Film Review
The President (a.k.a.
Praesidenten) was the first film
directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer, the Danish filmmaker whose subsequent
masterpieces
La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc
(1928) and
Ordet (1955) are held in such
high esteem that they are often cited as two of the most sublime works
to have been committed to celluloid. Before making his directing
debut, Dreyer had worked solidly for seven years as a screenwriter and
film editor at Nordisk, Denmark's leading film company, and by way of
gratitude his bosses at Nordisk gave him complete artistic control over
his first film - a privilege he would never again enjoy in his
career. Dreyer not only directed the film, showing immense flair
and originality in doing so; he also wrote the script, took great care
over the casting, and designed all of the interior sets. Right
from the outset, Dreyer was fashioning himself as a perfect example of
what would later come to be known as the
film auteur.
Although the film was based on a novel -
Der President, written by the
Austrian author Karl Emil Franzos - its story had a profound resonance
with Dreyer's own personal history. In common with two of the
female characters in the film, Dreyer's mother was a commoner who was
made pregnant and then abandoned by a man belonging to a 'superior'
class. Such was the stigma associated with illegitimate births at
the time that Dreyer's mother had to give birth away from her hometown
and was forced to give her newborn infant up for adoption. As a
young man, Dreyer was appalled to learn that this unfortunate woman had
died within a year of bringing him into the world, as a result of a
botched abortion. The fate of his biological mother was to have a
deep and lasting effect on Dreyer and throughout his films intensely
compassionate portraits of women suffering on account of the injustices
and cruelty of men abound. It is the one abiding theme in his
oeuvre, and the thing that was probably his dearest preoccupation in
life.
When Carl Dreyer began his career, Denmark's golden age of filmmaking
(1909-1914) was pretty well over. The country that had been one
of the most commercially successful and artistically pre-eminent in the
new industry of filmmaking was rapidly losing ground to the United
States and would never recover its former prestige. Nordisk would survive
this decline and is still in business today, the oldest continuously running film studio in
the world. In his capacity as a screenwriter and editor at
Nordisk Dreyer would have rubbed shoulders with some of Denmark's most
creative artists, and this would explain why, when he began making his
own films, he did so with such technical and artistic brilliance.
On the writing front, Dreyer makes good use of a narrative device that
had rarely been used before, the narrative flashback. This is not
some arbitrary gimmick that Dreyer has plugged into the film to make it
appear smarter than it is but an effective way of driving home his
central point, that women have always been ill-treated by society, the
injustices of one generation inevitably replayed by the next, over and
over again. Dreyer wants us to understand that it is the strict
moral code which society imposes on itself which prevents individuals
from changing for the better. Until this alters things will never
improve - women will go on being the victims of a system that punishes
them for the unmentionable crimes and follies of the male sex.
Another strength of Dreyer's screenplay is the psychological depth the
film's author brings to his characters, in particular the central
protagonist. The crises of conscience that afflict the eponymous
president and ultimately destroy him are something that we can easily
relate to and reveal in Dreyer not only a keen understanding of human
nature but also an extraordinary capacity for empathising with
others. There is never a character in a Carl Dreyer film who is
not totally convincing and who fails to arouse our interest, if not our
whole-hearted sympathy.
Dreyer's use of symbolism is interesting and quite striking. At
her trial, the fallen heroine, Victorine, is depicted as a Christ-like
martyr, almost exactly as Joan of Arc would later be portrayed by the
director in his best-known film,
La
Passion de Jeanne d'Arc (1928). In her saintly innocence,
we can hardly fail to see her as Dreyer intended, as the unfortunate
scapegoat of a system that is inherently rotten. The crumbling
castle ruins which we see at the start and end of the film provide a
potent visual metaphor for a society that is blighted by an antiquated,
life-crushing notion of morality, one that prevents individuals from
acting according to their own moral precepts and therefore taking an
honest stand against the injustices that are inherent in the
system. To save his daughter from a death sentence, the central
protagonist must surrender his place in society to accomplish a moral
act, but all he achieves is to exchange the guilt for one crime (his
abandonment of his wife and daughter) with another, one that is far
more heinous in society's eyes.
There is a jarring conflict between Dreyer's use of natural locations
(most of these being on the picturesque island of Gotland) and his
claustrophobic, ornately furnished interiors (which were influenced by
the 19th century Danish painter Vilhelm Hammershøi). If
the latter suggest a rigidly organised society, bound by inviolable
rules of etiquette (the horror of which is occasionally underscored by
some bold expressionistic touches reminiscent of Dreyer's subsequent
Vampyr),
the former express the more desirable alternative, where an individual
is free to act according to his own beliefs. Repeated shots of
cute little animals and toddlers show us the innocence and insouciance
that modern man has lost through his slavish adherence to a strict
social code. There is a nice humorous touch near the end of the
film, where a group of dogs make up for the lack of a human
congregation at a wedding which is deemed socially unacceptable.
This canine gathering does not regard the married couple as social
renegades, to be judged and pitied; they are just content to lend their
presence to a happy event. If only human beings could be so
wise...
© James Travers 2014
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.
Next Carl Theodor Dreyer film:
Blade af Satans bog (1920)
Film Synopsis
Karl Victor von Sendlingen is an important magistrate in an unspecified
European town, respected by all for his unstinting devotion to justice.
One day, he is called upon to preside over the case of a young woman,
Victorine, who has murdered her own child not long after giving birth
to it in secret. Karl Victor is horrified to recognise Victorine
as his estranged daughter, the fruit of an injudicious love affair he
had in his youth with a woman of inferior class. Instead of
marrying the girl he had made pregnant, he discarded her, to honour a
pledge he had made to his father never to wed a commoner as he had
done. The girl died after giving birth, leaving Victorine to fend
for herself. Employed as a governess, Victorine was herself put
in the family way by her employer's son, leading to a tragic chain of
events that now places her in a prison cell await trial for
infanticide. When Victorine's appeal against her death sentence
is turned down, Karl Victor has only one option left open to him.
He must sacrifice everything he has - his career, his reputation, his
self-esteem - to save the life of the young woman whose miseries are
the result of his own misguided sense of duty.
© James Travers
The above content is owned by filmsdefrance.com and must not be copied.