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I'm a bit with lubitsch on tthis one. Early Dreyer just doesn't seem anything special to me. I mildly enjoyed "The Parson's Widow", but "Die Gezeichneten" did almost nothing for me, though i do enjoy parts of it. Especially the ending, when the female protagonist was trying to save her honor with the huge knife in her hand - it somehow looks like Hitchcock borrowed that idea completely for his masterpiece "Blackmail".

But I'm currently writing a paper on "Die Gezeichneten" and I'll watch it a few more times. So maybe my opinion will change through time.

Lubitsch, it was Leaves I said was my third favourite Dreyer – The President would come a good deal lower, although I do think it’s a wonderful film, and agree with Tommaso that it already displays that ‘pared down’ quality so characteristic of Dreyer.

lubitsch wrote:It's interesting that you mention the Jesus episode, you however surely mean that it's the most impressive one in cinema up to 1920? I've finished a yet to be published article about Jesus films, seen all the big ones and would be genuinely shocked if you put these scenes in Dreyer's film ahead of all of them.

I often slip into hyperbole out of excessive zeal and laziness, without in fact having sufficient knowledge to say that something is ‘the best of its kind’. I certainly haven’t seen enough films about Jesus (and indeed can’t think of all that many from the silent era) to make statements like that with any authority. A paritcular mistake when talking to a completist cinephile like yourself! But when I watch the first episode of Leaves, I do have that feeling that it’s a ‘definitive’ telling of the story, mostly because it lacks the pomposity, the sentimentality, or the sheer cynicism you see in Griffith and De Mille (I do really like King of Kings, by the way, and feel sorry for it when it gets kicked around on this forum; but I can’t deny it’s kind of silly). I suppose I’m also wistful about the Jesus film Dreyer never got to make, and can’t help thinking it would have been quite a bit like this early stab at the subject.

As for your article, I’d be interested to hear more – it might make a good thread...

And I’m totally with all the praise for Parson’s Widow (and the great work by Neal Kurz on the Image disc), which manages to be the light but profound comedy Der Var Engang is trying to be – sorry Tommaso, but that one is by far my least favourite Dreyer (with a ghastly score from the ubiquitous Neil Brand). As well as the tedious ‘taming of the shrew’ plot, it also features what has to be the most cataclysmically unfunny clown ever to be laboriously scraped onto a strip of celluloid. Indeed, I react to Engang much the way you, lubitsch, seem to react to the others: it’s beautiful in spots, but totally unengaging as a whole. But that’s unfair, of course, since it isn’t ‘a whole’, and I’m sure it would make more sense if more of it survived – sounds like a lot of the spectacle and beauty was lost.

As for the camera moves in Leaves, I agree with Harry that the one following the refugee aristocrats from the street into the inn is quite remarkable, and not unlike the tracking shots in Cabiria, in that it seems to have no definite purpose. It’s worth saying that there’s also one brief tracking shot in The President, during the wedding at the end. As for who did it first, I know that Billy Bitzer did one in about 1906 (not sure what the film was), and The Passer-By (1912) on the Edison set, has two really marvellous ones.

HerrSchreck wrote:Leaves is in terms of cinematography, an extremely impressive film. In terms of narrative, it's a riff on Intolerance but without the sense of abstracted montage. Not a mindblower, but certainly not a failed film in retrospect, either.

I’m sure it was inspired by Intolerance, but beyond the four-story structure, the moralising tone, and the present-day 'redemption', I don’t see much similarity. Intolerance is about instances where one group of people decide they don’t like the way of life of another group of people, and the tragic consequences this has. But a lot of the time it isn’t about this – the jealous high priest is only a minor feature of the Babylonian episode, and it’s only really in ‘The Mother and the Law’ that the handling of this theme conveys any real passion or sincerity. That’s not meant as a big criticism, since I think Griffith intended it this way: the modern story is the main focus, and the other three are like a chorus on the sidelines, vaguely indicating that a similar ‘intolerance’ has driven tragedies in the past, and acting more as spectacular interludes thrown in for variety. Only the Babylonian story is developed at any length, and then only to showcase Constance Talmadge and the amazing spectacle of the sets, the battle scenes, etc. It is a deeply felt film in some ways, but also largely an excuse for Griffith to push the boundaries of film-making a little more (okay, a lot more). And the montage effect is fascinating and way ahead of its time, but by the same token clearly in an experimental stage, and not (to my eye) wholly successul in its attempt to make a 'film fugue', as someone once called it.

The main thing Dreyer took from this was indeed not the montage and certainly not the spectacle (there's nothing spectacular about Dreyer's ultra-authentic historical recreations), but the use of close-ups, especially the ones on Mae Marsh, and the way a human story could be told through these. And what you get in Leaves from Satan’s Book is a far more concentrated, coherent and profound film than Griffith’s, which perhaps isn’t quite as successful in creating memorable characters – Griffith was a better director of actors than Dreyer, or than most directors – but does provide, I think, a far more authentic account of this aspect of the human condition: the forces that drive us to make each other’s lives miserable.

It is still moralistic, but possesses those saving graces of the morality tale: subtlety and sympathy. The equivalents to the ‘intolerant’ ones in Dreyer are the heroes, not the villains, and it's telling that where Griffith's redemptive ending meant life, Dreyer's means death - and a fairly senseless death at that. Leaves may seem to be in the same vein of ‘stern melodrama’ as Griffith tended to work in, but I find it transcends that. The way the camera records so unflinchingly those moments of almost involuntary betrayal – always of a loved one, and most memorably in the cases of Judas (a great, unaffected performance) and the young sell-out blowing the whistle on Marie Antoinette – and the infinite moment of remorse that follows, foreshadows (and bears comparison with) so many similar moments in Dreyer’s later work, when he captures some ineffable spiritual epiphany in a character’s facial expression. Such moments are perhaps his great achievements as a film-maker, and he's producing them to perfection in Leaves from Satan's Book. Far from being a ‘riff’ on Intolerance, I’d say it’s a vastly more sophisticated treatment of a related subject, inferior to Griffith’s film on a technical level – even this is a symptom of Dreyer’s more focused approach – but superior in most other respects.

And yes, I do realise I'm all on my own with this one!

Nice, and perhaps there's a chance you could share your paper here? I would be interested to learn more about that film. But don't feel pressed.

The problem with "Die Gezeichneten" surely is that a lot of it seems to be lost, especially in what now makes up the first thirty minutes or so of the new resto as shown by arte. The pacing obviously is totally ruined, there are gaping holes in the narrative and so on. Almost as difficult to really assess as "Der var Engang". But just like with that film, I liked what I saw.

Sloper wrote:

HerrSchreck wrote:Leaves is in terms of cinematography, an extremely impressive film. In terms of narrative, it's a riff on Intolerance but without the sense of abstracted montage. Not a mindblower, but certainly not a failed film in retrospect, either.

