What to expect
Dreyer makes authority visible through measured movement, pale interiors, lowered voices, and faces forced to wait beneath judgement. The film treats belief as a social force capable of producing the evidence it demands.
How to ease in
The pace is severe but the relationships are direct. Notice who is permitted to interpret another person’s words, and how confession changes when punishment has already been decided.
Heads-up
In a seventeenth-century Danish household, a young wife’s desire and the persecution of an accused witch begin to mirror one another.
The rooms seem calm because everyone has learned to fear aloud only in approved language. I feel the violence long before the flames, inside each pause where another person claims the right to name the truth.
Open the note ↓
The rooms seem calm because everyone has learned to fear aloud only in approved language. I feel the violence long before the flames, inside each pause where another person claims the right to name the truth.
— Momo
Credits & versions
- Cast
- Thorkild Roose — Absalon Pederssøn · Lisbeth Movin — Anne · Sigrid Neiiendam — Merete · Preben Lerdorff Rye — Martin
- Screenplay
- Carl Th. Dreyer · Mogens Skot-Hansen · Poul Knudsen
- Production
- Tage Nielsen · Palladium
- Cinematography
- Karl Andersson
Version map
Where to go next
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