, in particular, blathers on about having seen Martin previously in her dreams the first time they meet. Since she knows nothing about him when she first believes herself in love with him, it is clear that she is only truly in love with the idea of youthful romance. Furthermore, Martin is not all that different than his father, in either looks or beliefs (as we discover at the end). He is effectively simply a younger version of his father. Again, that underscores that what Anne is in love with is the passion of youth which she had been denied when she was involuntarily claimed by an older man. Martin falls almost as quickly for her and they are soon embracing without ever really having had a serious discussion with one another – without getting to know each other’s souls in the slightest. These are not really two people in love; their attraction for one another is lust – pure and simple. Lust, by the standards of this puritanical Christian community, is the work of the devil.

Dreyer was a believer in the occult and there are several moments in the film that seem to suggest that Anne possessed some supernatural capacity. First, her mother was supposedly a witch, capable of conjuring spirits (i.e., making them appear). Upon learning this new information about her mother, Anne tries an experiment. She attempts to conjure Martin into the room and, in the next moment, he appears. Later, she wishes Absalon’s death and, moments after, he dies. Dreyer also leaves open the possibility that Herlof’s Marte’s curse of her judge turned out to have some real potency.

What Dreyer has accomplished, here, is something that only a few great directors occasionally pull off. He has made us potential accomplices in the persecution of witches. If you’re inclined to interpret events supernaturally, you’ve got plenty of reason here to condemn these women and burn them at the stake to excise the devil from them! They are, in fact, in league with the devil as that idea was conceived at the time. The problem is, therefore, not with these particular women being falsely accused of being accomplices of the devil, but with an entire mental framework that encourages supernatural thinking. Christianity, with its invocation of magical and supernatural elements and its preoccupation with chastity and guilt in relation to the sexuality of women, created the climate for dreadful persecutions, torture, and murder. Given that climate, the individual instances became inevitable. Note also that it is only Anne’s lust and not Martin’s that draws the attention, in the end, of the community elders. Christianity is also inherently discriminatory against women by its greater emphasis on the chastity of women than men. Religion has long been subverted by men to transfer to women the blame for their own sins.

Well, that’s ancient history, is it not? We no longer have witch hunts anywhere in the world. Or do we? Today, I read in the newspaper that in Nepal, hundreds of businesses owned by members of the Muslim minority had been destroyed by rampaging Hindus. Why, because some Nepalese citizens had been killed by Muslims in Iraq. Obviously, the Muslims in Nepal bear no responsibility for the acts of terrorist Muslims in Iraq, but since the Hindus of Nepal had no access to the real villains, they engaged in a witch hunt. If their religious leaders were providing genuine spiritual guidance, these people would understand that there is never any justification for violence against innocent people who merely bear some attribute (Muslin affiliation, in this case) in common with a wrong-doer. If you think the subject matter of Day of Wrath is all ancient history, think again!

But, you cry, that’s half-way around the world. We know better in America! Well, consider that Rumsfeld made a special point of declaring that Iraqi “detainees” are not covered by the Geneva conventions relating to POW’s. Later, he personally authorized certain methods of torturing the detainees. He promulgated a climate tolerant of torture and, lo and behold, the torture scandals ensued. Those who authorize torture are the same as the torturers. Those who maintain such a person in power are the same as the torturers. These modern witch hunts perpetrated by the U.S. military were powered only partly by religious intolerance and otherwise by racism, ethnocentricity, and paroxysms of excessive nationalism.

Some reviewers suggest a political allegory at work in Day of Wrath, since the film was made in 1943 during the occupation of Denmark by the Nazis. Dreyer, however, denied any such intent and I take him at his word. In my opinion, Dreyer was after something far more universal than the Denmark of 1943: human nature and our capacity for imposing great suffering on one another in the name of ideologies.

Production Values: Visually, Day of Wrath is utterly stunning. The Criterion restorations are an absolute marvel to behold. Every frame is gorgeous, but here’s just one example. Anne and Martin have escaped to the woods and are in the process of falling in love. We see them silhouetted against a backdrop of foggy reeds of a bog, invoking a sense of mystery and wonder.

The performance by Lisbeth Movin as Anne is the heart and soul of this film, albeit not so evidently as Falconetti’s performance as Joan of Arc. Movin was one performer who did not find Dreyer particularly overbearing. She was still young and malleable and appreciated his guidance. She delivered a performance that delicately mixes innocence, determination, and passion. Dreyer seldom used big-name stars in this films, partly because many of them refused to work with such a demanding director. Preben Lerdorff-Rye, who played Martin, later appeared for Dreyer in Ordet.

While there is no denying that Day of Wrath is a visual masterpiece, the plot weaknesses are so glaring as to detract significantly from the meaningfulness of the narrative. I mentioned already the haste with which Anne and Martin fall in love. Then there’s Anne’s determination to put herself at risk by exercising precious little caution in pursuing her affair with Martin. She knows that she lives in an intolerant community prone to burning women at the stake. Why does she invite tragedy? Some reviewers liken Day of Wrath to horror films. One of the chief similarities is the way that the protagonist repeatedly puts herself in harm’s way so as to elicit our fear for her. Then there’s the rather simple-minded ending. We understand that what Anne wants is to experience real love once in her life. She’s finally rid of her old husband. She’s just discovered that the guy she had in mind for genuine, youthful love is pretty much just another slug. She’s got her whole life ahead of her to find someone worthy of her love. There’s got to be a quality young man somewhere in Denmark. Why commit suicide by confession just because the first shot at real love falls through?

Bottom-Line: Style-wise, Day of Wrath is a certifiable five-star masterpiece. Script-wise, it destroys some of its potential punch. It’s one thing to have characters acting irrationally based on the prevailing delusions of the day, but it’s entirely another to have characters nonchalantly inviting self-destruction. I’m docking it one star for lost credibility. Day of Wrath is in Danish with English subtitles and a running time of 97 minutes. By all means, look for the film in its Criterion rendition.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Denmark:

Babette's Feast
Celebration
Dancer in the Dark
Gertrud
The Kingdom
The Kingdom II
Passion of Joan of Arc
Pelle The Conqueror
Vampyr

Recommended: Yes

Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age