205 - Carl Th. Dreyer: My Metier, 1995, Denmark. Dir. Torben Skjodt Jensen.

Monday, July 24, 2017

205 - Carl Th. Dreyer: My Metier, 1995, Denmark.  Dir. Torben Skjodt Jensen.

Look. I do matrimonial work. It's my métier. - Jake Gittis, played by Jack Nicholson, Chinatown.

A métier is a vocation or calling.  It is a French word presumed to have come from the Latin ministerium, meaning ministry.

Jake Gettis uses it in one of the great lines in one of the greatest movies ever made.

Outside of that, when have you ever heard this word used?  It is almost as though it was preserved for this one film quotation.

So how much more appropriate to discover that it was used before by one of the world's great filmmakers, referring to his vocation.

Carl Theodor Dreyer said that film was his métier.

And Torben Skjodt Jensen has preserved that statement in the title of his 1995 documentary on Dreyer.

The documentary contains generous interviews with people who worked with Dreyer.

Clara Pontoppidan, who played Siri (yes! Siri) in Leaves from Satan's Book (1920).

Helen Falconetti, the daughter of Maria Falconetti, who played Joan of Arc in The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928).

Lisbeth Movin, who played Anne Petersen in Day of Wrath (1943), and whom we will see 44 years later in Gabriel Axel's Babette's Feast (1987).

Preben Lerdoff Rye, who played Johannes in Ordet (1955), and who also played in Babette's Feast.

Birgitte Federspiel, who played Inger Borgen in Ordet (1955), and who also played in Babette's Feast.

Axel Strobye, who played Axel Nygen in Gertrud (1964), and yes, who played in Babette's Feast.

Baard Owe, who played Erland Janssen in Gertrud (1964).

Jorgen Roos, cinematographer.

Henning Bendsten, cinematographer for Ordet and Gertrud (1964).

Jensen organizes the documentary into three components: 1) the interviews, 2) clips from Dreyer's films, and 3) narrated passages from Dreyer's writing about film.

The stories provide some insights into his philosophy and methodologies, and how people felt when they worked with him.

There seems to be a consensus that he was a soft-spoken, humble man on the outside, who ruled with an iron will from his years of meticulous preparation for each film.  He knew what he wanted.  He got what he wanted.  And his actors enjoyed working with him, as he was gentle with them.

He would stand with complete calm, confident that he would get his shots.

Yet the suits themselves, the producers, were afraid to speak to him when they came to set, and they largely left him alone.  How wonderful for a film director!

He was said to have "10,000 volts" beneath the surface of that calm.  The actors got the calm.  The producers got the volts.

One of the takeaways from this documentary is that Dreyer made too few films.

Film is my one great passion. - Carl Theodor Dreyer.