Blade af Satans bog (1920)
Directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer

Film Review

Leaves from Satan's Book (a.k.a. Blade af Satans Bog) was the second film that Carl Theodor Dreyer made for Denmark's leading film company Nordisk at the start of his career.  After his first film, The President (1919), over which he was given complete artistic freedom, Dreyer had great ambitions for his second film, which was originally conceived on the scale of the film that inspired it: D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916).  With Denmark's film industry in decline, Nordisk could not afford the blockbuster Dreyer had conceived, so the director had to take a reality check and make do with a more modest budget - a situation he would become all too familiar with in the course of his career.  Marie Corelli's 1895 novel The Sorrows of Satan provided the story for the film, which divides into four chapters in which Satan appears on Earth at pivotal moments in history and tries to lure an unsuspecting human into a Faustian pact.  The first of these depicts Judas's betrayal of Jesus, one of the episodes that Dreyer later intended to include in his epic film on the life of Christ.  (Although he got as far as writing the screenplay for this magnum opus, Dreyer never succeeded in finding a financial backer to make the film and it remained an unfulfilled dream project.)

Dreyer may not have had the resources he had wished but Leaves from Satan's Book was an ambitious production for a relatively inexperienced filmmaker and involved its director undertaking meticulous research, which is evident in the film's period authenticity.  The minimalist set design is strongly influenced by familiar paintings of well-known artists, most noticeably Da Vinci, Velásquez and Rembrandt.  What most distinguishes the film is Dreyer's bold and startlingly effective use of the close-up, a technique he would perfect in his silent films but would avoid in his later work.  In each of the four acts, Satan (marvellously portrayed by Helge Nissen) is favoured with the biggest close-ups, which reveal his malevolent intent with chilling directness.  The film's most powerful close-up is the one in the final act which fixes our attention on the face of a young woman named Siri (Clara Pontoppidan) as she plunges a knife into her heart in defiance of Satan's vile chicanery.  In the woman's face we discern a myriad of emotions - fear, uncertainty, resignation and finally a blaze of triumph - before she succumbs to her fatal blow.  This astonishing sequence prefigures the close-ups that Dreyer would use to even greater effect on his masterpiece La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928).

Film Synopsis

Satan is expelled from Heaven and sent to Earth.  For every mortal he succeeds in tempting, his sentence is extended by a hundred years; for every mortal who resists his temptation, his sentence is reduced by a thousand years.  Disguised as a Pharisee in Jerusalem of 30 AD, Satan easily coerces Judas into betraying Jesus to the Romans.  In 16th century Seville, a young priest named Don Fernandez is racked by desire for Isabel, the attractive daughter of the astronomer Don Gomez de Castro.  How easily he is tricked by Satan into betraying Isabel and her father to the inquisition.  By the autumn of 1793, the French Revolution has entered its bloodiest phase.  Before he is arrested, the Count de Chambord places his wife and daughter Geneviève into the care of his trusty servant Joseph.  Dressed as a revolutionary, Satan offers Joseph social advancement if he betrays the women in his charge.  In the spring of 1918, the Russian Revolution has reached Finland, with Red and White Russians waging a fierce battle.  Satan appears before a married woman named Siri in the guise of a monk and offers to spare the life of her husband if she betrays her motherland...