I’m sure it was inspired by Intolerance, but beyond the four-story structure, the moralising tone, and the present-day 'redemption', I don’t see much similarity. Intolerance is about instances where one group of people decide they don’t like the way of life of another group of people, and the tragic consequences this has. But a lot of the time it isn’t about this – !

WHOAH doggie! That's an awful lot of energy for what comes down to, I guess, the deinfition of "riff".

I said this about the Dreyer film in the most offhanded kind of way because I never imagined that this connection would be challenged (and with such energy).

You have the early silent era at the close of the teens, when 99% of all feature films were around an hour or less. Features were approx eight years old. Not only was Dreyer directly inspired to make Leaves after seeing Intolerance but Dreyer made his film, like the Griffith, a long, and expensive production. Following his 'inspiration' he specifically chose a four story structure, like Intolerance; with each story occuring, as in Intolerance, in a different place and time thoughout history. He chose to have each of these stories, as in Intolerance, be unified by a theme-- specifically, as in Intolerance, around biblical morality and how non-adherance has corrupted man throughout the ages. He chose to feature a Christ tale in his contemporary-- second temple period in Jerusalem-- time, as in Intolerance. He chose to feature a tale from the French antiquity--St. Bart's massacre in Grif, the Revolution in Leaves-- as in Intolerance. To give his point urgency and relevance, he chose as in Intolerance to punctuate his narrative with a contemporary tale from his own homeland (USA in Grif, Scandinavia in Dreyer) which ties the moral thread. His tale features, as in Intolerance, the slaughter of innocents as the ultimate expression of evil, and the narrative-moral tone of protestant prognostication is that of Intolerance.

Yes there are differences at the story level-- of course there are. These are issues of plotting. I didn't say it was a copy of Intolerance (which I think is a far better film in all departments except consistently breathtaking photography-- although the Griffith film has moments of stunning painterly beauty... the lounging nude, playing females in the temple of love whattayacallit for example... the Dreyer film is more consistently meticulous in lighting and composition), I said it was a riff off of Intolerance, which is quite a different thing. It means that Intolerance was it's starting point, the thing that Dreyer had in mind-- far beyond mere inspiration-- when setting down to its conception and manufacture. And then, as work progressed, the film became a thing of its own, with its own look feel and set of specifics. Yet it remains a "clear riff" (getting so technical about such a loose word!) because the underlying obsession for the foundational inspiration is so clear, and the original pedigree wasn't entirely shaken during development, which is obvious to anyone via the most cursory examination. Intolerance is very visibly poking up though the surface of Leaves... this simply can't be argued, really.

This is different than saying for example The Passion of Joan of Arc is a riff on Battleship Potemkin... yet Dreyer made his film while completely under the spell of Eisenstein's film. He walked out of Potemkin and set to work with a head stunned by this encounter. Yet Dreyer's film is topically completely different, narratively completely different, technically completely different, and stylistically--beyond an accelerated cutting pace-- completely different. The link between the two films-- that one served as the inspiration for the other-- is not visible to even the savvy viewer. The connection between Leaves and Intolerance is of quite a different species, and quite obvious to anyone moderately familiar with both films, and how unusual this four-stories-on-a-grand-scale-connected-by-a-theme was for the time. Not only was this kind of conception new, but it was 1) Griffith's, and 2) all Griffith's. The second it appeared the association would have been obvious to any film scholar, and Dreyer didn't really attempt to hide it either. The only other film that comes immediately to mind that shares this similarity (and it too was considered a 'riff' or what have you on Intolerance) was Murnau's Satanas. And the association was no accident, nor was it an accident that these two directors (Murnau and Dreyer) turned out to be every bit Griffith's peer if not greater: both of these men (and their producers) were making a direct announcement to the world with these films: "We want the world to know that we think that we too can do what Griffith does and here is the direct proof... we believe we are are as great as the guy that everyone believes to be the Greatest Filmmaker In The World-- we are both paying tribute and laying down the gauntlet.. with this film we want him and everyone else to know that we are here and we are young and we are working and we can do what he does, that he's not the only one capable of this kind of craft."

Other directors like Stroeheim and Lang (and Eisenstein of course) reckoned with the Griffith legend, and did similar things but in their own way, without making reference so directly to the Griffith Intolerance blueprint.

I love Intolerance by the way. It haunts me to no end, and I can't fully articulate the reasons. It's size, it's aura, it's atmosphere and ambition just get under my skin. It gives me the creeps the way some crumbling old artifact upon which is written ancient spells or book of the dead might give me the creeps. I can't fully articulate it.. but it's impossible to overstate the achievement of Intolerance as far as I'm concerned. I like Dreyer's Leaves, but I'm forever in awe of Intolerance. Indeed it's flaws are legion, but the achievement-- the moreso since he had no script and carried the whole film around in his head-- is just mindbending. Never again.

And Sloper-- fyi (you may already know this) the modern story of Intolerance is the main focus because that was supposed to be the entire film originally. It was only after seeing Pastrone's Cabiria that Griffith's head was blown skyward and he felt both inspired and challenged. The ballooning of The Mother And The LAw into Intolerance was his response to that 'challenge'.

I just watched "Die Gezeichnten" again, and slightly changed my opinion. What I saw is really quite powerful, and not as melodramatic as it seemed the first time around. But this time, I watched the film with the musical score by Bernd Thewes, and it might be, that the (pretty good) composition adds some desperately needed structure and rhythm to the film.


@ Tommaso
I think you are right, when you talk about the missing 30 minutes being crucial. One of the more important aspects when I watch a film, is the editing pattern, and the specific rhythm a film creates - much like composition in music. "Die Gezeichneten" of course only survives in frgaments, and it is assumed, that even some sequences which were found "complete" in the various prints, might have been altered. So you don't really know what Dreyer was doing. But you get a general impression. Usually I don't have such a probelm with films that are only available in butchered/reconstructed form.

I'll watch it again without sound, and maybe the third time around, I'll start to love it.


I'm a huge Dreyer fan, but somehow the silent films I've seen by him so far didn't really touch me (Jeanne D'arc, The Parson's Widow and Die Gezeichneten) in such a profound way as his 4 sound features (Vampyr, Day of Wrath, Ordet and Gertrud).


The paper I'm working on is more a historical look at the way Jews are (re)presented in the film, by way of "selling" it to an international audience. So lots of economic considerations and the change of european film business after WWI is involved, and less about an auteurist approach to Dreyer. It will probably be published in a catalogue dealing with the representation of Jewish life in Soviet(-related) Cinema and it's in German, so it doesn't make sense (and I don't have the right) to post it here. But if you're interested, we can talk via PM, as I assume you live in Germany yourself(?)

HerrSchreck wrote:WHOAH doggie! That's an awful lot of energy for what comes down to, I guess, the deinfition of "riff".

