The strange beauty of Dreyer's Day of Wrath

Danish director Carl Theodore Dreyer's film Day of Wrath (1943) was shot in Denmark during the Nazi occupation, and one might look for sly or subtle analogies between the persecution and execution of young women accused of witchcraft and the Nazi genocide and the fascist ideology. In some ways, it's amazing the was even made, but perhaps the contemporary reference points were too subtle for the censors to comprehend. In any event, it's a terrific and unusual - clearly an influence on fellow-Scandinavian Bergman is evident throughout (especially The Seventh Seal, with its medeival setting and its execution scene). Yet Day of Wrath is unmistakable Dreyer's - shot very much in the same style as his silent classic The Passion of Joan of Arc: Spare settings, mostly interiors, lots of closeups on the tortured faces of the principal actors, beautiful lighting that will remind most viewers of Vermeer and Rembrandt, a remote historical setting, male dominance and cruelty in the guise of religious decree and Christian faith, and an extremely slow and deliberate pacing of every scene. Day of Wrath, set in 17th-century Scandinavia, in b/w - although if it were in color it would look almost the same, as everyone wears funereal black with those odd Dutch/Danish collars and wimples  - is about an older man, a priest, married to a much younger woman (Anne - the central figure in the movie); when the old man's son arrives from somewhere abroad - where he's been or why is never stated - the son and Anne fall in love, eventually driving the old man to his death and thereby raising the possibility that Anne may have brought about his death through witchcraft. The movie feels much older than it is - perhaps because of the setting, perhaps because Dreyer was imbued with the look and pacing of silent films - but it's beautiful in its own way, especially in its portraiture of the main characters and in its creepy re-creation of church rituals: a funeral, an execution, and the chorus of young boys chanting prayers as if burning a woman to death were just an ordinary event in their lives, which perhaps it was.