Master of the House

Viktor is a small king at home. He has lost his job, he is irritable, and he berates his wife from morning to night. She does all the work, looks after the children and never answers back. Then the old woman who was his nurse in childhood arrives and takes charge of the household. She sends the wife away and leaves the man alone. The subject is not marriage but housework counting as invisible labour. The old woman does not deliver a moral lecture to teach Viktor; she makes him do the work. Morning coffee, laundry and childcare fall to him in turn, and the transformation comes from there. The form is surprisingly close and everyday for silent cinema. The expressions are unexaggerated, the gestures small. Carl Theodor Dreyer had the apartment built in the studio at true scale and in working order; the plumbing and the stove actually functioned. That let the actors really do the tasks, and the film's texture comes out of it. It was the director's largest commercial success to that point. The interest it drew in France in particular gave Dreyer the chance to work there and make his next film, The Passion of Joan of Arc. Johannes Meyer plays Viktor, Astrid Holm his wife and Mathilde Nielsen the old woman. Who it is for: viewers who like silent cinema and films built on daily life. Who it is not for: anyone waiting for events; the film takes place almost entirely in one apartment.