Not an attack on you, Schreck - and I know you said it in an off-handed way, but that's how these discussions always start, isn't it? Your remark was effectively a capsule summary of the film, suggesting that at heart Leaves is a take on the same themes as Intolerance, which as you persuasively argue is true in lots of important ways - but also, I would argue, not true at all, in a more profound sense.

You rightly point out some more similarities between the two films, and I certainly wouldn't disagree that Leaves was inspired by and structured according to the example of Intolerance, or that it wouldn't have happened without Griffith's influence. And for the record, I love Intolerance too; I imagine these two films, along with The Birth, would easily top my pre-20s list of favourites. I cannot think of a more important film-maker than Griffith. And yes, I know The Mother and the Law came first - the chronology of the Cabiria influence seems a little complicated, as apparently Griffith and Bitzer saw this in early 1914, when The Birth was still in pre-production (they found Joseph Carl Breil conducting the orchestra). So it may be that Mother was something he'd been planning to do earlier, or that it was more the enormous success of Birth that made him feel he could finally do something to rival Pastrone. But in any case, I do feel that Leaves is as almost as different from Intolerance as Intolerance is from Cabiria.

Yes, Dreyer does the Jesus story again, and yes you're right to say that this still serves to indicate the 'biblical' morality which will be broken throughout the rest of the film. Hence the protagonist of the French episode receives a note from Satan calling him 'Judas'. All the same, I just don't think of Griffith when watching this episode. Dreyer isn't interested in the passion or the crucifixion, or in the intolerance of Jesus' enemies. Indeed, these enemies, as represented by Satan, are not driven by intolerance (though partly by jealousy/envy, a more complex and sympathetic motive which is arguably at the heart of Griffith's concept of 'intolerance'), but rather by the inexorable command of God to do evil in the world and tempt man into sin - but in the hope that man will resist this temptation. I believe this is the only aspect of the story that comes from Marie Corelli's 'Sorrows of Satan' (for the life of me I can't remember if Dreyer's film had another literary source, a collection of short stories or something - I'll look it up when I get the chance) and it may be tempting to write it off as a rather corny and sentimental conceit. But I think it's central to what distinguishes the film from Intolerance.

Yes, the two films share an episode in French antiquity, but 1793 is very far from 1572, and again the point of the story is completely different. And in a sense you may be right that the murder of innocents is the representation of 'ultimate evil', but actually this is not the 'evil' Dreyer is interested in. In the first, second and third stories, the betrayals facilitate the torture and murder of innocents, but they do not necessarily cause them - these atrocities would probably have happened anyway. The question, really, is whether the protagonist is prepared to remain faithful to their master/loved one, and thereby suffer the same fate. Consider the betrayal of Marie Antoinette in the French episode: the young man has already betrayed his mistress and her daughter, but he has the chance to redeem himself by helping Satan spring Marie out of jail; but even this turns out to be another temptation, since she refuses to be helped by this traitor - does he wait for the guards to come and find him, or switch over to their side? The innocents are dead, or going to die, and the evil in this case has more to do with betraying a promise. Dreyer focuses first on the temptation to sin against someone close to you, and then homes in even closer - on the process of sinning against oneself, or against some abstract principle.

And innocents certainly get murdered in the fourth episode, but Dreyer doesn't care all that much: the question is, will Siri allow her family to be murdered, or will she betray her cause? In this case, allowing the innocents to be killed would actually be the right decision. You're right to suggest that the choice of a modern story set in (or at least near) Dreyer's homeland was intended, as in Intolerance, to give the story urgency and relevance: as I mentioned before, it is also in the modern story where redemption finally occurs, and as with Griffith this is meant to provide a note of optimism at the end, to suggest to the audience of today that they can improve on the examples from history. But in Intolerance, this was a much bigger statement. Griffith seems to be suggesting that the intolerance practised in past ages can be corrected, on a grand scale, in the present, perhaps because of its exposure in films such as his own, which have a unique capacity to reach mass audiences, and as in The Birth he ends on a beautiful but pompous vision of a kind of earthly paradise, where Jesus puts an end to all strife and people live in harmony forever. And the point seems to be that such a vision can only come true if people take heed of Griffith's message. Indeed, he even figures himself as being the victim of intolerance, stifled by censorship, etc.

Dreyer's equivalent to all this is a woman committing suicide and a heart-shaped pendulum swinging back and forth. There's no vision of a better future, just an ultra-austere exhortation to kill yourself (and your loved ones) rather than betray a cause or a principle.

I'm absolutely not challenging the connection with Intolerance, only its extent. Yes, of course there's more of a connection here than between Joan and Potemkin. And I didn't mean to argue over the meaning of 'riff' exactly - just standing up for a film I feel strongly about, and suggesting that if it is a riff on Intolerance, it's a riff in a different key and style, or something like Miles Davis doing Rodrigo. Except even more different. Yes, Intolerance is poking up through Leaves - I wouldn't dispute that - but the differences have to do with more than just 'plotting' or the 'look, feel and set of specifics'. They're fundamental to the basic conception of the film and the motives for making it. Yes, Dreyer is paying tribute to Griffith and inviting comparison with him, and he owes the basic premise of the film to Griffith, but he's also a wise enough artist to know that he has to do something very different if he wants to make a name for himself.

I guess part of the problem here is that I see the importance of Intolerance as being less to do with the 'four stories through history' structure and more to do with the moment-to-moment business of telling a story through editing, close-ups and camera movements. And in that sense, certainly, Griffith's influence on Dreyer is both vast and profound.

Sloper, sorry to hear about your dislike for "Der Var Engang". I've just rewatched it to remind myself of why exactly I find it's a very good film, and basically I think it's for similar reasons everyone here seems to love "The Parson's Widow" so much. There's a pretty effortless shifting of tone from comedy to seriousness in the film, or rather, the seriousness is underlying the playfulness that seems to be so much in the forefront of the film. The initial scenes, with their comic portrayal of the king and the pouting princess are woderfully pulled off by Dreyer, almost as if this was a slowed down version of an early Lubitsch film (but without the slapstick). As to the clown, yes, he's not particularly funny, but I'm not sure whether he was supposed to be. He's much more of a buddy to the prince than a court jester, and his general role might indeed be Shakespearian: an observer who sees through the idleness and pomposity of the court (even if the king is a friendly character) and somewhat cynically plays 'the game' and otherwise, perhaps rightly, is more or less mainly interested in his bodily well-being.

