Themes

Aesthetics and Politics in Carl Th. Dreyer’s Day of Wrath

This essay highlights the singularity of Day of Wrath within Dreyer's œuvre in its focus on social critique. Stylisation elevates this critique beyond the much-referenced historicity of the depiction to a universal, timeless plane relevant to contemporary and future audiences.

Deciphering Dreyer: Props and Symbols in Gertrud

'Gertrud' has been considered the most indecipherable of Dreyer’s films, reflected in a disastrous premier and scholarship that has largely focused on a formalist examination. In contrast, this essay highlights how props offer a useful entry point into the film’s meaning and yield an interpretation that is considerably more life-affirming than has to date been proposed.

The Dreyer Paratext

Casper Tybjerg discusses Dreyer’s opposition to film credits and some of the theoretical issues raised by the use of paratexts. Denmark’s most celebrated auteur, Carl Th. Dreyer, was firmly opposed to the use of film credits. He believed they got in the way of the audience’s immersion in the story. In this issue of Kosmorama, Casper Tybjerg discusses Dreyer’s claim and some of the theoretical issues raised by the use of paratexts – titles, credits, posters, stills and trailers, those elements that are not quite part of the film itself.

Maren’s smile

The most miraculous moment in Danish film history, the resurrection scene in Carl Th. Dreyer’s 'Ordet', invites us to reconsider the sense of wonder which animates the director’s film making. Creagh McLean Cole.

Pissing into the Well

In 1946, Carl Th. Dreyer's short film Vandet paa Landet ("The Water in the Country") was shelved because it was feared that it might harm Danish agriculture's image abroad. The film was intended to humorously propagandize for improved well-water hygiene by getting the audience disgusted with the water in poorly maintained wells. In the article, Dreyer's short film is used to show how we can combine a rhetorical and a cognitivist approach in an analysis that can explain both the film's propagandistic features and the significance of the disgust it evokes in the viewer.