Very nicely put. I think a big part of this film's creepiness resides in the constant sense that Gray is drawn into a set of rituals and patterns that have been repeating themselves for several generations - and I like your point about the element of 'deduction' being removed by the absurdly helpful explanations found in the book. The characters seem to be left with nothing to do, no agency. The book does of course give them instructions on how to break the curse, by killing the vampire, and Gray accomplishes this (with the help of his fellow bookworm, the manservant) just after attaining 'peak impotence', in his dream of living-death-and-burial. But after this, arguably, the film goes on to follow the pattern established in Dreyer's other films, where the set narratives, rituals, orthodoxies and texts are surpassed and transcended. The book becomes irrelevant in the final reel, and both Gray and the manservant seem to be acting in ambiguous harmony with the benevolent (but vengeful) spirits that have taken over at the end. At least, that's one alternative to the reading I suggested above, and maybe a more persuasive one...Mr Sausage wrote:Thinking about it, the book doesn't so much compel the past into the present as pull the present into the past since it comes across as a description of the very events occurring in the narrative. The old book, which kicks off the supernatural events proper, seems to pull Gray into its world (which fits with the theme of Gray being Quixotic, in the sense of having an imagination driven wild by books--also a late addition), forcing him, a person from the present, to reenact events from the distant past. One could well read the movie as being about a person forced to inhabit a story!
swo17 wrote:Is Dreyer taking sides here, proposing a rejection of the past, or merely acknowledging how it hangs over everything that we do? Perhaps in his other films more than this one, does he find fault with the past itself or with how people in the present dishonor it by twisting it to fit their own ends?
Drucker wrote:Like Griffith, Dreyer's films often are centered on both 1) innocence of good characters and 2) the hypocrisy of others. Joan of Arc is an example where both contrast perfectly in Dreyer's film. Master Of The House being another one.
I don't think the conflicts always centre on 'the past' or the old as such, but the antagonist in Dreyer's films is usually some form of received idea, orthodoxy, prejudice or superstition, and it's often signalled by a piece of heavily foregrounded text: the legal records that punctuate Day of Wrath, for example, or the panning shot of 'BORGENSGAARD' at the start of Ordet, a loftily inscribed word that comes to be associated with old Morten's doctrinal rigidity ('no son of Borgensgaard will ever, etc.'), and perhaps stands in contrast with the unspoken, unwritten 'word' referred to in the film's title, the word that means simple, unprejudiced faith.matrixschmatrix wrote:The head of the other household in Ordet definitely comes off as a viciously doctrinal traditionalist, but that feels more like it's part of the film's critique of organized religion and the way it blots out faith than anything to do with the battle of old vs. new.
But as swo says about the distinction between 'the past' and 'those who twist it to fit their own ends', I'm not sure whether it's organised religion as such that Dreyer tends to oppose or just the way it gets enlisted to support conflicts and persecutions that have nothing to do with religion. Look at Rylowitsch in Love One Another, disguising himself as a monk to stir up anti-Semitic feelings; the importance of the military presence in Joan of Arc, hanging over the ostensibly Christian trial (which several of the monks speak out against); or the ending of Day of Wrath, which is really motivated by the mother's jealousy rather than by any genuine religious fervour.
=D