#Cay Kristiansen

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'Ordet' – Carl Dreyer searches for grace on Criterion Collection

One of the most powerful and profound films about faith ever made, Carl Dreyer’s Ordet (Denmark, 1955) (which translates to “The Word”) turns a Romeo and Juliet story into a passionately spiritual drama of love and acceptance. Anders (Cay Kristiansen) and Anne (Gerda Nielsen) are young lovers in rural farming community, he the son of proud farmer Morten (Henrik Malberg), she the only daughter of…

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Carl Theodore Dreyer

I like to say I’ve seen CTD’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” but actually, it was playing on a screen at a Catpower concert about 100 years ago. Catpower was all the rage back then. She was allowed to be grumpy on stage. And, people ate it up. So, this is the first CTD film I’ve ever actually seen.

Camera movement. Pans, tracking, 360s — both around the subject (the uncle and the young girl whose mother is about to die in childbirth) and spinning in the middle of the subject (a room for example). That one of the uncle and the child is sweet and captivating. She is like the Christ child and Mary in a Renaissance painting. She’s the only one who takes the crazy uncle, Johannes, seriously, and as it turns out, she’s not far off.

This film is about communities and identity, in this case formed by religion. There are two rival religious factions, old and new. Each thinks marrying into the other would be unacceptable. To us now, these differences in belief systems seem insignificant. They weren’t small differences to the characters in the story. They take this stuff very seriously.

Yet, when in the presence of the potential for a real miracle, nobody takes it seriously. (Spoiler follows.) Ok, so it’s easy to say now, after we find out the crazy uncle apparently can bring someone back from the dead. It’s hard to believe in a real miracle. It’s easier to believe in a fantasy, or a conspiracy theory, or just plain lies.

The film has a classical structure. Setup of the Borgen family: father, and brothers, and wife, and kids at the farm with Johannes. The inciting event is when the youngest son wants to marry a girl from their rival religious sect. The son’s father, Morten, is against the union until he finds out that the girl’s father refuses because the Borgen’s religion isn’t up to snuff. The child birth tragedy comes exactly at the midpoint. Inger, wife of the eldest son, Mikkel, seems to be recovering, but Johannes predicts her death unless his father believes in him. A nice midpoint surprise. Nothing like actual death to elevate religious conflict.

It all comes down to this:

And, what about Kierkegaard? Study him and go crazy, apparently. That’s the explanation given for Johannes’s delusional state of mind. But, Johannes seems to control two life and death scenarios. Maybe he is Jesus Christ after all. If Jesus lived in our time, he’d be locked up, or at least shooed away from hanging out by the subway entrance.

Even before Catpower, I took a class with a young philosophy professor, who told us that “Soren” was slang for “dick” in Denmark. The class was on Nietsche, and I think the girls loved him. Lots of wavy hair. I guess philosophy worked out for him. But, I can’t find any reference to “Soren” as a swear word on the interweb. People will believe just about anything for a song and dance.

[byneddiedingo]

Preben Lerdorff Rye in Ordet (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)

Cast: Henrik Malberg, Emil Hass Christensen, Birgitte Federspiel, Preben Lerdorff Rye, Cay Kristiansen, Ejner Federspiel, Gerda Nielsen, Sylvia Eckhausen, Ove Rud, Henry Skjaer. Screenplay: Carl Theodor Dreyer, based on a play by Kaj Munk Cinematography: Henning Bendtsen. Production design: Erik Aaes. Film editing: Edit Schlüssel. Music: Poul Schierbeck. 

