An average movie

I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this flick but, since it was directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer and since it was available on YouTube, I thought I might as well check it out. It was apparently a big success when it was released and it’s because it was so successful that Dreyer would manage to make later on ‘La passion de Jeanne d'Arc’, obviously his magnum opus. Unfortunately, to be honest, I actually had a hard time to really care about the damned thing though. The fact that it took me 3 attempts to watch it until the end maybe didn’t help but, with each session, it never really interested me. Sure, it was technically well made, especially for a movie made 100 years ago, and it was a nice time-capsule showing how people lived back then in Denmark. However, I never really cared for any of the characters involved and what they were going through. I mean, the way Viktor treated his wife but also the rest of his family was of course rather deplorable but you might wonder if it was really uncommon back then (even nowadays some guys are pretty nasty with their partners). As a result, you might wonder how the audience back then thought about a movie about a man showing typical dominant, or even tyrannical, being actually corrected by the women around him. Still, this setup never really intrigued me though and, to make things worse, the way they completely infantilized Viktor to make him change his ways was, in my opinion, rather pathetic. Seriously, they even brought his childhood’s nanny who treated him again as if he was 12 years old. Anyway, to conclude, even if it didn’t really work for me, I have to admit that it was still a decent watch and it is worth a look, especially if you are interested in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s work. 

6/10