However, the film is not so much about the court and even less about the taming of that shrew, though the machinations of the men might make us believe that ( and perhaps this is also the main point of Drachmann's play, which I don't know, but which – as the cover blurp informs us – is indeed partly based on Shakespeare's play). I tend to read the film rather as showing us a process of growing-up, from the childlike princess to the matured, loving woman. There's a lot of very real suffering for the ex-princess in the second half of that film, which retains practically nothing of Shakespeare's 'shrewish' Catherine, and Clara Wieth plays this changing character in a marvellously believable way. Of course, the film is basically a fairy tale and thus hasn't got the tortured seriousness of the learning processes in other Dreyer films, but there's more profundity in it than might at first be apparent. Remember also that some absolute key passages near the end are completely missing in the current version (and I fear, more or less definite version) of the film now. If we had those midsummer celebrations or even only the tale of the changing seasons near the beginning of the film, the general tone of the film would probably lean even more to the serious or pastoral side than now. And I also don't think the film is only 'beautiful in spots', but a delight to behold for most of the time. There's one brief shot when Katherine comes home to the hut in the woods at night which looks as if it was an early study for the famous final shots of "Vampyr". Or the still photograph of the final marriage ceremony: almost like something out of Lang's "Nibelungen", though one of course would have to see that in motion to find out whether it's indeed similar. And finally, I really have no problems with Brand's music here and elsewhere; it's sparse, not overly mimicking what is going on on-screen, but still retains a feeling for the mood of every scene. But in your description it sounds almost as if you were talking about one of Sosin's lesser efforts.

A wrote: One of the more important aspects when I watch a film, is the editing pattern, and the specific rhythm a film creates - much like composition in music. "Die Gezeichneten" of course only survives in frgaments, and it is assumed, that even some sequences which were found "complete" in the various prints, might have been altered. So you don't really know what Dreyer was doing. But you get a general impression. Usually I don't have such a probelm with films that are only available in butchered/reconstructed form.

What you write is even more true of "Der var Engang", but with that film the difference is that most of the sequences that still exist are intact and those missing are replaced by stills, so that you know what you're missing and get a feeling for the rather slow pacing. With "Die Gezeichneten" it seems to be different; not so many scenes are missing, but they don't always survive in complete form, which makes the film's beginning so terribly hurried up and incoherent and might be the cause for a greater irritation than with other incomplete silents.

A wrote: I'll watch it again without sound, and maybe the third time around, I'll start to love it.

I'm a huge Dreyer fan, but somehow the silent films I've seen by him so far didn't really touch me (Jeanne D'arc, The Parson's Widow and Die Gezeichneten) in such a profound way as his 4 sound features (Vampyr, Day of Wrath, Ordet and Gertrud).

Surely, the later works are on a different, even more exceptional level than most of the silents, though I'm surprised you find "Jeanne" less profound than the sound films. Perhaps you should watch the silents with music (you seem to habitually watch them without, am I right?). If the music is done right, as with the "Gezeichneten" score, it can greatly enhance the perception of flow and indeed editing patterns of a film, and most of all, it helps to respond emotionally. I know that some people are of the opinion that watching a silent without music is somewhat more 'pure', but I don't know – for me, it doesn't work, not even with "Jeanne". And historically, of course, there was almost always music played with a silent.

Thanks for the info on your forthcoming essay. Yes, I'm German and would be able to read it, but I had indeed hoped it would focus on the film itself, though certainly your topic is interesting. Reminds me a bit of the collection of essays called "Pioniere in Celluloid. Juden in der frühen Filmwelt" which I recently read and which has a few essays on the representation of Jewish life in early Weimar movies, including some brief passages on "Die Gezeichneten".

Great discussion on "Intolerance", btw. This reminds me of the fact that I still haven't watched my recording of that arte broadcast with the apparently spectacular new orchestral score and much improved resto. From what I read elsewhere, this is NOT identical to the dvd version released by arte stummfilmedition, which seems to be a clone of the French MK2 edition and only has an organ score. Just in case anyone was thinking about buying that arte disc for the new version.

I can only echo Sloper’s eloquent defense of the earliest Dreyer films, especially of their visual splendor, and Tommaso’s point that they already bear ample evidence of the style that would blossom in the later work.

The plot of "The President" is melodramatic, to be sure, but Dreyer took it in hand only because it was readily available and he wanted to get underway on his first film before Nordisk changed their mind and pulled the plug. Even so, the narrative, as handled by Dreyer, gets less appreciation than it deserves. The time-travelling structure of the film, moving between generations of self-proclaimed sexually “reckless” Victors and also, separately, those they had seduced and abandoned, is quite dazzling, especially considering how little cinema from outside Scandinavia Dreyer had seen up to this point. The fact that his first film features not one, but two, women whose circumstances recall those of Dreyer’s own mother—an obsessive motif—is reason enough to afford the story more consideration than it routinely receives. And the film is rife with those discursive cuts to little moments at unexpected times, such as the sequence intercutting the main narrative with shots of puppies jostling at a bowl of milk, that continue throughout the early films, but disappear entirely from the later ones.

"Leaves from Satan’s Book," too, is so heavily marked by Dreyer’s signature, despite the influence of his inspirational encounter with "Birth of a Nation" and "Intolerance," and among its four parts, already stylistically distinct in matching form to content. The Spanish Inquisition sequence, especially (featuring his third female victim of a sexual opportunist), is so spare and compressed, visually and otherwise, that it stands out as a precursor to the final masterpieces. The Jesus section of the film represents Dreyer’s only actual treatment of the subject that would obsess him for the last decades of his life. Even at the time of "Leaves," which raised a ruckus among the faithful for portraying Jesus on film at all, Dreyer remarked that he would have preferred a more “human” rendering of Jesus the man—the focus of his cherished unrealized final project—but had acquiesced to the more conservative expectations of believers.

In the end, I can’t really extract and isolate these films from the whole of Dreyer’s achievement—for me, the single most remarkable body of work in cinema.

Sloper wrote:Your remark was effectively a capsule summary of the film, suggesting that at heart Leaves is a take on the same themes as Intolerance, which as you persuasively argue is true in lots of important ways - but also, I would argue, not true at all, in a more profound sense.
...

You're speaking with great labor, and articulating something that needs little emphasis-- yes I understand Leaves is not a COPY of intolerance. I said

"Yes there are differences at the story level-- of course there are... as work progressed, the film became a thing of its own, with its own look feel and set of specifics."

Pointing out that there are differences between the two films is a given, you do not need to keep emphasizing them versus something I never claimed in the first place. One is not a remake of the other. You're getting deep down into the specifics of Dreyer's narrative and pointing out the ways that it's different from Grif's... as if I thought they were completely identical. They're not. Suffice that you seem to understand that by highlighting these differences you're not disqualifying the huge connection between the two films.

You've got to understand that Griffith's experiment with this scripturally-toned, mammoth-scale, intertwined (thematically and in terms of cutting) omnibus structure jumping throughout history was so unique, it would be as if Grif in 1915 made an 8 hour film about a schoolboy who gets struck by lightning in a rainstorm and morphs via the heavenly charge into a sacred jellyfish in bowtie, cowboy boots and psychedelic papal robes who sells scrolls of the apocrypha with complimentary gallons of Neapolitan swirl ice cream from door to door on earth, Mars, Neptune and Pluto, two hours per planet, with each planetary tale in a different style of film.. cartoon, ballet, opera, and crime drama, and with the film jumping around in time from planet to planet via ellipses; and Dreyer in 1920 produced a 6 hour tale about a college student who gets struck by heat lightning and morphs into a giant lobster who dresses in 3 piece suit and bowtie and sells devils food cake from door to door on four planets, with each tale 1.5 hrs each, and Dreyer telling his tales with straight cinema, but each punctuated, instead of by different forms of stage, by different styles of cinema... less expensive but equally interesting contrasting styles of shooting and lighting and art direction.