As a non-believer, I find the story told by Ordet objectively preposterous, but it raises all the right questions about the nature of religious belief. Ordet, the kind of film you find yourself thinking about long after it's over, is about the varieties of religious faith, from the lack of it, embodied by Mikkel Borgen (Emil Hass Christensen), to the mad belief of Mikkel's brother Johannes (Preben Lerdorff Rye) that he is in fact Jesus Christ. Although Mikkel is a non-believer, his pregnant wife, Inger (Birgitte Federspiel), maintains a simple belief in the goodness of God and humankind. The head of the Borgen family, Morten (Henrik Malberg), regularly attends church, but it's a relatively liberal modern congregation, headed by a pastor (Ove Rud) who denies the possibility of miracles in a world in which God has established physical laws, although he doesn't have a ready answer when he's asked about the miracles in the Bible. When Morten's youngest son, Anders (Cay Kristiansen), falls in love with a young woman (Gerda Nielsen), her father, Peter (Ejner Federspiel), who belongs to a very conservative sect, forbids her to marry Anders. Then everyone's faith or lack of it is put to test when Inger goes into labor. The doctor (Henry Skjaer) thinks he has saved her life by aborting the fetus, but Inger dies. As she is lying in her coffin, Peter arrives to tell Morten that her death has made him realize his lack of charity and that Anders can marry his daughter. Then Inger is restored to life with the help of Johannes and the simple faith of her young daughter. Embracing Inger, Mikkel now proclaims that he is a believer. The conundrum of faith and evidence runs through the film.  For example, if the only thing that can restore one's faith is a miracle, can we really call that faith? What makes Ordet work -- in fact, what makes it a great film -- is that it poses such questions without attempting answers. It subverts all our expectations about what a serious-minded film about religion -- not the phony piety of Hollywood biblical epics -- should be. Dreyer and cinematographer Henning Bendtsen keep everything deceptively simple: Although the film takes place in only a few sparely decorated settings, the reliance on very long single takes and a slowly traveling camera has a documentary-like effect that engages a kind of conviction on the part of the audience that makes the shock of Inger's resurrection more unsettling. We don't usually expect to find our expectations about the way things are -- or the way movies should treat them -- so rudely and so provocatively exploded.

[dweemeister]

Ordet (1955, Denmark)

By the 1950s, Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer had made eleven films. However, his last three works were victims of circumstance. The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928) consistently ranks high in film critics’ lists of the greatest movies ever made, but it offended ardent French nationalists who resisted the idea of a Dane directing a movie about one of the nation’s secondary patron saints. Vampyr (1932), in its stillness and languor befitting its disturbing atmosphere, was despised by audiences – including a riot from Viennese moviegoers demanding a refund – expecting more action. Day of Wrath (1943) released a firestorm of controversy in Nazi-occupied Denmark because of its allegory about living under an authoritarian regime. All three of these films were commercial failures. All three of these films are today considered cinematic exemplars.

Danish movie producers might have sneezed, claiming imaginary allergies, at the notion of financing the next Dreyer film, but the Danish government decided to reward Dreyer – struggling with finances after World War II – with a lifelong lease to the Dagmar, the state arthouse movie theater. With a morsel of the Dagmar’s profits, Dreyer sought a project he could make on a shoestring budget. Dreyer’s twelfth film would be Ordet (“The Word” in English), based on a play of the same name by Lutheran pastor Kaj Munk. Ordet is a severe film that never loses hold of an attentive viewer. It contains a provocative ending that cannot (and will not) be spoiled, and it is an ideal follow-up to The Passion of Joan of Arc and Day of Wrath in that this piece examines the nature of faith. Instead of probing why the film’s characters believe (or don’t believe) in God, its focus is instead on how the characters express their belief.

In the autumn of 1925, widowed Borgen family patriarch Morten (Henrik Malberg) is a devout farmer soon to be busy with doting on his third, incoming grandchild. Morten has three sons: his eldest, Mikkel (Emil Hass Christensen), is agnostic, married to Inger (Birgitte Federspeil), and the couple have taken care of Morten’s two grandchildren; middle son Johannes (Preben Lerdorff Rye) went mad studying Søren Kierkegaard’s texts and now believes himself to be Jesus Christ; and youngest son Anders (Cay Kristiansen), the center of the film’s attention for a plurality of its runtime, is lovesick. The entire Borgen family lives under the same roof – creating tension, but Morten is nevertheless proud of “Borgensfarm”.

Anders and Anne Petersen (Gera Nielsen) wish to marry. Anne’s father Peter (Ejner Federspiel), is the local leader of the conservative Inner Mission sect of Lutheranism; Anders and Anne correctly believe he will oppose the marriage. Peter’s standoffish rejection inspires Morten – also originally in opposition – to change his mind. He stomps over to Peter’s residence, arriving mid-sermon, and failing to sway his friend. Peter’s telephone rings as they argue, and Peter must bear news of a family emergency at Borgensfarm.

