'Vredens Dag' or 'Day of Wrath' has a mysterious, unsettling atmosphere quite like Dreyer's previous film 'Vampyr', but it's very understated here. Unlike the Verfremdungseffekt in the previous effort the horror feel in this film is achieved through its setting (an extremely oppressive world) and by the way the plot is told, which is largely by means of suppressing the drama inherent in the situations. By not providing much release for the audience the film emphasizes that the real drama bubbles under the surface, namely it is within the characters, and the drama is a psychological one.
That aforementioned extreme oppressiveness of the environment within the film is one of Christian dogma, it becomes oppressive because all the characters believe in it to a more or less great extent and as a consequence no desire will go unpunished and fear dominates everyone's lives. The guilty conscience that arises from thinking that one broke a Christian law is actually the least of it, with its witch burning premise the film provides a more specific threat. One gets the impression that a woman can be made to burn at the stake by being denounced as a witch by seemingly anyone who feels like it. Further, women can be made to believe themselves that they are witches, which is an even greater exertion of power as it keeps the sincere belief in the existence of witchcraft and the occult alive in people's minds.
Dreyer cleverly maximizes the film's sense of an oppressive environment by presenting the Christian Weltanschauung of that time as unchallenged in people's minds and as essentially in direct control of the law when in reality surely not everyone held the same convictions in matters of faith in Denmark at the time, at the very least there were different branches of Christianity that disagreed with each other on even many of the fundamentals (an example of this can be seen in Dreyer's own 'Ordet'), and witch trials weren't at all conducted by clergymen alone, even THEIR power had limits.
It took a third viewing for me just to realize that among other things 'Day of Wrath' also is a roundabout coming-of-age film, a film about sexual awakening, Anne never experienced sexual desire until she laid eyes on her stepson. In addition to the all-encompassing religious indoctrination of that time this explains her naivety about coming to believe that she has supernatural powers over men, when apparently, without even quite realizing it, she bats her eyelashes, swings her tush, etc. and THOSE obviously are the things that do the trick, it's not her wishing that her stepson falls in love with her that causes this wish to miraculously come true for her through witchcraft.
'Vredens Dag' refuses to take sides, this results in an ambiguity about where the filmmaker stands on the issues at hand, which can easily be frustrating on a first viewing, but makes it all the more intriguing on further viewings and prevents it from becoming uninteresting for there will always remain a degree of mystery. The big ambiguity in this film is that although the Christian doctrine could hardly be shown less favorably Rev. Absalon is basically a kind-hearted and well-intentioned man and husband to Anne, but more significantly Anne's liberation from her life of oppression makes her happy, a happiness and joyfulness that not only has the side effect of turning her selfish (as she has no consideration anymore for anyone else's feelings and needs), but through Dreyer's compositions and lighting and by how the actress plays her, she comes off as evil, she is subtly made to look like the witch that she is believed to be by others, and whom even herself comes to believe to be.
As we all know, women are quite a mystery to men, and in this story woman's sexuality poses the biggest mystery of all, implying that men can't bare such an enormous lack of control, therefore the woman's behavior and her power over people and over men especially can only be explained with witchcraft. By making Anne at times look evil and like she revels in her power over other people the viewer will find it easy to relate to that time and its people, understanding how the belief in the occult could have been so prevalent. Prevalent not only among men who could make sense of woman's inexplicable behavior only through the concept of witchcraft, but also among women who sometimes couldn't explain their own powers and who were so often told that this or that makes them witches that they started believing it themselves. Significantly it is Rev. Absalon's mother who finally denounces her a witch and it is Anne's own remorse that urges her to agree with the accusations against her.
'Vredens Dag' is amazingly deliberately paced for 1943. Around 1960 such pacing in films like 'L'avventura', 'Marienbad' and 'The Naked Island' felt positively revolutionary. With Dreyer having already been an established silent movie director one is tempted to say that his sound pictures simply hark back to the silent era when especially up to the early-/mid-20's films just naturally were very slow-paced. Dreyer's silent movie roots maybe were what enabled his style on some level, but to equate those two vastly different types of slow pacing would certainly be a folly, not least because of how expertly Dreyer uses off-screen sound as a storytelling device, which is what often makes it possible for him to have so many continuous takes run for several minutes in the first place. It can hardly be a coincidence that Dreyer's 'Vampyr' (1932) already practiced something that I think otherwise hasn't really been seen in film until around 1960 in films like 'Vivre sa vie' and again 'L'avventura' and 'Marienbad', namely the back and forth shifting between subjective and objective mode, making it seem like the camera has its own will separate from the characters and the plot.
