#128: JENSEN, Torben Skjødt: Carl Th. Dreyer -- My Metier (1995)

CARL THEODOR DREYER BOX SET {Spine #124}

JENSEN, Torben Skjødt (Denmark)
Carl Th. Dreyer -- My Metier [1995]

Spine #128
DVD
OOP

Torben Skjødt Jensen's elegant documentary is a collage of memories and reflections on one of cinema's greatest directors. Visually rich and densely layered, Carl Th. Dreyer — My Métier illuminates an artist too little understood and too important to overlook. Through interviews, historical writings, and rare archival footage, a portrait of Dreyer emerges — an austere perfectionist, yes, but also a passionate man possessing a genuine sense of humor. The Criterion Collection is proud to present this in-depth study of Dreyer's life and work for the first time on home video.

94 minutes
Black & White

Stereo

Narrated in English

Interviews in Danish and French

1:66:1 aspect ratio

Criterion Release 2001

Director/Writer

Torben Skjødt Jensen was 37 when he wrote and directed Carl Th. Dreyer -- My Metier.

The Film

An excellent doc. Most interesting is the interview of Hélène Falconetti.

The Extras

The Booklet

Eighteen-page booklet featuring essays by Dreyer, Jensen, and Ulrich Breuning.

Dreyer:

"There is a certain resemblance between a work of art and a person. Just as one can talk about a person's soul, one can also talk about the work of art's soul, its personality. The soul is shown through the style, which is the artist's way of giving expression to his perception of the material. The style is important in attaching inspiration to artistic form. Through the style, the artist molds details that make it whole. Through style, he gets others to see the material through his eyes."

Jensen:

"[This documentary] works on three aesthetic levels playing off each other. First, the participants (Birgitte Federspiel, Preben Lerdorff Rye, Lisbeth Movin, Axel Strøbye, Baard Owe, Henning Bendtsen, Jørgen Roos, and Hélène Falconetti, daughter of Maria Falconetti. Second, clips from Dreyer's films; and third, the expressive narrative. Running like a scarlet thread throughout are Dreyer's own statements (voiced by Henning Jensen) on his vocation as a filmmaker, his passion, his aesthetic principles, and his language, intertwined with my own personal pictorial adaptation as an expressively symbolic explosion of images. Hypnosis, repetition, abstraction. My understanding of Dreyer is drawn from his concrete legacy of stills, sketches, letters, manuscripts, clips from films, etc., primarily derived from the Danish Film Museum collection."

Breuning:

"I've always been interested in people who have been able to express themselves, but who have had problems functioning as human beings — Lerfeldt, Baudelaire, and Dreyer were all maladjusted people."

Commentary

None.

Interview footage and archival material

Extensive

Biographical essay Dreyer scholar Edvin Kau.

Good material.

83

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