Carl Theodor Dreyer

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Carl Theodor Dreyer (1965)

Carl Theodor Dreyer (born February 3, 1889 in Copenhagen , Denmark as Karl Nielsen ; † March 20, 1968 there ) was a Danish film director and screenwriter who is considered one of the most important filmmakers in European cinema history. His works often deal with spiritual subjects. One of his most famous films is The Passion of the Maid of Orléans , which is regularly cited as one of the best films of all time.

life and work

Carl Theodor Dreyer was born under the name Karl Nielsen as the illegitimate child of Josefine Bernhardine Nilsson, a Swedish maid in Copenhagen. When the boy was one and a half years old, his mother died while trying to have her next child - also illegitimate - herself aborted. Although Dreyer only found out about this tragedy as an adult, this trauma is said to have left deep traces on him and in his films. After a stay in the orphanage, he was finally adopted by the typesetter Dreyer and his wife, who also changed his name to Carl Theodor Dreyer . The young Dreyer found his first employment as a pianist, writer and theater critic.

After these smaller jobs, he began his film career in 1912 as a screenwriter, for example in 1914 for Die Waffen Nieder! . He also worked as an actor in two silent films from 1912/1913. He worked for the Danish film production company Nordisk , for which he directed his first film , The President , in 1919 . Dreyer said that during his five years at Nordisk, he learned so much from working on films every day that there could hardly be better training. Dreyer designed his episodic film Blätter aus dem Buche Satans ( Blade af Satans bog ) (1920) based on the model of DW Griffiths Intolerance . Before that, he shot The Pastor's Widow in Sweden . At the beginning of the 1920s, Carl Theodor Dreyer went to Berlin to film for UFA . There was, among others, the chamber feature film Michael . Filmed in Denmark in 1925, you should honor your wife (Du Skal ære din hustru) was one of Dreyer's few commercial successes: The enormous success of the film, especially in France , paved the way for Dreyer to make the film adaptation of The Passion of the Virgin von Orleans ( La passion de Jeanne d'Arc ) in France from 1928, which today is counted among the most important cinematographic works in French and in all of film history , although Dreyer was otherwise more in the artistic tradition of Scandinavian film.

He shot his first sound film , Vampyr - The Dream of Allan Gray , in 1932 as a German- French co-production. The film is now considered a classic horror film , although it does not contain any explicit scenes of violence. Like its predecessor, it was a failure with contemporary audiences . Dreyer went back to his home country, and his next film, Day of Vengeance , was not released until 1943 , in which he thematized belief and persecution in witches at the beginning of modern times with visually powerful images. After 1946 Dreyer made a few documentaries for the Danish government , but found it difficult to find investors for his own projects after the financial failures of his previous films. It was only when Dreyer was awarded lifelong director of a cinema by the Danish government in 1952 for his life's work that this not only brought him financial security for the rest of his life, but he was also able to produce his two late works through the cinema income. The faith drama Das Wort (1955) was a success with both critics and audiences, it was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival . With his last film Gertrud, based on a play by Hjalmar Söderberg , Dreyer again created cinematic art of lasting value. With the fixation on the essentials in his film Gertrud , Dreyer encountered incomprehension at the time of the premiere in 1964, the special modernity of this masterpiece was only really understood after his death.

In 1965 Dreyer was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . The director, who had been married to his wife Ebba Larsen since 1911 and had two children, died of pneumonia in 1968 at the age of 79. He left behind the project he had started for a great biography of Jesus.

reception

Today Carl Theodor Dreyer is considered to be one of the most important visionaries of the cinema and is one of the most important European directors of his time alongside Fritz Lang and Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau . He influenced later directors such as Ingmar Bergman , Robert Bresson , Andrei Tarkowski and Lars von Trier . Dreyer's films were rarely commercial successes when they were released and not in all cases immediately met with critical acclaim, as they were often “ahead of their time” in terms of subject matter and form. His works were usually characterized by an "aura of dark grimness", and the supernatural or religion are often thematized in his films. In many of his films, particularly the Maid of Orleans , close-ups are strikingly often used. Another characteristic of his films are authentic sets, which are reduced to the bare essentials, especially in his later works. In The Passion of the Maiden of Orleans he mixes German Expressionism with Realism .

