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THE EUROPEAN CINEMA
d'Arc. Without question, Carl Dreyer is a film artist of immense skill and, compared with much that runs through the projectors, Day of Wrath has qualities of honesty of effort and a certain dignity, but I cannot find myself alongside the many international critics who claim the film as a masterpiece of cinema ; in fact, I can find little justification as to why the film was made at all. Why was it necessary to select such a cruel and evil theme ? Possibly Dreyer was depressed and without faith of liberation from the Occupation/
More typical of Danish artistic and technical standards are the films of Benjamin Christensen, one of the veterans of silent days, with their serious and always adult approach to social and psychological problems : Children of Divorce (1939) and The Child (1940), both for Nordisk. The Burning Question, directed by Alice O'Fredericks, dealing with abortion, was a further sociological subject which the Danes were not afraid to tackle on the screen. Among the young directors are Bjarne HenningJensen and his wife Astrid, who started as documentary makers but who made in 1946 their first full-length story picture, Ditte Menneskebarn (Ditte — Child of the People). This sensitive and beautiful study of an illegitimate country girl, set almost wholly in natural surroundings on Jutland, is one of the most successful attempts yet to blend documentary with fictional ideas. Its subtle psychological handling of the characters, its quite brilliant direction of children, its authentic acting of peasant life, made this film most memorable. These two young directors have just completed De Pokkers Under (Those Confounded Children), a film about the need for proper recreation facilities for children, again beautifully handled.
The Danish documentary group, for a while under the admirable producership of Mogens Skot-Hansen (himself no mean director and script-writer), has created quite a name for itself. Its many films, if sometimes a little overimpressionistic and unsure, at least show a variety of styles and techniques, and are always lively and imaginative, Of
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