Sealed Orders (1914)
Directed by Benjamin Christensen

Film Review

Benjamin Christensen's short but brilliant career as one of Denmark's leading filmmakers got off to a prodigious start with this gripping spy thriller.  Combining traditional themes of love, honour and betrayal with a fast-paced adventure-melodrama, Sealed Orders (a.k.a. Det hemmelighedsfulde X or The Mysterious X) is the kind of crowdpleaser that would have been massively popular on the eve of the First World War, and its abundant use of exterior locations lends it a startling sense of immediacy.  The film was a hit with critics and audiences at home and abroad and established Christensen's reputation as one of the most promising filmmakers of the day.

Prior to this auspicious debut, Christensen had been pursuing a successful career as a stage actor with the Royal Danish Theatre, although he had appeared in a few films as early as 1911.  He began his film directing career in his mid-30s, shortly after he took over the running of the film production company Dansk Biografkompagni in 1913, where he had previously worked as an actor and screenwriter.  Being a producer as well as a director, Christensen was privileged to have complete control over the first films he made in Denmark, and this artistic freedom allowed him to develop a cinematic style that was years ahead of its time.  When you compare Christensen's early offerings with other films of the 1910s it is hard not be struck by how modern they appear.  Lighting, camera positioning, even camera motion, are used brilliantly to create atmosphere and tension, whilst fast editing and cross-cutting help to build and sustain an extraordinary pace of action, without ever losing narrative coherence.  At a time when  Denmark was beginning to lose its supremacy as a world leader in the new medium of cinema, Benjamin Christensen brought a sudden jolt of newness and vitality to his country's widely revered film industry.

Being one of Denmark's most charismatic and talented actors, it was fitting that Christensen should take the lead role, and he brings dignity and a quiet charm to his archetypal character, allowing the focus to be stolen by his photogenic co-star Karen Sandberg, with whom he would share top billing on his next feature.  The shamelessly melodramatic plot may seem unconvincing today, but this is at least in part a reflection of how values have changed since the time the film was made.  Nowadays, the notion of honour barely registers in our consciousness but a century ago it was one of the foremost of the virtues and it was more than likely that an army officer of 1913 would rather face a firing squad after being wrongly charged with treason than publicly denounce his wife as the mistress of an enemy agent.  The characters are simply drawn, almost stock caricatures, but they are convincingly portrayed and Christensen compels us to engage with their increasingly desperate plight.  A young boy's courageous bid to visit his father in prison is exquisite in its poignancy and we even end up sympathising with the central villain as he becomes cruelly caught up in the mechanics of Fate.  The story may be a tad far-fetched, but it is so skilfully put together and moves at such a swift pace (helped by the paucity of inter-titles) that it is nothing less than compelling.  Sealed Orders is silent cinema's nearest thing to a rollicking good page-turner novel.

The narrative sophistication is only one part of the film's appeal.  Just as commendable is its artistic flair and dazzling innovation.  Christensen combines the visual artistry of his contemporaries and subsequent filmmakers (Griffith, Lang, Murnau) with an unflinchingly deft treatment of suspense worthy of Hitchcock - indeed the Danish director may even be considered a forerunner of the so-called Master of Suspense.  Many scenes have a remarkable depth of field, with action manifesting in all parts of the frame (not just the foreground).  Christensen's recurring use of silhouettes and shadows lends a touch of menace to more than a few scenes and may well have had a strong influence on early German cinema.  Most striking is the ominous skeletal structure of the windmill that is central to the drama.  Sitting atop a steep hill, its stark silhouetted form seems to glower with menace - and so it should.  It holds the fates of all of the three main protagonists in its hands and acquires a mystical, almost demonic character.

In the film's most recognisably Hitchcockian sequence, the villain of the piece manages to get himself sealed in a dank, rat-ridden cellar, with the door to the windmill firmly wedged over the trapdoor.  As poor Count Spinelli struggles in vain to free himself, the camera pans slowly up the fatal door towards the hinges that stubbornly refuse to yield.  The release or otherwise of the real traitor from his self-made hell is the plot nexus around which the rest of the film dizzyingly revolves, resulting in an almost unbearably suspenseful race against time as the world literally falls to pieces in eerie precognition of the catastrophe that was WWI.

Benjamin Christensen followed this debut tour de force with a similarly well-paced thriller, Blind Justice (a.k.a. The Night of Revenge) (1916), which proved to be another popular success.  Christensen then gave up film directing for a while, perhaps disillusioned with his lack of recognition at home, but he returned in force with his third feature, Häxan (1922), in which his obsessive fascination with witchcraft through the ages allowed him to craft one of the most remarkable films of the silent era.  This is the masterpiece that brought Christensen worldwide acclaim and earned him a ticket to Hollywood, although his subsequent career was to be but a pale shadow of what had preceded it.

Film Synopsis

After war has been declared, Lieutenant van Hauen is summoned to receive some sealed orders from his military superiors containing instructions that will be of paramount importance in the coming offensive.  As he returns to his wife and children to bid farewell before setting off to war, van Hauen fails to notice a man unknown to him take note of the sealed orders.  The man is Count Spinelli, his wife's secret lover and a traitor who is actively engaged in passing on military secrets to an enemy power.  When it is discovered that the secret orders have fallen into enemy hands, van Hauen is immediately charged with treason and brought before a court-marshal.  His wife insists that the real traitor is Spinelli but van Hauen refutes her testimony in court and resigns himself to being executed before a firing squad.  Meanwhile, the man who can clear the lieutenant's name and save his life is trapped in the cellar of a disused windmill...