That aforementioned extreme oppressiveness of the environment within the film is one of Christian dogma, it becomes oppressive because all the characters believe in it to a more or less great extent and as a consequence no desire will go unpunished and fear dominates everyone's lives. The guilty conscience that arises from thinking that one broke a Christian law is actually the least of it, with its witch burning premise the film provides a more specific threat. One gets the impression that a woman can be made to burn at the stake by being denounced as a witch by seemingly anyone who feels like it. Further, women can be made to believe themselves that they are witches, which is an even greater exertion of power as it keeps the sincere belief in the existence of witchcraft and the occult alive in people's minds.
Dreyer cleverly maximizes the film's sense of an oppressive environment by presenting the Christian Weltanschauung of that time as unchallenged in people's minds and as essentially in direct control of the law when in reality surely not everyone held the same convictions in matters of faith in Denmark at the time, at the very least there were different branches of Christianity that disagreed with each other on even many of the fundamentals (an example of this can be seen in Dreyer's own 'Ordet'), and witch trials weren't at all conducted by clergymen alone, even THEIR power had limits.
It took a third viewing for me just to realize that among other things 'Day of Wrath' also is a roundabout coming-of-age film, a film about sexual awakening, Anne never experienced sexual desire until she laid eyes on her stepson. In addition to the all-encompassing religious indoctrination of that time this explains her naivety about coming to believe that she has supernatural powers over men, when apparently, without even quite realizing it, she bats her eyelashes, swings her tush, etc. and THOSE obviously are the things that do the trick, it's not her wishing that her stepson falls in love with her that causes this wish to miraculously come true for her through witchcraft.
'Vredens Dag' refuses to take sides, this results in an ambiguity about where the filmmaker stands on the issues at hand, which can easily be frustrating on a first viewing, but makes it all the more intriguing on further viewings and prevents it from becoming uninteresting for there will always remain a degree of mystery. The big ambiguity in this film is that although the Christian doctrine could hardly be shown less favorably Rev. Absalon is basically a kind-hearted and well-intentioned man and husband to Anne, but more significantly Anne's liberation from her life of oppression makes her happy, a happiness and joyfulness that not only has the side effect of turning her selfish (as she has no consideration anymore for anyone else's feelings and needs), but through Dreyer's compositions and lighting and by how the actress plays her, she comes off as evil, she is subtly made to look like the witch that she is believed to be by others, and whom even herself comes to believe to be.
As we all know, women are quite a mystery to men, and in this story woman's sexuality poses the biggest mystery of all, implying that men can't bare such an enormous lack of control, therefore the woman's behavior and her power over people and over men especially can only be explained with witchcraft. By making Anne at times look evil and like she revels in her power over other people the viewer will find it easy to relate to that time and its people, understanding how the belief in the occult could have been so prevalent. Prevalent not only among men who could make sense of woman's inexplicable behavior only through the concept of witchcraft, but also among women who sometimes couldn't explain their own powers and who were so often told that this or that makes them witches that they started believing it themselves. Significantly it is Rev. Absalon's mother who finally denounces her a witch and it is Anne's own remorse that urges her to agree with the accusations against her.
'Vredens Dag' is amazingly deliberately paced for 1943. Around 1960 such pacing in films like 'L'avventura', 'Marienbad' and 'The Naked Island' felt positively revolutionary. With Dreyer having already been an established silent movie director one is tempted to say that his sound pictures simply hark back to the silent era when especially up to the early-/mid-20's films just naturally were very slow-paced. Dreyer's silent movie roots maybe were what enabled his style on some level, but to equate those two vastly different types of slow pacing would certainly be a folly, not least because of how expertly Dreyer uses off-screen sound as a storytelling device, which is what often makes it possible for him to have so many continuous takes run for several minutes in the first place. It can hardly be a coincidence that Dreyer's 'Vampyr' (1932) already practiced something that I think otherwise hasn't really been seen in film until around 1960 in films like 'Vivre sa vie' and again 'L'avventura' and 'Marienbad', namely the back and forth shifting between subjective and objective mode, making it seem like the camera has its own will separate from the characters and the plot.