Film Review
Carl Theodor Dreyer is a director who is usually associated with
austere, often intensely bleak dramas about human suffering
and spiritual renewal. He
is not as well known for his comedies and so
Master of the House, a rare
excursion into farce, will come as something of a surprise to those who
have based their assessment of this, the one true master of Danish
cinema, on such films as
Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1929)
and
Ordet
(1951). The only apparent connection between this film and
Dreyer's better known works is a thematic link, its depiction of the
subjugation of women by men. The difference is that here the
women finally get the upper hand and a harmony between the two sexes is
achieved, an unlikely outcome that is vaguely reminiscent of the miracle that we
see in
Ordet.
Adapted from a play by the renowned Danish screenwriter Svend Rindom,
Master of the House is a sublimely
crafted morality piece, with a feminist (or, more accurately,
pro-women's rights) subtext that is several decades
ahead of its time. It could so easily have been a preachy
melodrama but Dreyer avoids the pitfall of moralising didacticism and
instead delivers a film with genuine human feeling, a film that is both
poignant and humorous. There is even a Lubitsch-like verve and
playfulness in some of the film's later sequences,
particularly those where the tyrannical
Viktor finally submits to the iron will of his dominatrix nanny.
Master of the House is
surprising in other ways. It has a striking neo-realist touch,
which is remarkable when you consider that the film was made at time
when virtually all filmmakers preferred a more stylised approach, to
compensate for the absence of recorded dialogue. Dreyer is again
ahead of his time in his striving for authenticity. Originally,
he had wanted to shoot the entire film in a real two-room
apartment. When this proved to be impractical, he insisted that
the studio sets be constructed as a functional replica of a real
apartment, complete with adjacent four-walled rooms and running
water. Dreyer eschews the stylisation favoured by his
contemporaries and achieves a naturalistic feel that is virtually
unique at this time.
Dreyer is also to be noted on his use of close-ups, another technique
that very few filmmakers of this era had learned to exploit fully.
Rather than require his actors to express themselves in a
theatrical manner, through exaggerated facial and body gestures, Dreyer
uses the close-up to achieve the same effect in a more naturalistic
manner. In this film, he shows just how effective a
carefully composed close-up of an actor's face can be in conveying a
character's feelings, without dialogue. In Mathilde
Nielsen (who plays the aforementioned elderly dominatrix), Dreyer had
an excellent subject for this purpose, her
penetrating eyes, curled lips and mocking smile telling us far more
than could every be expressed through reams of scripted dialogue.
Although it is so often overlooked today,
Master of the House is assuredly
one of Carl Theodor Dreyer's great achievements. The film was
particularly successful in France and helped Dreyer to find financial
backing for his next, and most ambitious film,
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc.
This, Dreyer's best known film, could not be more different from
Master of the House, and yet it
shows a natural progression in the director's technique. The
psychological realism that Dreyer achieved in
Master of the House and his
previous film
Mikaël (1924) reaches
devastating heights in his Joan of
Arc study, principally through what is arguably cinema's most
inspired use of the close-up.
© James Travers 2010
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Next Carl Theodor Dreyer film:
The Bride of Glomdal (1926)
Film Synopsis
Ida Frandsen's life is one of unceasing drudgery. From the crack
of dawn to late in the evening, she is busy with the multitude of
household chores that need to be done to make life as tolerable as
possible for her husband Viktor and their children. But far from
being grateful for his wife's endless toil, Viktor treats her with
contempt. He scolds her for the slightest fault and
fails to see the sacrifices she makes to keep him comfortable. From
time to time, Vikor's
former nanny, Mads, comes in to give Ida a helping hand, but this does
little for Viktor's humour, since he has grown to loathe the
interfering old woman. Mads is appalled by the way that Viktor
abuses his wife and decides it is time he was taught a lesson.
She and Ida's mother persuade Ida that she must take a break, otherwise
she risks damaging her health. Reluctantly, the worn out Ida
agrees and moves back in with her mother, accepting Mads' assurance that
she will take care of her husband and the children. Viktor is
outraged when he learns that his wife has abandoned him but has a
change of heart when he learns that Ida genuinely is ill. With
Ida away recuperating at a rest home, Viktor has no choice but to put
up with the humiliations that his former nanny metes out to him with an
almost malignant glee. Mads is pitiless, having resolved to give
Viktor a taste of his own medicine...
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.