Pacing and an intricate plot are of no concern to Dreyer. For the film’s opening two-thirds, Dreyer – who wrote the adapted screenplay – takes all the time needed to let the audience know the lives of the Borgens. The love shared between all three generations of the Borgen family is never questioned, although their understanding of and relationship with God differs. Because of my lack of religious belief, I do not know how to accurately describe Dreyer’s comparison of Morten and Peter other than the former is less beholden to religious dogma than the latter. The agnostic Mikkel believes God as essentially dead, forsaking long ago the children of Earth to the kindness and cruelty of their neighbors. No one in the Borgen household condemns or lampoons Mikkel for not believing. Certainly not Inger, who sympathizes with this struggle of faith. Not even Johannes, the most difficult son to truly understand. Johannes, speaking Jesus’ words from scripture and words that one could imagine Jesus might have said in rural 1920s Denmark, appears as a cloud-gazing, simply-clothed itinerant by day. His words are lofty, his speech deliberate, his empty gaze distancing him from those who surround him. He asks others to pray and believe, never wrathful if they do not listen or heed his advice. By night, he returns home as he always has done. Though he no longer addresses his father, brothers, sister-in-law, and nieces as his father, brothers, sister-in-law, and nieces, they still treat him as family – even though they do not accept him as Christ. For Anders, he is obviously preoccupied with the woman he loves.

Ordet is structured around the domestic lives and habits of its characters – it is akin to free verse poetry, resisting any attempts at novelistic analysis. Characters fully express themselves, and dialogue never overlaps between speakers (even in argument). There is silence after completed statements of opinion and revelation. In that silence, Dreyer’s camera captures the listener’s reaction (except for Johannes, who does not visually react): contentment, disbelief, amusement, concern, horror, understanding. This is executed in the mostly empty spaces of the Borgen household, against clear backdrops. In the dialogue pauses during and between conversations, all one can hear is ambient noise: the floorboards creaking as a character is making their way across the room, the clock ticking in the parlor room, someone shuffling positions in their chair. Cinematographer Henning Bendtsen (1959’s Boy of Two Worlds, 1991’s Europa) keeps his camera distant – of Ordet’s 114 total shots (averaging more than sixty seconds each between cuts), only three are close-ups. It is as if there is a presence accompanying the characters even in the most ordinary scenes, but that presence is something unknowable, something beyond an individual’s understanding of God.

Bendtsen’s mastery of mise en scène (a concept that is generally defined as the combination of set design, shot composition, and actor placement to empower cinematic or theatrical art) culminates when Mikkel’s oldest daughter, Maren (Ann Elisabeth Groth), walks into the parlor room to see her uncle Johannes waiting in the dark. Inger has gone into labor; her pregnancy endangering her life. Maren has overheard how perilous her mother’s situation is from the adults and cannot sleep.

She asks Johannes if her mother will die soon; he responds, “Do you want her to, little girl?” The camera cuts. “Yes, because then you’ll bring her back to life, won’t you?” It is a curious response that raises unanswered questions how Mikkel’s two girls view Johannes as an uncle and as a self-proclaimed Christ. The others will not allow me to perform this miracle, notes Johannes, as the camera begins to slowly revolve around them. Maren and Johannes have a late-night conversation about what happens when a mother goes to heaven and miracles. The gradual dolly shot going across Johannes and Maren’s front sides display the empty depths of the parlor room, suggesting something there. Again, it suggests something beyond our conception of God. Maren and Johannes’ conversation adds to this, as Johannes comforts Maren, imparting that mothers will be with their children even in death, without the stress of other things during the day. In three minutes, a creaking floorboard, ticking clock, Johannes’ blank face, and the familial tenderness between the two actors have encapsulated what Ordet conveys to open-minded viewers of all faiths.

All of this is demanding, in different ways, for the acting ensemble and the audience. In many films (especially today’s cinema), editors will cut quickly from reactions to dialogue or during dialogue – serving to either undermine an actor’s ability or conceal their shortcomings. Because of the camerawork and minimal editing, there is little room for any mediocre acting to hide in Ordet (which contains stellar performances from its ensemble), a production that asks its actors to inhabit their characters for lengthy stretches without a cut. In a way, this harkens to Ordet’s background as a stage play, but the film adaptation does not feel stage-bound. For the audience, the barely moving camera and thoughtful pace can be an impediment to the impatient. But I suspect many viewers – as I did – will have difficulty unpackaging Johannes. Johannes, with all credit to Preben Lerdorff Rye, seems like he accidentally walked onto the wrong movie set and began acting thinking he was shooting for that other production. That last sentence could be construed as disparagement, but it is not – Rye’s performance befits the character, and Dreyer’s intention to perplex viewers with Johannes’ presence is controlled and purposeful.