That's how unique and instantly recognizable the similarities would have been back then. There'd by no question, really, for those privvy to the community of the newborn cinematic craft, the even newer Feature Film, and it's founding fathers-- his film like Murnau's SATANAS would have screamed "Griffith here I am, and here I come!!".

Now I know there's going to be a stampede to hijack that marvelous plot about the jellyfish papal ice-cream boy. One at a time, guys.. one at a time. Have your people contact my people... I'll put down my cigar and my floozie, and take a call here and there. Easy now. Easy.

Sloper wrote:As for who did it first, I know that Billy Bitzer did one in about 1906 (not sure what the film was), and The Passer-By (1912) on the Edison set, has two really marvellous ones.

Bitzer's Interior New York Subway 14th Street to 42nd Street (1905) is one big proto-structuralist tracking shot (and one of my favourite early films), though that's a bit of a cheat, as it's just an extreme variant on those early 'phantom ride' films.

Tommaso wrote:Sloper, sorry to hear about your dislike for "Der Var Engang". I've just rewatched it to remind myself of why exactly I find it's a very good film, and basically I think it's for similar reasons everyone here seems to love "The Parson's Widow" so much.

In honour of this discussion I watched it again too (been meaning to for a while), and I guess I must have been in a bad mood last time - I do still find it pretty unengaging, for various reasons, mainly I think because the prince is such a creepy, unpleasant character. He has eyes like those of Helge Nissen's Satanas, and throughout he just seems vindictively cruel. Very reminiscent of the tale of 'patient Griselda' which was quite popular in the Middle Ages, and which ends in a very similar way, but because Dreyer's film is played from the beginning as a comedy, the whole thing gets very uncomfortable very quickly. At least Petruchio was funny, and sort of loveably insane; this prince of Denmark is like Hamlet on a bad day.

But yes, Clara Wieth is wonderful, and she manages the 'growing up' transition you refer to brilliantly - even at the beginning, especially in the scene where she's in her bedroom with her maids, you can glimpse the warmth that will come out later on. The forest scenes are gorgeous, and yes it's heartbreaking that the concluding celebrations don't survive. Even the intertitles' description of the climax is moving, and perhaps this cathartic scene would have made it all worthwhile. On the whole, though, I think Dreyer is well out of his comfort zone with this material, and his usually patient, all-forgiving attitude to people is ill-suited to such a punitive fairy tale. With The Parson's Widow, he had far more likeable characters to work with, and great comic actors - especially Sofren and the widow.

I mostly left the sound off, but did sample bits of the score. It wasn't anywhere near 'ghastly', I admit, but I do tend to find Brand a bit insipid. He's not bad in the way that Sosin is, but I sort of class these two together: they're both capable of good work (Sosin's near-perfect score for Terje Vigen, and Brand on the Arbuckle/Keaton shorts) but it's a bit frustrating that they're the 'go-to' guys for silent film scores when there are quite a few more talented and interesting ones out there. The DFI Christensen disc is at the top of my kevyip, so I'll give Brand another try soon...

ltfontaine wrote:The plot of "The President" is melodramatic, to be sure, but Dreyer took it in hand only because it was readily available and he wanted to get underway on his first film before Nordisk changed their mind and pulled the plug. Even so, the narrative, as handled by Dreyer, gets less appreciation than it deserves. The time-travelling structure of the film, moving between generations of self-proclaimed sexually “reckless” Victors and also, separately, those they had seduced and abandoned, is quite dazzling, especially considering how little cinema from outside Scandinavia Dreyer had seen up to this point. (He hadn’t seen any of Griffith’s films, for instance, until he had completed shooting, and mostly finished editing "The President.")

I didn't realise he hadn't seen Griffith yet at that time - that does make the narrative sophistication of The President more remarkable. You're right that, however obvious the subject matter is, it's an expertly told story, perhaps as a result of Dreyer's long training as an editor (which in those days meant having a load of film dumped in your lap and somehow making a movie out of it).

HerrSchreck wrote:You're speaking with great labor, and articulating something that needs little emphasis-- yes I understand Leaves is not a COPY of intolerance. I said

"Yes there are differences at the story level-- of course there are... as work progressed, the film became a thing of its own, with its own look feel and set of specifics."

Pointing out that there are differences between the two films is a given, you do not need to keep emphasizing them versus something I never claimed in the first place. One is not a remake of the other. You're getting deep down into the specifics of Dreyer's narrative and pointing out the ways that it's different from Grif's... as if I thought they were completely identical. They're not. Suffice that you seem to understand that by highlighting these differences you're not disqualifying the huge connection between the two films.

Schreck, I don't think I was just labouring an obvious point here. In retrospect, I was partly reacting to this thread, where you'll see that Tommaso, zedz and tryavna all basically judge Leaves to be an 'anonymous' film, and a re-tread of Intolerance. After reading that, I pretty much expected to be underwhelmed. Tommaso has repeated here that it's Dreyer's most uncharacteristic film, and although you obviously admire it a good deal more than they do, you also have given the impression that you consider it an essentially derivative film. You say it lacks Intolerance's abstracted montage, that it has better cinematography, and that it differs on the story level, in details and specifics, and I don't think the squid/lobster thing really accounts for how different these two films are.

I'm not just saying that Leaves is 'not a copy' of Intolerance, nor do I feel that I'm only talking about details and specifics: I'm saying that it's different in almost every truly important respect from Griffith's film, and that the similarities are obvious but, almost without exception, superficial. Any serious assessment of Dreyer's film has to take Griffith's into account, of course, but to me that's just the first step: although I've seen Intolerance many more times than Leaves, I never think of the former while watching the latter. It's not just that the work took on individuality as it got made, it's different in its conception, in its intent, in what it's about, in its whole attitude. Most of the things that make Griffith's film so good are not really there in Leaves, and vice versa. Also, according to the blurb on the DVD, Leaves was based on a script written in 1913 - without knowing more about it I can't say what that proves, and it may be that Intolerance still provided the precedent needed to make such an ambitious screenplay viable. But in any case, I think the differences between the two films are important, interesting and worth talking about, all the more so because no one else has acknowledged them. However, if it seems to you that I'm flogging a dead horse, I'm happy to call it a day on this one.

zedz wrote:

Sloper wrote:As for who did it first, I know that Billy Bitzer did one in about 1906 (not sure what the film was), and The Passer-By (1912) on the Edison set, has two really marvellous ones.