Filmography

literature

  • Martin Abraham: Carl Theodor Dreyer: Film and literature, melodrama and tragedy, abstraction and realism, good and bad.
  • David Bordwell : The Films of Carl-Theodor Dreyer . University of California Press, Berkeley CA et al. 1981, ISBN 0-520-03987-4 .
  • Raymond Carney: Speaking the Language of Desire. The Films of Carl Dreyer . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge et al. 1989, ISBN 0-521-37807-9 .
  • Carl Theodor Dreyer: Four Screenplays. La Passion de Joan of Arc. Vampire. Vredens Dag. Ordet. From the Danish by Oliver Stallybrass; Introduction by Ole Storm. Thames & Hudson, London, 1970, ISBN 0-500-50002-9 .
  • Jean Drum, Dale D. Drum: My Only Great Passion. The Life and Films of Carl Th. Dreyer (=  Filmmakers . Band 68 ). Scarecrow Press, Lanham MD et al. 2000, ISBN 0-8108-3679-3 .
  • Film forward. No. 14, autumn 1989, ISSN  0940-2322 , (focus on Dreyer).
  • Jytte Jensen (Ed.): Carl Th. Dreyer. The Museum of Modern Art, New York NY 1988, ISBN 0-87070-305-6 .
  • Edvin Kau: Dreyer's cinematic art. Akademisk Forlag, Copenhagen 1989, ISBN 87-500-2859-6 .
  • Tom Milne : The Cinema of Carl Dreyer. AS Barnes, 1971, ISBN 978-0-498-07711-1 .
  • Donald Skoller (Ed.): Dreyer in Double Reflection. Translation of Carl Th. Dreyer's Writings About the Film (Om Filmen) . With accompanying Commentary and Essays. Da Capo Press, New York NY 1991, ISBN 0-306-80458-1 .
  • Paul Schrader : Transcendental Style in Film. Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer. University of California Press, Berkeley CA 1972, ISBN 0-306-80335-6 .
  • Jean Sémolué: Carl Th. Dreyer. Le mystère du vrai. Cahiers du Cinéma, Paris 2005, ISBN 2-86642-408-5 .
  • Carsten Bergemann: Carl Theodor Dreyer. In: Thomas Koebner (Ed.): Film directors. Biographies, descriptions of works, filmographies. 3rd, updated and expanded edition. Phillip Reclam, Stuttgart 2008 [1. Edition 1999], ISBN 978-3-15-010662-4 , pp. 192-197.

Web links

Commons : Carl Theodor Dreyer  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Carl Theodor Dreyer at Senses of Cinema
  2. ^ Critique of "Das Wort" ( Memento from August 20, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) by Jonathan Rosenbaum , with biographical comments on Dreyer
  3. ^ Carl Theodor Dreyer at Britannica
  4. ↑ Quote from the Internet Movie Database
  5. ^ Carl Theodor Dreyer at Senses of Cinema
  6. ↑ Article in the Guardian on Carl Th. Dreyer
  7. ^ Carl Theodor Dreyer at Criterion Collection
  8. ^ Carl Theodor Dreyer at Britannica
  9. ^ Carl Theodor Dreyer at Britannica
  10. ^ Carl Theodor Dreyer at Criterion Collection
personal data
SURNAME Dreyer, Carl Theodor
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Dreyer, Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Danish film director
DATE OF BIRTH February 3, 1889
PLACE OF BIRTH Copenhagen , Denmark
DATE OF DEATH March 20, 1968
Place of death Copenhagen , Denmark