Gertrud (1964)
Country: DK
Technical: bw 115m
Director: Carl Dreyer
Cast: Nina Pens Rode, Bendt Rothe
Synopsis:
About to leave her civil servant husband, a woman suddenly breaks with her musician lover and rejects the entreaties of her old love to go it alone.
Review:
Dreyer's hymn to love is almost universally praised by critics but to my mind is not an unqualified success. Very slow and stylised, with spotlit faces looking past one another and lines spoken trance-like, it is unrelievedly doomladen despite the optimistic closing philosophy ('Tis better to have lived and loved, etc.) Superficially resembling Bergman's chamber pieces, it never achieves the violent or imaginative nature of his angst-ridden scenarios, which confers on the Swede his truly cinematic qualities. However, time may well have tempered this judgement and fostered an appreciation of the 'less is more' approach of the Dane.
Country: DK
Technical: bw 115m
Director: Carl Dreyer
Cast: Nina Pens Rode, Bendt Rothe
Synopsis:
About to leave her civil servant husband, a woman suddenly breaks with her musician lover and rejects the entreaties of her old love to go it alone.
Review:
Dreyer's hymn to love is almost universally praised by critics but to my mind is not an unqualified success. Very slow and stylised, with spotlit faces looking past one another and lines spoken trance-like, it is unrelievedly doomladen despite the optimistic closing philosophy ('Tis better to have lived and loved, etc.) Superficially resembling Bergman's chamber pieces, it never achieves the violent or imaginative nature of his angst-ridden scenarios, which confers on the Swede his truly cinematic qualities. However, time may well have tempered this judgement and fostered an appreciation of the 'less is more' approach of the Dane.
Country: DK
Technical: bw 115m
Director: Carl Dreyer
Cast: Nina Pens Rode, Bendt Rothe
Synopsis:
About to leave her civil servant husband, a woman suddenly breaks with her musician lover and rejects the entreaties of her old love to go it alone.
Review:
Dreyer's hymn to love is almost universally praised by critics but to my mind is not an unqualified success. Very slow and stylised, with spotlit faces looking past one another and lines spoken trance-like, it is unrelievedly doomladen despite the optimistic closing philosophy ('Tis better to have lived and loved, etc.) Superficially resembling Bergman's chamber pieces, it never achieves the violent or imaginative nature of his angst-ridden scenarios, which confers on the Swede his truly cinematic qualities. However, time may well have tempered this judgement and fostered an appreciation of the 'less is more' approach of the Dane.