Bitzer's Interior New York Subway 14th Street to 42nd Street (1905) is one big proto-structuralist tracking shot (and one of my favourite early films), though that's a bit of a cheat, as it's just an extreme variant on those early 'phantom ride' films.

I just checked Father of Film (the Brownlow/Gill doc), which features a clip from the film in question, but doesn't mention the title. A google search turned up this article, where Brownlow says:

Kevin Brownlow wrote:G. W. Bitzer, who would eventually become D. W. Griffith’s camera-man, shot a little film in 1904 called Photographing a Female Crook.A prisoner is dragged in by police for a mug shot and she knows that if she flails about and distorts her face the photograph will be blurred. As the policemen try to keep her still, Bitzer slowly tracks from long shot into close-up. The kind of close-up that film historians would have you believe was invented by D. W. Griffith.

I think Sloper, the problem here (and I think this is where a vast amount of your energy expenditure is coming from) is that you're tying the issue of quality into a discussion that in my mind is a cold, clinical assessment devoid of value judgement. This is what I'm brickwalling on because I don't see the relevance. You hear "Leaves is a riff on Intolerance" and become somewhat defensive for Leaves and engage in a moderately pointed defense of the film's salutary qualitites, particularly those that are utterly distinct from those in Intolerance.

That's a clouding of the discussion, I think. If I cook you some authentic Galician paella which you never had before, and which blows your mind.. and you go home and invent what you call a Sloper Sea Slam, which is essentially a flat-pan rice & seafood reworking of the basic paella recipe with some changes to the liquid base and seasonings, it's no shame to you for me to say that you created your own dish which is a riff on paella. No elucidation of the unique, unlike-standard-paella manner in which it hits your tongue on the front nose, after the swallow and the wash, how the overall effect is far more light and bright and energetic, can change the fact that your seafood/meat/veggie/saffron/bomba-rice dish was a riff on the galician paella I prepared for you originally which blew you skyhigh with ecstacy.

A qualitative discussion of how good one is versus the other, and the ways that one is different or better, etc, is a separate one to me. Identifying sources and derivation is pretty much a clinical piece of detective work-- subjectivite discussions regarding quality don't enter into it.

To me it's more like you slap together the paella in a mad, genius-fuelled frenzy, throwing in all sorts of foodstuffs I've never tasted before, and then I, inspired by your example, labour quietly over a delicately flavoured seafood and asparagus risotto. The people who don't like the risotto very much, and are aware that you're my culinary idol, call my dish a pale imitation, while others praise the risotto's subtle flavours but make rather a lot of the fact that it, like your paella, is a rice dish. My best customer, of course, is a certain young man who stands up amid the other diners and argues, at tedious length and in unnecessary amounts of detail, that Sloper's risotto is an original dish which in fact owes little to the more famous and influential (and in many ways more accomplished) Schreck-paella. The other customers filter out one by one, leaving the risotto to go cold, but as I stand in my rather spare and lonely kitchen, arranging rows of spatulas in telling configurations on the wall, I say to myself, 'that guy totally gets what I was doing with the risotto'.

I'm all for a cold, clinical assessment of influence, but subjectivity and value judgements have to come into it at some point, because the question of how important a particular source is also involves questions about the originality of the work in question. It's a huge issue in medieval studies, because poets back then were derivative to an extent that would land them in court these days. For instance, scholars commonly argue that Chaucer was writing in the shadow of Dante, and that a poem like The House of Fame is basically a riff on The Divine Comedy. But once you look closely at the borrowings and allusions and parodies and outright plagiarisms, you realise that in fact Chaucer is using Dante to make some incredibly sophisticated statements of his own, and in his modest way is even doing something which Dante could never have dreamt of. A pet hate of mine is the source study (and most of them are like this) which simply points out a correspondence or an allusion and doesn't comment on its significance, or suggest why the allusion is being made, or how a new context alters the meaning of a particular phrase or motif. Such comments will always be open to debate, but I believe that it's only by going that extra step and making those subjective judgements that you can begin to assess the importance of the source, or the purpose and meaning (let alone the value) of the imitation.

No Sloper, you're allowing yourself to tumble into a pit of extrapolation that's of your own making. This issue is simple, especially in a clear-cut situation like Dreyer's film vs. Intolerance.

What Other People Think about the fact that Dreyer took a basic template from Griffith as a starting point, is not the same as the Utilization Of The Template itself. The clinical aspect of the discussion is our ascertaining the historical fact, evidenced by Dreyer and the resulting film itself, that in Scandinavia in the late teens early 20's Dreyer worked under the influence of Intolerance to make a film that shares a lot of core structural and thematic/narrative similarities with Intolerance. That these gigantic similarities are there because of-- and only becuase of-- Intolerance is beyond dispute.

Once the fact has been established, you are entitled to make of it what you will: the author of the source piece (Griffith) may choose to be flattered and enjoy the publicity, or he may choose to take him to court. In classrooms around the world you will find as many opinions as there are students and professors. Some viewers may choose to find the secondary piece Leaves superior to the Intolerance, and others may find it drab and lifeless compared to his more original, non-derivative work (if there is a consensus I'd say that this is it). These subjective consverations are not stable, as there are no clinical measurements to establish beyond doubt the qualitative degrees that you are arguing. The fact that you feel so alone in your championing of the Dreyer film as the superior masterpiece should convince you of that fact.

Your statement about Dante/Chaucer:

you realise that in fact Chaucer is using Dante to make some incredibly sophisticated statements of his own, and in his modest way is even doing something which Dante could never have dreamt of.

first of all this is simply gossip from your mouth. That's a statement about your feelings in 2009, not nonfictional investigation of Chaucer at his desk in his time. What you see as sophistication might be the gutter turds of a subway rat to another man. You have no clue what Dante dreamt of. Your value assessment-- of Chaucer exceeding Dante in sophistication-- is simply fanspeak. It cannot be located in the history of both artists and therefore has no value in the tracing of one man's influence upon another within a specific single work. You're allowing your exuberant enthusiasm for one to get in the way of the tracing of aesthetic borrowing-- which already can be a tricky business-- from the other.

But let's say for a moment that 'sophistication' was consitently measurable, ina way that could be passed on from man to man and from university to university so that it could be studied and assigned. Applying this to the Dreyer/Griffith scenario--so what? That the level of alleged sophistication in the Dreyer is that which Griffith is incapable of envisioning in even the most glorious of his aesthetic dreams is nothing to the discussion. None of this has access to the facts of the case: that Leaves is, in its construction, exceedingly derivative of it's inspiration. Masterpieces can be inspired by insipid pieces of crap. Happens, you know.

What people choose to make of it is neither here nor there to the unalterable historical, clinical fact of it's existence, once factually established as it has been. The reason that subjective qualitative discussions are kept seperate is because they are forever in flux, and in variance from person to person.

