Day of Wrath

A film set in a Danish town in the seventeenth century. There is an accusation of witchcraft in the town. An old woman is seized; she talks under torture and is burned. Before she dies she curses the pastor and says something: he had once saved his own wife's mother from the same charge and kept it hidden. The pastor Absalon is an old man. His wife Anne is much younger and the marriage was not of her choosing. Absalon's son Martin comes home. He and Anne are of an age and something begins between them. The tension runs two ways: on one side the hiding of the relationship, on the other Anne starting to suspect a power in herself. Witchcraft is taken to be real in the town, and at some point she begins to believe it too. What the narrative is interested in is not magic but how an accusation works: anything said can become evidence and there is no such thing as a defence. The photography is black and white; the scenes are held long and the camera moves very slowly. The light is built as though taken from paintings. Lisbeth Movin plays Anne, Thorkild Roose plays Absalon and Preben Lerdorff Rye plays Martin. Carl Theodor Dreyer directed. It was made in Denmark under German occupation and was read at the time as an allegory. An important production for anyone who likes classic European cinema and slow drama. For a viewer expecting pace, the film is deliberately slow and nearly motionless.