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A haunting film. It's been criticised as 'slow': well, it is. But the pacing, rather than being in any way dull, achieves something rare in films: it gives the viewers space to think about what they're seeing. And there is a great deal to think about. It's a film of tiny detail: in the acting, the smallest details are significant and powerful (watch Absalon's hands in the scene where Anne tells him that she is committing adultery).

I want to draw attention to just one detail here: the remarkable use of written documents (a characteristic touch of Dreyer's, to be found elsewhere in his films). The torture and examination of the old woman Herlof's Marte is intercut with shots of the (fictional but authentic) legal documents that set out her fate; when she makes her 'confession', we see the scribe painstakingly writing with his scratchy quill-pen, setting it all down for the record. As a historian who works extensively with court records of this period, it seemed to me that I was being invited to think about the problematic relationship between these dusty pieces of parchment and paper - our sources - and the events that they describe. And, in doing so, it also offers food for thought on the relationship between 'visual' and 'written' histories.

Hans Weirs-Jenssen, Anne Pedersdotter: a drama in four acts (tr John Masefield; Boston, 1917) is the play that originally inspired Dreyer to make the film

Scandinavian Witchcraft

NB: Historical writing in English on the Scandinavian countries is not that easy to find (I'm not even sure that there are any book-length studies)

There are a number of good articles in B Ankarloo and G Henningsen (eds), Early modern European witchcraft: centres and peripheries

Thor Hall and Herbert Burhenn, 'The making of a witch: the guilty triangle', Scandinavian Studies, 60 (1988)

Gustav Henningsen, 'Witch persecution after the era of the witch trials: a contribution to Danish ethnohistory', Arc, 44 (1989)

Jens Christian Johansen, 'Witchcraft in Elsinore, 1625-26', Mentalities 3 (1985)

On Dreyer

Donald Skoller (ed), Dreyer in double reflection (New York, 1973). A collection of Dreyer's own writings in translation

David Bordwell, The films of Carl Theodor Dreyer (Berkeley, 1981)

Scandinavian Witchcraft

The Witches' Sabbath (primarily Finnmark, northern Norway)

Witchcraft in Scandinavia (Alison Cronise) [currently unavailable: January '04]

Den Sidste Heks (Danish language)

The film

IMDB information

Toward a rhetoric of film: identification and the spectator (Gilberto Perez) in Senses of Cinema, an online journal; an intriguing analysis of Day of Wrath amongst other films

The danger of power (Jamie Olsen) essay with short bibliography

A parable for critics (Ray Carney)

Dreyer's Art (Ray Carney)

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gbase/Calendar/Film?Film=oid%3A138663 (review by George Morris)

http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue09/reviews/carldreyer/text.htm (Gary Morris)

http://www.cinematheque.bc.ca/archives/dreyer.html (Pacific Cinematheque)

http://www.filmref.com/directors/dirpages/dreyer.html (Strictly Film School)

Also useful...

A History of Danish Film (the mermaid lounge) a good overview

Introduction | Bibliography | Martin Guerre | Winstanley | Hunting the Witch | Shorts
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This page last updated 22 January '04 by Sharon Howard

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