Johannes’ presence in Ordet strikes at unsettling ideas for Christians and non-Christians alike, and these conflicting ideas are integral to the film’s controversial final ten minutes. In contrast to Morten’s comfortable, undemanding religiosity and the Inner Mission’s stringent emphasis on dogma, Johannes’ claims to be Christ is unnerving. The New Testament is filled with parables, gospels, and miracles told and performed by Christ. The Borgen family and the Inner Mission sect adherents would rather Jesus be dead, with God’s physical embodiment and judgment removed from the corporeal world humans share, than believe Johannes to be the son of God. Every character in Ordet except Johannes believes that the days of God’s miracles have passed; to some viewers, the film may seem to endorse this view. But Dreyer’s intentions are not to evangelize on behalf of any Christian belief – Dreyer, according to film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, was not religious and his occasional visits to a French Reformed church were attempts to familiarize himself with Christian colloquialisms for his film projects. Dreyer wants to understand how religion plays a role in the lives of the Borgens and the film’s secondary characters and how they express their faith. He succeeds.

By the time Ordet’s final act begins, the viewer is probably still wondering how such an apparently simple film that may have bored them in the opening half-hour has convinced them to finish it – barreling into the thickets of one’s soul with unexpected force. Dreyer and the actors have outlined their characters completely, allowing observant viewers intuit each character’s reactions to the mundane and the sublime. The film’s paradoxical and transcendent conclusion provides these characters and the audience an ending that we desperately desire, but also challenges that desire to question our faith.

For the first time since the silent era, Carl Theodor Dreyer had made a film that was instantly acclaimed by critics and audiences in Denmark and abroad – including receiving the Golden Lion at the 1955 Venice Film Festival and a joint Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film shared with four other movies. Despite Ordet’s success, Dreyer would continue to struggle in finding funds to make another film. Dreyer made only one more film in Gertrud (1964), and a long-gestating project about Jesus (no surprise that Dreyer would consider making such a film) never came to fruition, although a manuscript outlining the film was published in 1968.

As someone who was never raised with much of an understanding of the Abrahamic religions, I nevertheless find films commenting about the nature of religious belief fascinating. Almost all these films, due to demographics and religious history, have been within Christianity’s folds. Too often faith is held as a nightstick for comic or dramatic purposes in narrative art – and this sort of art is neither challenging nor rewarding for anyone. In recent years, I have found glorious exceptions from Old Hollywood and in non-English-language cinema that put to shame the evangelical-specific, exclusionary present of the American Christian film industry. Ordet is arguably one of the most exacting and illuminating religious films ever made. Late in Ordet, Dreyer’s film finds itself in a wallow of despair and ends with spirits exultant. Its ending – one that I desired – still leaves me uplifted and horrified.

My rating: 10/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. Half-points are always rounded down. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

[enterfilm]

ORDET (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)

[aestheticsunav]

Ordet (La Palabra)

Director:  Carl Theodor Dreyer

Fecha: 1955

País: Dinamarca

Duración: 125 min.

Género: Drama | Religión.

Reparto: Henrik Malberg, Emil Hass Christensen, Preben Lerdorff Rye, Cay Kristiansen,Brigitte Federspiel, Ann Elizabeth, Ejner Federspiel, Sylvia Eckhausen

Guion: Carl Theodor Dreyer (Obra: Kaj Munk)

Fotografía: Henning Bendsten (B&W)

Música: Paul Schierbeck

Productora: Palladium Films

Tráiler

Ordet trata sobre el papel de lo divino y lo religioso en la vida cotidiana de una familia. Este papel se hace más grueso y notorio con el fallecimiento de Inger, la madre de familia. 

En la película no todos los personajes creen, ya que la mayoría no lo hace. Se ridiculiza y se satiriza el papel de Johannes, por ser teólogo y creer firmemente en la religión. Esto nos anticipa el carácter de reprimenda que efectua Dreyer contra la sociedad en esta película. 

La temporalidad es clave en la película. Es el tema central más importante. Cuando muere Inger, la familia para los relojes como signo de rebeldía ante el tiempo y lo divino. Sin embargo, Inger resucita, y cuando lo hace, los relojes vuelven a la hora natural. Así se da un rechazo al paso del tiempo y a lo divino, pero también un perdón y una vuelta atrás. 