You don't have to have any opinion whatsoever about Intolerance/Leaves-- you could hate them both to the very substance of your marrow-- to identify, clinically, the clear cut case in question.

HerrSchreck wrote:Your value assessment-- of Chaucer exceeding Dante in sophistication-- is simply fanspeak. It cannot be located in the history of both artists and therefore has no value in the tracing of one man's influence upon another within a specific single work. You're allowing your exuberant enthusiasm for one to get in the way of the tracing of aesthetic borrowing-- which already can be a tricky business-- from the other.

The issue of aesthetic borrowing would be less tricky if you understood that literary (or filmic) influence is a relationship between two texts, not between two men. Sloper's point is how Chaucer is using--sometimes verbatim--the words of Dante, and manipulating those words through recontextualization to produce meanings they did not already possess, meanings which might seem alien to a mediaeval Florentine. How Chaucer the man might react psychologically to Dante the man (which hardly matters, the two were so different), or what either man's personal history is, is irrelevant to apprehending this. Influence is located in a text: history and psychology are unnecessary in this point.

Mr_sausage wrote: How Chaucer the man might react psychologically to Dante the man (which hardly matters, the two were so different), or what either man's personal history is, is irrelevant to apprehending this. Influence is located in a text: history and psychology are unnecessary in this point.

"If I understood"? I think you misunderstood everything I've been saying, young man: I said "influence upon the other within the bounds of a single work,"... not in their hairstyles, wardrobe, go-go boots for evening attire, or even All The Art They've Ever Produced. I think you've misled yourself a touch by chopping off the "within a single work" part of the sentence.

All I'm arguing above is exclusively text-based: a clinical assessment of the two men's work, where a connection is suggested. Where did you misintepret my statements above so that you walked away believing that I was suggesting an analysis of one man's general influence upon the other as an individual? Beyond the bounds of the work in question?

Of course we are talking about the relationship between two texts. How can you analyze texts without texts?

That aside, and since you introduced this issue into the discussion, I'd advise: the texts are products of the men themselves, and are a reflection of their own invention, the things that have influenced them (including men, living and dead), and a host of other things. But that's another discussion entirely, and one for you to consider as you go about the business of your devlopment as an eager young man investigating the nature of art and its creation.

What I have trouble coping with is the way you keep insisting that 'the discussion' should be about objective facts:

HerrSchreck wrote:The clinical aspect of the discussion is our ascertaining the historical fact, evidenced by Dreyer and the resulting film itself, that in Scandinavia in the late teens early 20's Dreyer worked under the influence of Intolerance to make a film that shares a lot of core structural and thematic/narrative similarities with Intolerance. That these gigantic similarities are there because of-- and only becuase of-- Intolerance is beyond dispute.

That last statement kind of depends on what that 1913 script was like, doesn't it? And you're trying to make out that your point of view here is the clinical, objective one, while I'm all gossip and fanspeak which has no bearing on 'the discussion'. But in the first place, 'the discussion' has been all about gossip and fanspeak from the start: lubitsch said he didn't like Dreyer's early films, that sparked a bit of discussion, then you came in and said:

HerrSchreck wrote:Leaves is in terms of cinematography, an extremely impressive film. In terms of narrative, it's a riff on Intolerance but without the sense of abstracted montage. Not a mindblower, but certainly not a failed film in retrospect, either.

So you think the cinematography is good; so it's not a mindblower; so it's not a failed film; so what? These are just opinions, opinions are unstable and therefore irrelevant. And if you're saying that your statement about Leaves being a riff on Intolerance was a purely objective historical observation, with no value judgement implied, then why did you bother saying it? We all know that Leaves was inspired by Intolerance. 'Our ascertaining the historical fact, evidenced by Dreyer and the resulting film itself, that in Scandinavia in the late teens early 20's Dreyer worked under the influence of Intolerance to make a film that shares a lot of core structural and thematic/narrative similarities with Intolerance' is a waste of time, because we've all already ascertained it. You talk as if we're some sort of committee appointed to determine who was influenced by what and then quickly move onto another subject before anyone starts spouting their worthless opinions.

What I said about Chaucer/Dante was fanspeak, if you want to call it that - I call it an opinion. I wasn't dogmatically stating a fact, just saying what I think about the relationship between the works of those two authors. If we're only here to discuss objective reality, then at best we have nothing new or interesting to say ('Leaves is a riff on Intolerance'...'Yes, it is'...'Yes'...'I also acknowledge this fact') and at worst we have nothing to say at all. No, I don't know what Dante 'dreamt' (that really isn't news to me), but neither do you know what Dreyer was thinking of when he made Leaves from Satan's Book. I have never denied the fact that you keep asserting - that Dreyer was inspired and influenced by Intolerance - but your statement that

HerrSchreck wrote:Leaves is, in its construction, exceedingly derivative of it's inspiration

is not the 'fact of the case' you claim it to be. The word 'exceedingly' is not objective, but subjective: the extent of Leaves' derivativeness is open to question, and your assertion, which you call a fact, is actually just your opinion in 2009, fanspeak etc. And the word 'derivative', especially in conjunction with 'exceedingly', connotes a lack of originality, which again is a value judgement on your part - not a fact. By the way, I think this opinion you express is a perfectly reasonable one, although I disagree with it, and you can support it with evidence from the text of the film; but I can do the same with my opinions. Yours are no more objective, no more factual, than mine - on the objective statement (Dreyer was inspired and influenced by Intolerance) we are in agreement; but I differ with you on the subjective part, the 'exceedingly derivative' part.

I'm way too tired and flu-ridden to know if either of us is still making sense, but it feels like you're taking issue with my having expressed opinions about the relationship between two films. When did you decide this was the sort of thing you wouldn't put up with on this forum? If you disagree with me, fine; if you think my opinions are stupid, fine; if you want to just ignore them, fine; and if you want to take issue with them in a rational and coherent manner, then that's positively wonderful; but it's ridiculous to lambast me for not being 'objective' enough. I genuinely don't see what the problem is here.

Ugh...

On the plus side, I just watched The Mysterious X. And Neil Brand did okay.

Sloper, I don't think this is quite fair. You're sounding wounded and quite a bit bitter with me. Remember, you wanted to have this discussion. You initiated this one on one with me, so the tone of victimization sounds a bit off color to me. I haven't been rude or mean-- or at least deliberately hurtful. You opened this discussion by quoting me, and subjected what was merely a completely off-the-cuff, five cent statement of my take on the film (a riff on Intolerance but a very good film on its own) to CRT scan and neutron activation analysis. You sensed that up to a day or so ago that I really wasn't interested in getting deeply into this (" But in any case, I think the differences between the two films are important, interesting and worth talking about, all the more so because no one else has acknowledged them. However, if it seems to you that I'm flogging a dead horse, I'm happy to call it a day on this one.") and I really wasn't.. but it seemed like you really wanted to have this discussion so I ate a bowl of Wheaties and got my energy level on par to type long thought out responses.

