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by his torture, has wrung confession from her; the elderly pastor who has suppressed his knowledge of a woman's guilt in order to gain her young daughter as his second wife and who suffers bitter pangs of remorse at his lack of courage; and the young wife who meets and falls in love with the pastor's grown-up son and in time confronts her husband with the truth of the relationship. The drama reaches its climax in the denunciation of the young wife, her abandonment by her lover, and her confession over her dead husband's body to the practice of witchcraft.
In Dreyer's hands the drama developed a sombre intensity. Every aspect of the theme suggested deliberate, considered treatment: as always with Dreyer, the theme had been pondered over and brought to the screen with thought and feeling behind every foot. Hitherto the visual emphasis in Dreyer's work had been most arresting: his interesting arrangement of figures, his atmospheric feeling for landscape, and the sense of light and shade in the interiors. These were found again in the new film, particularly in the inquisition sequence; but there was also a resourceful handling of sound. It was the implacable ringing of the witch-bell offscreen in the opening sequence which helped to set the fear-laden mood of the film, just as it was the contrast between the sweet voices of the choirboys mingling with the screams of the woman on the blazing pile which heightened unbearably the horror of the scene. Characteristically, Dreyer's intense feeling for the subject was conveyed to the players. Anna Svierkier's old witch was a deeply affecting study. The tortured conscience of the pastor was conveyed by Thorkild Roose, and Lisbeth Movin as the young wife had a touching charm which might conceivably have been mistaken for witchcraft in a repressed community. The most powerful performance came from Sigrid Neiiendam as the pastor's mother: the forbidding Rembrandtesque figure dominated the film from the shadows.
Vredens Dag, a memorable achievement of the cinema and proof of Dreyer's stature as an artist, was coldly received by the film critics in Copenhagen, but was supported by prominent figures in art and science. After the liberation it was received with enthusiasm in Britain and France and with qualified approval in the United States. Dreyer's films have invariably become centre-pieces of controversy before their imaginative originality has been appreciated. It is only an artist of exceptional aesthetic stamina who can withstand such treatment over the years. Perhaps it was under the shadow of the Danish failure of the film that he made Tzd Manniskor (Two People) (1945) for Svensk Filmindustri in Stockholm. The action of the film was confined almost exclusively to a city flat and to the movements of its two occupants, a man and his wife. Presumably Dreyer's aim was to base his drama on various external and internal stimuli; but through some failure of understanding between director and players the aim was never realized. Dreyer wants to forget the film and to think instead of preparations for his master work, a film about Christ. To deny him the opportunity to make this film would be to crush a work of creative imagination which, with the intense thought and study Dreyer has given it, is already half-way to the screen.
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