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THE DAYS OF WRATH (VREDENS DAG, DIES IRAE), Denmark, 1943

VREDENS DAG (Dies Irae)

Denmark, 1943

International title: Day of Wrath

Director: Carl Theodor Dreyer. Screenplay: Carl Theodor Dreyer, Mogens Skot-Hansen, From the Theatrical Text by Hans Wiers-Jenssen; Text of the “Dies Irae”: Paul La Cour. Director of photography: Karl Andersson. Editing: Anne Marie Petersen, Edith Schlüssel. Music: Poul Schierbeck. Costume designer: Karl Sandt Jensen, Olga Thomsen. Set design: Erik Aaes, Lis Fribert. Interpreters and characters: Thorkild Roose (Rev. Absalon Pederssøn), Lisbeth Movin (Anne Pedersdotter), Sigrid Neiiendam (Merete), Albert Høeberg (The Bishop). Production: Palladium Film. Duration: 93 ‘.

Format: DCP. Source: Danish Film Institute, courtesy of the Danish Film Institute. Original version. Subtitles: English.

1623: Anne, young, adulterous and attracted to magical practices, gives in and accuses herself when she sees herself disowned by her lover. Dreyer invents a new dramatic and liturgical intensity, a full and dense slowness, a theater of shadows and lights inspired by Rembrandt and Vermeer: ​​in the rarefaction of words and gestures a great tale of ambiguous love, intolerance and d ‘horror. As a student, Pasolini fell in love with the cinema of Carl Theodor Dreyer, discovered in a university film club. He defined it as the essential author of a “constellation”, “I would even say that it is the most important of all”. “While I was filming Accattone, the only author I directly thought of was Masaccio. After I finished it, I realized that some of my great cinematographic loves had also been involved: Dreyer, Mizoguchi and Chaplin. Why these three? Because they are all three, each in his own way, epic directors; not epic in the Brechtian sense of the term, I mean epic in the most mythical sense, of a more natural epic that is more linked to things, to facts, to characters, to the story, without the detachment of a Brecht. I feel this mythical epicity both in Dreyer and in Mizoguchi and Chaplin: all three observe things from a point of view that is absolute, essential and in a certain sense religious, sacred. “

(Pier Paolo Pasolini)

Sunday 3 April 2022, h. 10:45 am

Saturday 9 April 2022, h. 3:30 pm

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Dies Irae

  • Organized by: IIC Melbourne