March 15, 2016

15. Day of Wrath

42 minutes

My guest for this month is Neven Mrgan, and he’s joined me to discuss the film I chose for him, the 1943 romantic drama film Day of Wrath. You can follow the show on Twitter @cinemagadfly.

Show notes:

The director of this film, Carl Theodore Dreyer, had an extremely unhappy childhood, which seems relevant

The story was based on a Norwegian play called Anne Pedersdotter, about an actual witch trial

A previous Dreyer film The Passion of Joan of Arc, was super controversial when it was initially released in France

My favorite Dreyer film thus far is Vampyr, which has the eerie quality of dreams

I also enjoyed Master of the House, which had a lot more in common with this film stylistically

This could be seen as a cautionary tale on the dangers of electing Donald Trump

It’s hard to believe this film could have been made in the US, at least not under the Hays Code of the time

Apparently the correct term for Absalon and his other church official buddies is pastor

That one evil church dude does really look an awful lot like Vladimir Putin

It’s not hard to see all the influences this must have had on Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible

The Fassbinder film that we watched instead of this was Mutter Küsters' Fahrt zum Himmel

Dreyer was a huge, and obvious, influence, on Danish director Lars von Trier

Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies is a good book, but I’m not sure he named the actress he slapped as Meryl Streep

If I Did It is an actual book, nominally by OJ Simpson, about how he would have committed the murders. Yep

During the time this film was made, Denmark was occupied by the Nazis

It’s important to note that Facism typically comes after Totalitarianism

Neither the actress who played Anne, nor the one who played Herlof’s Marte, are known for much other work

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By Arik Devens

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