La muerte de Inger se nos anticipa, mediante la conversación de Johannes con su sobrina, que Inger morirá en algún momento de la película. Le pide a Johannes que, si Inger muere, la resucite. Johannes intenta calmara diciéndole que en el cielo será feliz. A través de esta conversación y otros momentos, como el funeral de Inger, el espectador se vuelve un personaje más, unido por el deseo de resurrección de la madre de la familia. 

De este modo, Dreyer se salta las leyes de la naturaleza en Ordet, de forma magistral, para conceder al espectador y a los personajes el deseo más codiciado: la resurrección de alguien querido.

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15- Ordet (Carl Dreyer, 1955)

Basada en la obra teatral de Kaj Munk, este filme danés dirigida por el aclamado director Carl Dreyer se enfoca en la espiritualidad de los personajes, puesto que la obra abarca la idea de la iluminación dentro de la misma religión. Dreyer rodea al filme con un ambiente místico, mismo que utiliza para abordar la inseguridad del individuo ante los caprichos de la fe y de la razón.

La historia es acerca de los tres hijos de un devoto granjero danés llamado Morten (Henrik Malberg). El hijo menor, Anders (Cay Kristiansen), comparte las mismas creencias que su padre, el hijo mayor, Mikkel (Emil Hass Christensen, ha perdido toda su fe y es felizmente casado, y el hijo de en medio, Johannes (Preben Lerdorff Rye), ha perdido la cabeza y se proclama como Jesucristo mismo en la tierra. El desarrollo de la trama se lleva a cabo cuando la esposa de Mikkel, Inger (Birgitte Federspiel) tiene complicaciones en el parto de su tercer hijo, poniendo así las creencias religiosas de los personajes a prueba.

Este filme cuenta con aspectos impresionante de producción donde podemos apreciar una cinematografía peculiar y muy limpia, así como un cuidado muy meticuloso en la imagen y en los espacios que aparecen en pantalla. El rodaje duro cuatro meses de los cuales dos fueron para la grabación en set, y los otros dos en la locación de Vedersø, una pequeña villa al oeste de Jutland.

Es interesante analizar los cuadros del filme, puesto que para llevar a cabo la imagen de la película Dreyer se baso en las pinturas del pintor danés Vilhelm Hammershøi para crear estas composiciones cinematográficas dándoles un toque preciosista y naturalista, al igual que añadiendo dramatismo y quietud a la imagen. Otro dato interesante del rodaje de esta película fue que la actriz que interpreta a Inger estaba embarazada al igual que el personaje durante la filmación. Federspiel entró en trabajo de parto cuando casi terminaban de rodar, por lo que accedió a que Dreyer grabara los sonidos del dolor de parto, mismo que usaron como efecto de sonido en el corte final del filme.

[undiaungato]

Ordet (1955) · Carl Theodor Dreyer

[habitantes-oazj]

“Ordet” (The Word), 1955. 

Cay Kristiansen as Anders Borgen. 

Henrik Malberg as Morten Borgen.  

Birgitte Federspiel as Inger, Mikkel’s Wife. 

Emil Hass Christensen as Mikkel Borgen. 

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. 

Cinematography: Henning Bendtsen  

[ayteknoloji]

The Word (1955)

Danimarkalı büyük usta Carl Theodor Dreyer’in 1955 yapımı filmi ‘The Word’, çiftlikte yaşayan bir aileyi merkez alarak aşk, ölüm ve din üzerinden inanç kavramını sorgulamaktadır. Çiftlik sahibi yaşlı Morten’in küçük oğlu Anders, dini konularda çatışma yaşadıkları ailenin kızı Anne ile evlenmek istemektedir. Büyük oğlu Mikkel’in karısı Inger üçüncü çocuğuna hamiledir, ortanca oğlu Johannes ise İsa…

[ozu-teapot]

Ordet | Carl Theodor Dreyer | 1955

Cay Kristiansen, Sylvia Eckhausen, Gerda Nielsen

[enterfilm]

ORDET (Carl Theodor Dreyer, 1955)

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[habitantes-oazj]

“Ordet” (The Word), 1955. 

Cay Kristiansen as Anders Borgen. 

Birgitte Federspiel as Inger, Mikkel’s Wife. 

Henrik Malberg as Morten Borgen. 

Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer. 

Cinematography: Henning Bendtsen