Vredens dag [Day of Wrath] (1943)

(Criterion Streaming, November 2019) There are movies out there—many movies out there—that are critically acclaimed to the stratosphere, acclaimed as some of the greatest movies ever made, oft mentioned on extended best-of lists and basically untouchable if you want to keep showing up unharmed at movie reviewers’ secret conferences. (I kid—If there were such conferences, no two critics could agree on what to order for lunch, let along drafting a film canon.)  But when shown to any ordinary person, the film will produce a very different response: a muted sigh out of a duty completed, a checkmark on a list, a resigned sigh of satisfaction that we can go back to more entertaining fare, and the satisfaction that the film will never need to be revisited. So it is with writer-director Carl Theodor Dreyer’s Day of Wrath, a slow-paced witchcraft romance that plays as an allegory of life under totalitarianism at a time when Dreyer was working in a Nazi-occupied country. It’s clearly made with high ambitions and high competence—but you have the time to fall asleep three times before the credits roll. Pacing is not the sole issue here—monotonous pacing with humourless writing add to the heavy atmosphere of a historical drama in oppressive times. Amusingly, the initial reaction to the film was a lot like mine—accusations of a slow boring film. Later appreciations were far more positive. But I’m sticking to my guns on this one—saw it once, don’t need to see it again.