You had a serious issue with my choice of words (riff) and wanted to show where and how you felt I was wrong in this. I simply did not agree and expended sincere energy into pointing out specifically how I believed you were making critical mistakes in your process of working through the problem. Now because I haven't yeilded to your standpoint, I'm getting "When did you decide this was the sort of thing you wouldn't put up with on this forum? If you disagree with me, fine; if you think my opinions are stupid, fine; if you want to just ignore them, fine; and if you want to take issue with them in a rational and coherent manner, then that's positively wonderful; but it's ridiculous to lambast me for not being 'objective' enough. I genuinely don't see what the problem is here.

Ugh..."

????

I'm just getting over the swine flu myself, and hope you feel better soon. That's the short-form, kindly version of my response to the above.

Needless to say we're done with this conversation.

HerrSchreck wrote:Where did you misintepret my statements above so that you walked away believing that I was suggesting an analysis of one man's general influence upon the other as an individual? Beyond the bounds of the work in question?

I suppose it'd be when you said this: "That's a statement about your feelings in 2009, not nonfictional investigation of Chaucer at his desk in his time." As said, no one needs to be "investigating Chaucer at his desk in his own time." Not the issue.

HerrSchreck wrote:That aside, and since you introduced this issue into the discussion, I'd advise: the texts are products of the men themselves, and are a reflection of their own invention, the things that have influenced them (including men, living and dead), and a host of other things. But that's another discussion entirely, and one for you to consider as you go about the business of your devlopment as an eager young man investigating the nature of art and its creation.

You said you were going to advise me on something, but damned if I can find any advice. But you have reminded me of an amusing part of Pale Fire, where mad-Scholar Kinbote, commenting on the first lines of Shade's poem ("I was the shadow of a waxwing slain / By the false azure in the windowpane. / I was the smudge of ashen fluff / But I lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.") says: "We can vizualize John Shade in his early boyhood...experiencing his first eschatological shock, as with incredulous fingers he picks up from the turf that compact ovoid body and gazes at the wax-red streaks ornamenting those grey-brown wings and at the graceful tail feathers tipped with yellow as bright as fresh paint." He's so busy trying to connect the perfectly ordinary occurance of a bird hitting a windowsill with some grand, life-altering piece of the poet's life he imagines must be behind it that he completely and ludicrously misses the point. It's the window, not the bird, that's important.

But, no, of course you're right. Art is the reflection of the artist's invention...wait...isn't art the invention? But no, you said it was the reflection. Ok. So what's the invention, then, if art's the reflection of it? I'm confused. But anyway, you're right. Art is the "things" that have influenced the artist. And it's also a "host of other things." So art is things. Reflections of inventions of things. Have I got that right? I'm a bit dense.

Oh my goodness.... I nearly oopsed my haberdashery.

HerrSchreck wrote:the texts are...

HerrrSchreck wrote:...the things that have influenced them...

HerrSchreck wrote:...and a host of other things...

I'm trying to parse it, but all I get is art is a lot of things. Plus a reflection. Perhaps you can explain it to me. Surely you knew what you were talking about?

If I explain, what do I get in return?

Maybe show me some of those long beautiful legs and slender feet? Let your shiny lips catch the light just so?

HerrSchreck wrote:If I explain, what do I get in return?

You get to save face by proving you did not, in fact, just write a pile of nonsense. And after all, you were proposing to advise an "eager young man" such as myself. Probably a good idea to make sure you actually have something to say, first.

I'd be delighted if you just pretend my advice was wrong, and it was all "nonsense"-- Texts are not the product of the men who create them, are not the result of a man's sense of invention or his inspiration (which cannot stem from a virtual infinitude of stimuli and sensory encounters).

Now will you please remove your teeth from my pants leg and go color or something? Nookie is a 2-way street.

Carl Dreyer was mortified whenever anyone pointed out the striking resemblance between a shot in “The President” and Whistler’s “Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother.” What must he think of the quivering mass into which “Leaves” has been beaten here?

I’m pretty sure that Mouse and the Traps had heard Dylan before they recorded “A Public Execution,” and that Ozu had seen a few American college comedies before he made his own, festooned with pennants from The Big Ten, but influence is too often claimed by observers on the flimsiest of evidence. In regard to “Leaves,” however, Dreyer stated “the facts of the case” in 1967:

"I was very strongly influenced by Griffith. He created great films and then all of the rest of us followed him and learned from him. When “Intolerance” was shown in Copenhagen for directors and officials of Nordisk, the others did not like his film, but I found it deeply moving. The three historical parts did not much interest me, but I felt that the modern story with Mae Marsh and Robert Harron was wonderful. I was especially impressed by the scene in which she pulls at her handkerchief with her teeth in her anxiety for her husband . . .

“Griffith’s use of close-ups and the human way in which he approached the story impressed me immensely. This was true of all his work—the big spectacles did not interest me much, but the human stories such as “Broken Blossoms” and “Way Down East” had a profound effect on me."

This much we have from Dreyer himself. Griffith’s style influenced Dreyer in the ways he describes and “Intolerance” directly inspired the creation of “Leaves from Satan’s Book.”

But when did this influence occur?

Jean and Dale Drum, who had unique, extended access to Dreyer and his account of things, claim that the director had not seen Griffith’s films until “The President” was almost in the can:

“About the time Dreyer was finishing the editing of “The President” World War I ended and a long-delayed shipment of American films arrived in Denmark. Among these were several D. W. Griffith features, including his two masterpieces, “Birth of a Nation” and “Intolerance.” A special showing of these films was arranged for a group of directors at Nordisk, and Dreyer remembers the profound impression that Griffith made on him that evening. He was particularly caught up by "Intolerance" and determined that he too would create such a film if Nordisk would back the effort.”

But it appears that the Drums may be playing fast and loose with the chronology of Dreyer’s encounter with Griffith’s films. The sequence of events delineated by David Bordwell, among others, is as follows:

1918 January
“Intolerance” and other unspecified Griffith films are screened privately for Nordisk directors, including Dreyer.

1918 March
“The Birth of a Nation” plays in Denmark, a fact on which Bordwell presumes (accurately or not?) that Dreyer sees the film at this time.

1918 summer
Dreyer shoots “The President.” (No puns please.)

1918 August
Dreyer finishes editing “The President.”

1918 November
World War I ends.

1919 summer
Dreyer shoots “Leaves from Satan’s Book”

So, according to this account, the Griffith films arrived in Denmark before the end of WWI and Dreyer saw “Intolerance,” at least, before ever shooting his first film.

In terms of influence, it’s notable that the contemporary Finnish episode in “Leaves,” equivalent to the “modern story” in “Intolerance” favorably cited by Dreyer, is the only one of the four sections that Dreyer wrote himself. He shot and edited the Finnish portion of “Leaves” first and screened it for Nordisk bigwigs, who authorized him to proceed with the rest of the film.