Carl Th. Dreyer

Day of Wrath

Day of Wrath

Filmed during the Nazi occupation of Denmark, Carl Dreyer’s Day of Wrath (Vredens dag) is a harrowing account of individual helplessness in the face of growing social repression and paranoia. Anna, the young second wife of a well-respected but much older pastor, falls in love with her stepson when he returns to their small seventeenth-century village. Stepping outside the bounds of the village’s harsh moral code has disastrous results. Exquisitely photographed and passionately acted, Day of Wrath remains an intense, unforgettable experience.

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Film Info

  • Denmark
  • 1943
  • 97 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 1.33:1
  • Danish
  • Spine #125

Special Features

  • Digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Henning Bendtsen
  • Deleted footage of interviews from Torben Skjødt Jensen’s documentary Carl Th. Dreyer—My Metier, with actors Lisbeth Movin and Preben Lerdorff Rye
  • Stills gallery

Available In

Collector's Set

Carl Theodor Dreyer

Carl Theodor Dreyer

DVD Box Set

4 Discs

$63.96

Out Of Print

Special Features

  • Digital transfer, supervised by cinematographer Henning Bendtsen
  • Deleted footage of interviews from Torben Skjødt Jensen’s documentary Carl Th. Dreyer—My Metier, with actors Lisbeth Movin and Preben Lerdorff Rye
  • Stills gallery
Day of Wrath
Cast
Thorkild Roose
Absalon Pederssøn
Lisbeth Movin
Anne, his wife
Sigrid Neiiendam
Meret
Preben Lerdorff Rye
Martin Pederssøn
Anna Svierkier
Herlof's Marte
Albert Høeberg
The Parson
Olaf Ussing
Laurentius
Credits
Director
Carl Th. Dreyer
Screenplay
Carl Th. Dreyer
From a novel by
Hans Wiers-Jenssens
Producer
Carl Th. Dreyer
Producer
Tage Nielsen
Cinematography
Karl Andersson
Editing
Anne Marie Petersen
Editing
Edith Schlüssel
Music
Poul Schierbeck

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Explore

Carl Th. Dreyer

Writer, Producer, Director

Carl Th. Dreyer
Carl Th. Dreyer

The creator of perhaps cinema’s most purely spiritual works, Danish master Carl Theodor Dreyer is one of the most influential moving image makers of all time, his arrestingly spare and innovative approach echoed in the films of Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, Andrei Tarkovsky, Lars von Trier, and countless others. After making his mark with such narrative silent films as the provocative Michael (1924) and Master of the House (1925), Dreyer created The Passion of Joan of Arc (1928), which, though deemed a failure on its release, is now considered, with its mix of stark realism and expressionism (and astonishing, iconic performance by Maria Falconetti), one of the great artistic works of the twentieth century. For the next four decades, Dreyer would continue to make films about people caught in battle between the spirit and the flesh and to experiment technically with the form. Vampyr (1932) is a mesmerizing horror fable full of camera and editing tricks; Day of Wrath (1943) is an intense tale of social repression, made during the Nazi occupation of Denmark; Ordet (1955) is a shattering look at a farming family’s inner religious world; and Gertrud (1964) is a portrait of a fiercely independent woman’s struggle for personal salvation.

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